The launch of ColdFusion 11 and ColdFusion Builder 3

As ColdFusion advocates and users, mso.net was delighted to hear the announcement of the launch of ColdFusion 11 previously known as Splendor and ColdFusion Builder 3 previously known as Thunder.

Here are some of the new highlights to ColdFusion 11 and ColdFusion Builder 3:

Mobile Application Development Workflow – ColdFusion 11 along with ColdFusion Builder 3 gives you a unique end-to-end workflow for mobile application development addressing the challenges associated with building, testing, debugging and deploying enterprise class mobile applications – both web based as well as installed mobile apps.

Language Enhancements – While there are a range of enhancements made to the language, some of the features that can be called out are full CFSCRIPT support, support for member functions and JSON enhancements.

PDF Functionality – ColdFusion 11 now leverages a new engine for HTML to PDF conversion that does an almost perfect job of converting most HTML/CSS to its corresponding PDFs pixel-to-pixel. Along with the new engine, CFPDF has additional functionality to support digital signatures and archiving PDFs.

Security – ColdFusion 11 has a built-in mechanism to prevent access of Administrator or its components from external access. ColdFusion 11 has additional built-in functions to prevent XSS, thus allowing concurrent logins through CFLOGIN. ColdFusion also supports mail encryption through CFMAIL.

Find out what’s new in ColdFusion 11.

ColdFusion Builder 3 bundled with ColdFusion 11

ColdFusion 11 Standard and ColdFusion 11 Enterprise are bundled with copy (ies) of ColdFusion Builder 3. With one copy of ColdFusion Standard, you get one license of ColdFusion Builder 3 and with one copy of ColdFusion Enterprise, you get three copies of ColdFusion Builder 3.

Java 7 Update 55 – Oracle recently released an update for Java (Java 7 Update 55) with critical security fixes. This update was released on 15th of April and ColdFusion 9, 10 and 11 have already been certified to run on Java 7 Update 55.

For ColdFusion 11, all attempts were made by Adobe to include this update as part of the final CF11 installers though this was very close to their launch date. Adobe ran into an issue with the installer with a third-party platform used by ColdFusion, on Java 7 Update 55. Adobe has escalated this issue with the vendor and are working with them for a fix. For now, the Java version bundled with the final installers of ColdFusion 11 is Java 7 Update 51.

However, you can still use Java 7 Update 55 with ColdFusion 9, 10 and 11 by pointing to an external Java location in your CF configuration.

Linux support for the new PDF Engine – The Linux support for the new PDF engine in ColdFusion 11 will be available through an update within the next few weeks.

Availability of installers for CF10 and CFB 2.0.1 – mso.net has also been made aware that the installers for ColdFusion 10 and ColdFusion Builder 2.0.1 will only be available for download on adobe.com until the 14th of May, 2014. If you need these installers for later use, you will need to download them before this date.