Reality ColdFusion: Intranets and Content Management

Forta, a ColdFusion expert and evangelist, talks to you as one professional developer to another as he explains design considerations, walks you through the decision-making process, and points out key development challenges and their solutions. His insider approach makes you an active, integral part of the virtual design team, not just a passive reader; he teaches best practices and good design implicitly, by example. Once you're ready to strike out on your own, turn to the companion Web site, which is loaded with full-fledged intranet and e-business applications (including a mail client, scheduling program, user directory, content-management system, and threaded discussions) that you can put to work immediately as standalone apps or as an integrated suite of programs. These highly configurable applications save you time and money, letting you start your projects with tested, high-quality code. Reality ColdFusion MX: Intranets and Content Management is a one-stop resource for intermediate-to-advanced Flash and ColdFusion developers who want to design professional-quality intranets from scratch.

I love the concept of this book. Currently my bookshelves are lined with books that give me snippets of code explaining the various tags in CFMX. This book assumes (requires) you know CFML and don't need an explanation of the tags or their attributes. You become part of the development team. As you read this book you will see how this team will build a content management system. Starting from an idea and ending with a working CMS (hopefully) you will learn the "big picture" of CFMX.

With most basic instructional books it can be difficult to see how all your .cfm modules will fit into one grand application. This book will help you.The book is filled with mock notes and memos from the team members discussing requirements and ideas for the CMS. Also the code used is written out for you. The code is divided into small coherent pieces and there are plenty of editorial comments to explain the team's methodology.

If you are looking for code you can cut-and-paste from a CD; look elsewhere. This book is to give you real-world experience coding a project. Simple pasting modules into you CFMX server would not teach you anything. Besides, if all the code for the CMS you are building was placed on a CD, it would be easy to just copy the files onto your intranet and have the worlds cheapest CMS available...


Disregard the previous reviewer.   October 24, 2002
Gianni D'Alerta (MIAMI, FL United States)
10 out of 13 found this review helpful

...

This is not about code... its about real life production experiences. Uniquely original in the genre of computer books. Most computer books, are technical, full with code. This book takes another approach, by selecting five of the most commonly built web apps and guides you through the process, down to the emails the clients send internally. I am half way through the book and have already learned some interesting techniques that utilize coldfusion mx's newest features. Each project is developed in different ways, so the reader gets a good mix of different styles of production and workflow methodolgies.

Great book... once finished going to get the other reality book about flash and coldfusion.


Great Book and great author   July 1, 2003
Paul Russ (Manassas, VA USA)
1 out of 8 found this review helpful

This is a great book for cold fusion. Mr. Forta explains this language very well with simple examples.


Great Idea! Bad code!   January 28, 2003
Mike Miller (Atlanta, GA USA)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

So I'm going throught the book and decide to start in part IV "product requirements". After reading the whole section (several chapters), I decide to install the code on my own CFDev server so that I can see the app I've been reading about in action. Long story short, I can fill a phone book with the errors I've found and recieved.

Sure, I can spend 2 or 3 days going through the code and rewritting the application. But at that point, the book is no longer valid. So while it has been fun to read emails from Teo to the team about how to develop the application, the final product doesn't work.

I've been using ColdFusion for 5 years. I thought that I should point that out.

I haven't tried the other Apps in the book yet. Maybe they work. Maybe they don't!


Don't Bother Buying This Book   January 5, 2003
5 out of 11 found this review helpful

You'll be very disappointed if you buy this book. The code is full of errors and doesn't work. Save your money, look around, and buy something else. You'll be wasting your money on this one.