Adobe ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit, Volume 1: Getting Started

For years, the Web Application Construction Kit has been the gold standard by which ColdFusion books are judged. This new edition, updated for the latest version of ColdFusion, continues in that tradition.

Previous editions have been a bit daunting, so the authors this time wisely decided to split into three volumes instead of the normal two. Volume 1 introduces readers to the basic concepts behind setting up ColdFusion and beginning to write their first applications. Once the basics are covered, it moves on to show how to connect to databases and display that information, create and use forms and their data, make printable content, and set up a basic application framework - pretty much, everything a newcomer to the language would need to know.

The thing that struck me, an advanced ColdFusion developer, about this edition was that many books claim to preach accepted best practices but then sacrifice them in the name of simplicity. These authors, on the other... Read more

I have been coding CFML since Coldfusion 5, and I have long used the Cold Fusion MX book as a reference in my daily work, so I was happy to get the new books to help with using some of the newer features.

So this is a large jump from my book for version 6, there is a lot more in the book, but also a lot less. I went ahead and got all three books in the series, and one of the things that I found was missing was the CFML tag reference at the end of the book. I know that sometimes I do work while on the road, and so do not have internet access, but they seem to only want to have that information on-line.

In my review of Volume 3, I did complain about half the book being on-line only and not actually in the print book. When you buy a book, it is nice to actually get the book.

I am far from a new user of Coldfusion so I can not speak of how well it teaches the language, but as a long time user, I do find this series as a nice reference. One things that... Read more

this is mostly the same as 7.0 book, but for 7.0 it covers more than this one. No ajax function, have to wait until the Volumn2 to come out and it seems not coming as scheduled.(it delayed two times)