Sure it's a slow adoption feature in ColdFusion, but it hasn't been forgotten. And those that know how to use it - love it.

Wim Dewijngaert @ http://cfform.dewijngaert.be has created a number of great DHTML components that work with CFForm (format="xml").

So if you've already discovered the hidden power in xml forms or have been meaning to use them - go take a look and try some of them out.

I knew that people would eventually start posting components/xsl skins for cfform. Does anyone else have any that they would like to post (they aren't hard to make).

Time to simplify some blogs/sites, Why do I have two, well that's another story. But for now, I've decided that there is no reason to try and maintain 2 different sites. One specific to cfform and one to everything else ColdFusion. So I've decided to merge cfform.com into mikenimer.com.

This is not the end of cfform , it's just moving. The domain will still point to cfform.com articles. However this does mean you need to update your RSS feeds.

The new CFForm RSS feed is going to be:

http://www.mikenimer.com/rss.cfm?mode=short&mode2=cat&catid=66C5B7CE-CC7C-166B-B62E58948BAE104B

I just posted this on my personal site (mikenimer.com) but for those of you just read this site I thought a double post was a good idea.

Darren Houle has put together a Visio Stencil for laying out ColdFusion flash forms, and Flex applications - if you?re so inclined ;) It has 43 different Halo components (Charts, Tabs, Accordions, Calendars, etc..).

You can get it here. Trust me I've been using this for the last week and a little wireframing before you start coding makes you finish a lot quicker, and it's a better application for it.

http://63.135.103.199/ecomm

Another new feature in Flash Forms in ColdFusion 7.0.1 (Merrimack) is support for onLoad in your flash forms.  What does this mean? This means you can define a function to call when the form is loaded to help initialize different parts of your form.

But first, if you haven't yet - you can download it here:

downloads updates

And you might want to read this post first, about creating functions in flash forms (another new feature)

read

I'm hoping to update the different examples on CFFORM.com soon to use these new techniques but for now here is an example:

Also don't forget to read the release notes to learn about all the new goodnees in 7.0.1
read

With the recent release ColdFusion 7.0.1 (Merrimack) I can finally tell you about some of the new Features. But first, if you haven't downloaded yet - do so!

You can download it here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/downloads_updates.html#mx7

The first feature to tell you about is support for actionscript functions proper. Now you can create real Actionscript functions inside of your flash forms, no more <cfsavecontent> hacks. This should help to keep you flash forms a lot more manageable, it might even help that 32k limit (since you aren't copy/pasting as much code).. 

Previously you might of done this:
<cfsavecontent var="as1">
alert('hi');
</cfsavecontent>

<cfinput type="Button" onClick="#as1#">

Now you can do this:
<cfform format="flash">
<cfformitem type="script">
    function alertMsg(msg)
    {
         alert(msg);
    }
</cfformitem>

<cfinput type="button" onClick="alertMsg(' this is a button click ')">
<cfinput type="button" onClick="alertMsg(' you clicked the wrong button'">
</cfform>

Ray Camden recently posted an example of adding Up/Down controls to a cfselect list in a Flash Form. This is a good example of how you can extend flash forms with actionscript.

http://ray.camdenfamily.com/index.cfm/2005/9/9/Ask-a-Jedi-Moving-items-up-and-down

Recently I answered a question about how to center some Form Buttons in a flash form. The secret to doing this is the spacer form item. The reason this works is that the spacers will take up the extra space, by default, leaving the button in the middle. 

Paul Robertson has recently jumped in feet first to Flash Forms and along the way has posted his experiece as well as a great series of posts about how the flash forms work and how to use them better.

• Select all checkboxes in ColdFusion Flash Forms
• Part 1: Select all checkboxes in ColdFusion Flash Forms
• Part 2: Advice for building and debugging ColdFusion Flash Forms, from one beginner to another
• Part 3: Creating “dynamic” form fields in ColdFusion Flash Forms — how and why
• part 4: Getting meaningful data from dynamically generated fields in ColdFusion Flash Forms

It's official the #1 most requested feature in CF Flash Forms - File Uploads - is now possible.

Originally this wasn't in the CF Flash Forms because of a limitation of with the Flash Player itself, however, with Flash 8 this is not longer a limitation. In Flash 8 macromedia have added support for file uploading which means it's now possible to support this in CF Forms.

Nahuel and Laura at ASFusion have stepped up and got this working against the latest beta of Flash 8, even before I could add this to the product. They even wrapped it all up in a nice custom tag so you can easily add it to your forms - Gotta love the ColdFusion Community.

Check out the posting here

Before you ask, no this won't be in the CF7 "Merrimack" release. Due to Release schedules of CF and the Flash Player adding support for <cfinput type="file"> will have to wait until the next major version of CF.

It's been awhile since my last posting and I have to say wow! people have been busy with flash forms. Especially the folks at ASFusion.com. In the last week or so they have uploaded 2 good examples.

The first example(s) are using Flash Remoting in Flash forms. The initial posting was this post "Remoting for ColdFusion Flash Forms". The interesting part to this is that they  aren't using any Flex features, instead they are using old school Flash 6 (I think that's when we introduced Flash Remoting) Actionscript.

• Related Articles:
• Populating a cfgrid with Flash Remoting
• How to populate a cfselect with Flash Remoting
• CFTree populated with Flash Remoting and XML
  

And the granddaddy of all Flash Remoting examples A full blown RSS Feed Reader built with CFForm and Flash Remoting. I want to point something out here, this is a good example of what CFForm can do - but to be fair, and give the proper warnings, it's not what it was designed for.  It was designed to make rich forms on the web not build RIA Applications. Nahuel even points out that in his next version he wants to move this application to Flex

"Why? Because I want to add more features to it and I already reached the limit in the cfform. Flex will give us the freedom and ability to create classes, custom components and make everything more OO. I have been working in flex lately, and the tags are very similar to cfform. In that way, I think the migration won't be that hard."