Still no CFBuilder?

It isn't part of the Creative Cloud, nope.

I signed the Change.org petition to ask Adobe to reconsider the subscription only model. It's not that I think Creative Cloud isn't cool, because I think it is. But I want a choice whether or not to own my apps outright, or do the monthly subscription model. As an independent programmer, I use Fireworks, Photoshop and Acrobat Pro, and I don't need to upgrade all the time, so I don't like the idea of having to pay a monthly fee in perpetuity to use my software.

It seems that I can't open .cfm files in DWCC and that the feature was 'depreciated'. Does anyone have any additional information on this?

Why is ColdFusion no longer supported in Dreamweaver CC? Is there an extension coming along for CF?

I don't get it. I can create a PHP document but not a Coldfusion doc or cfc. Well, I guess I do get it.

Bill: Please remember that you can use ColdFusion Studio, for free. Also, we are updating CFStudio so it is being actively worked on right now.

CF Studio has not been actively developed since CF Studio 5?

Hi Ray, I understand but this seems like some sort of retreat for Adobe. I think that most would accept a lack of new development of CF in DW but to remove file associations and code hinting seems like Adobe is leaving CF alone in the park with a note saying, "Please take care of him". Dramatic - I know. Hopefully they will at the very least release an extension in the near future. If CFStudio is made apart of the cloud ( which it should be since every other Adobe app of value is ) then it might make it easier but I still think we've lost here. Thanks for the info.

I have been using Dreamweaver as my code IDE for over a decade. Now I can't even open my files. I can't use ANY of the Dreamweaver features, since I write Coldfusion sites. It wont even open my files now. The responsive features, site management features, mobile features are all denied me since I can't manage my sites with it. I'm going to have to find and learn a whole new IDE because ColdFusion is now deprecated (that's Adobe's characterisation not mine).

re: Mike Kear.

Ditto hear.. DW CS6 is the opnly app I general have open all day every day. At least I can still use it but DW CC is now next to useless for me.

Ray, that's great that CFBuilder is being worked on and improved, but Adobe has still killed the workflow that thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of developers have been familiar with since the days of Macromedia over a decade ago.For developers that do both design and CF coding, DW was their primary tool. Moving forward, that won't be the case. It's hard not to see this as a preview of things to come, CF-wise, from Adobe.

@Mike Kear: You should be able to download DW CS6.

@Multiple:
"because ColdFusion is now deprecated"
"It's hard not to see this as a preview of things to come, CF-wise, from Adobe."

So to be clear - even though we are *publicly* talking about ColdFusion 11 and the next ColdFusion Builder you think CF is deprecated? Just because DW dropped support? I'm sorry - but I think you guys are going overboard here.

Well I"m sorry Ray, but that's what Adobe Support said: "ColdFusion is deprecated in Dreamweaver" They keep support for our competitor PHP, but now, at a time when I have the least amount of time to learn a new IDE, I have to go and get a new one, pay more money when I have been a subscriber to CC since the beginning, and take the time to learn it.

Will Dreamweaver CS6 still be supported in the Creative Cloud? Because that's how I bought it. My betting is now the new CC version is released, I'll keep getting upgrade messages after I remove Dreamweaver CC from my system.

Deprecated in DW is not the same as "deprecated". The product, CF, is not going anywhere.

You do not have to buy a new IDE. There are multiple free options, *including* the official, recommended IDE for CF, ColdFusion Builder.

I do not know how long DW CS6 will be supported - it is now the older version. I'd imagine you would see security fixes if any applied, but, as is normal with _all_ companies, you probably will not see product updates to the older version of a product.

I have to say it's going to be really hard to sell CF11 if ADOBE wont even support it in its own IDE.

And whether an ide needs to be paid for or not, it's not 'free'. I bill my time by the hour, and learning a new IDE is expensive. Any time I dont spend on billable work is soaked up caring for my invalid wife, so it costs me dearly to learn new technology. I have to choose carefully what I spend my time on. Learning a new IDE seems to me like spending expensive time on standing still.

I just think Adobe should have retained support in its own IDE for it's own product ColdFusion.

I would like to hear the official and true reason from Adobe why they droped the support for cf in DW. Is it strategie? Is it because they simply forgot it? SO WHY??????

@MikeK: Dude. We have multiple editors. We don't just have one IDE. We support it in ColdFusion Builder. I'm sorry if you are going to have to spend time to learn CFB, but learning is part of the job as a developer. I've had to learn new things since day one - and I expect to have to continue to learn new things until I retire. Do you not spend time learning when a new version of CF comes out?

I was lucky enough to get a free 1 year subscription to CC after I participated in DW Pre-release program. I still think the pricing model should change. Consideration should be taken for people living in developing countries (like me). It would cost me 210EGP to get a subscription for a single application (and I would probably need 2). and that's a lot considering our income. I don't mind paying for CC but we need a lower price :)

BTW, I love the new DW and Photoshop!

