Just Josh'n

Day 1:

Ben Forta kicked off the event with a couple charts on where CF is now, and where its going.  He emphasized more on LiveCycle integration, Flex Integration and BlazeDS.  There was some confusion as to what exactly the difference is between the LiveCycle DS ES & Blaze DS... Adobe really needs to fix that so it's not so confusing.  He also talked a little bit about the CF Open Process Initiative.  I wont get into the details, but he basically talked about a bug tracker, a improved enhancement request process and a custom advisory board.  Ben Forta also hinted at some future CF 9 improvements one that I thought was being hinted at was AIR integration in CF 9.  He also "hinted" at a CF IDE, basically he said improving the developer experience... so you can read into that how ever you want.  I basically read it to say "CF IDE".  Enough said.  Overall Day 1 for me was pretty good, I attended a couple classes later in the day that I really liked.  One was ColdSpring, I learned more about the AOP capabilities of Coldspring than I knew before the class thanks to Matt Woodward.  I also attended a couple sessions on the new cfdocument and cfpdf capabilities.  I already have a couple use cases for the cfpdf capability when combining multiple pdfs into one.  I hope to have a sample on this blog in a couple days.

Day 2:

Day 2 for me was extremely beneficial.  I really took a lot back from the MXUnit session.  I do test on my CFC methods, but nothing like what these guys do.  I plan on using MXUnit in the very near future.  Another session that I thought was really great was the new Ajax tags in CF8.  After going to that session and than going to a Spry session, I realized (at least from my knowledge) that I dont need to use Spry, CF8 has a lot of functionality and it can be extended.  Spry seems to be more for Dreamweaver users & Designers who want to add Ajax functionality to HTML sites.  Not really sure why Adobe added this capability when they also added some very useable Ajax features in CF8.  If anyone can enlighten me, I am all ears :)  There was a awesome Cryptography session, it was great, but it was right after lunch and there was a lot of information thrown at the audience in a very short amount of time.  The basic run down was try to avoid using cryptography if you can, its not for the faint of heart and can be a pain to get it done right... oh and per the speaker the CF8 Cryto stuff sucks, he recommends that you use the Java classes instead.  I also sat in a session by Matt Woodward on the difference between all of the LiveCycle DS products.  Matt broke down the differences of each one and this helped shed some light on what Blaze DS has and what it doesnt have.  Very helpful.  The last session I took was on Transfer ORM.  The speaker from Fig Leaf was pretty excited, a bit over excited probably due to all the coffee he drank through out the day (LMAO - he had a huge jug full of coffee).  Anyway, I have been wanting to start using Transfer ORM for awhile now, I think after this session I am actually going to move to it on my next project.

Summary:

Overall the first two days of WebManiacs was good Fig Leaf did a excellent job with the facilities, food/snacks, and the sessions. What I took away from it was basically this:
- Learn and use the AOP parts of ColdSpring (when needed)
- Definitely start using MXUnit for my CF development
- I now know the difference between all the LiveCycle DS ES Products (Thanks Matt!)
- Start using Transfer ORM to handle your DB stuff
- Dont waste time learning Spry, just use the CF Ajax Tags for now since it handles so much for you out of the box

I will post all of my notes and links to some presentations on Friday/Saturday once the conference is over.  I have three days left of Flex/AIR sessions and so far they have been awesome!