Laura Arguello

As you may know by now, ColdFusion 7 includes a new feature that lets us create forms in flash format. They work as a replacement for html forms, but give us some additional controls like the tree, grid, and calendar. Even if making a "form" doesn't sound very appealing to you, once you start using this feature you will find that you can do much more than simple forms. But the best is that they can enhance the usability of your regular forms, even if they are simple, with built-in features such as validation, tooltips, and tabs. It doesn't take much to make a flash form; basically, we only have to specify that the form's format is flash in the cfform tag and proceed with the cfform elements. In this article, we'll walk you through the process of creating a small application interface using only flash forms. There's a lot to discover about flash forms, although you d... (more)

Your First Adobe Flex Application with a ColdFusion Backend

Flex is a complete set of tools to develop rich Internet cross-platform applications based on the Flash platform. With Flex, you can create applications that not only have the "wow factor" necessary to please clients and users alike, but the "usability factor" necessary to make your application a real success.  Flex 2 has recently been released and can be downloaded at Adobe's Web site. This release includes Flex Builder 2 (an IDE based on Eclipse) and Flash Player 9. At Adobe's Web site, you'll also find tools specifically for ColdFusion such as the ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity... (more)

ColdFusion "Real Estate Sample Application" (Part I)

With the release of Macromedia ColdFusion 7 and the arrival of Flash Forms, developers were presented with an alternative to HTML forms that offered them additional functionality, such as full-featured controls not available in HTML and built-in validation. That alone made Flash Forms appealing - and with the addition of pieces of ActionScript code, developers were able to create truly responsive forms. But because they were meant to be compatible with HTML forms, they still shared the same submit-refresh model. What if you could "submit" the form and, without a page refresh, ge... (more)

How To Create a Photo Slide Show ...

All applications, simple or complex, online or desktop, are composed of many elements: screens, forms, menus, etc. In a Rich Internet Application, those elements can also include video, audio, or images. From the programmer's standpoint, it would be great to be able to reuse those parts so that they can be incorporated into different places of the application, or in different applications, using the same component. In Flex, creating custom MXML components is a very easy task; whenever you create a new component, simply drop it in your application as many times as you want. You c... (more)

The Real Estate Sample Application Using ColdFusion and Flash Forms

With the release of Macromedia ColdFusion 7 and the arrival of Flash Forms, developers were presented with an alternative to HTML forms that offered them additional functionality, such as full-featured controls not available in HTML and built-in validation. That alone made Flash Forms appealing - and with the addition of pieces of ActionScript code, developers were able to create truly responsive forms. But because they were meant to be compatible with HTML forms, they still shared the same submit-refresh model. What if you could "submit" the form and, without a page refresh, get... (more)