Forgot to say, that would be around %20 of my stable income.

I've had the Adobe Creative Cloud for over a year now, got it for the special price in May 2012 and the monthly fee went up last month. I still think it's worth the fee compared to buying the latest complete program package even every 2 years.

For me the loss of CF support in DW doesn't bother because I don't use it for CF projects anyways, only during the design phase. I'm still a loyal CF Studio 5 user. Yes, I admit it, I'm still using a program that hasn't been supported for nearly a decade :) I do have CFBuilder and CFBuilder2, but I can write my code faster on the old program than with the latest CFBuilder. Maybe it's because I type fast and CFB can't keep up with it or who knows what it is, but CFB is slow on my 32Gb Ram system.

Jaana, I don't have the link handy, but there is a tweak you can do for Eclipse to allow it to use more RAM. It tends to speed things up.

If you find that link, please pass it on. I'd love to be able to use CFB in the future. It's sad that even 32Gb Ram doesn't speed it up.

There is this tool you may want to try - Google. ;)

Ok, that was a dick comment. ;) Here ya go:

http://stackoverflow.com/qu...

"So to be clear - even though we are *publicly* talking about ColdFusion 11 and the next ColdFusion Builder you think CF is deprecated? Just because DW dropped support? I'm sorry - but I think you guys are going overboard here."

Adobe talks up Flash Catalyst, pushes people to use that for workflow in Flex projects, to better integrate with designers. They kill it the next year. They talk up "Flash everywhere!" for several years at MAX, and kill their mobile and TV client two years later. They send Flex to the Apache foundation (not necc. a bad thing, mind you), and then strip out the design view in the version they hand off (Flashbuilder 4.7), the equivalent of Microsoft removing the "Visual" from Visual Studio. And they remove access to the version that did have design view (FB 4.6) from Creative Cloud. They've discontinued development on Fireworks, and FW will probably be dropped from CC within 12 months.

They have now removed a design view from CF coders, essentially. Why? To "deprecate" a feature. Why was the feature removed? To sell more copies of CF Builder? To improve some other facet of DW? We don't know. But they felt it was important to leave PHP coding in there still for some reason. Do you not see how this might be disconcerting to some of us?

I don't think Adobe has deprecated CF yet. It's great that Adobe is talking about CF11 and CFB 3 or whatever the next version of CFB will be called, but I'm frankly not going to give Adobe the benefit of the doubt for what they'll be supporting in 24 months.

All that said, Ray, I really appreciate all the information, tips, tricks and other knowledge you share here and with the community. I wish Adobe would reach out to the community on things like this through people like you before they make these kind of changes that impact long-existing workflows.

@Landon: "Adobe talks up Flash Catalyst, pushes people to use that for workflow in Flex projects, to better integrate with designers. They kill it the next year." Absolutely correct. It is unfortunate - but sometimes products go away. This is true of every company.

To be honest, design view is not something I'd expect a CF developer to use.

As for selling more copies of CFB, remember, it is free!

I know this DW change is impacting folks, but honestly, in all my presentations I've *rarely* seen users mention they are using DW. I'm not trying to say this group doesn't matter - but given that the % may have been *incredibly* small and given that another product, CFB, exists, the DW team may have made the call that the impact would not be that bad.

FYI:

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-pr...

Thanks to John Bliss for sharing this.

Worse, this brilliant design move effectively positions Dreamweaver as an oversized, over-priced HTML and CSS design tool. One that's totally unable to create and edit the common HTML-based file formats used on many, many, many web sites.

What "modern" and "relevant" web site for which I'm going to want a modern, responsive CSS design DOESN'T use a dynamic language these days?

What site DOESN'T have default .cfm or .aspx or .py or .php or whatever file extensions on ALL of it's files.

According to Adobe, with Dreamweaver CC you can code faster with new visual editing capabilities, including CSS Designer and the updated Fluid Grid Layout interface. With it, says Adobe, you can generate clean, web-standard code.

Problem is, you can't save any of that wonderful code as a CFM or ASP or ASPX or JSP file.

Okay. That's not quite true. You can edit the extension and save your HTML as a CFM file. But if you try to reopen that file again using the IDE's file browser, Dreamweaver CC will throw you back into CS6 and open it there.

Brilliant. A web file editor and design environment that refuses to edit web files.

"What "modern" and "relevant" web site for which I'm going to want a modern, responsive CSS design DOESN'T use a dynamic language these days?"

Um - actually - I've done that. I've used third party tools like Parse to handle the back end. Frankly - data storage is just a commodity for some needs. No need for a server.

"What site DOESN'T have default .cfm or .aspx or .py or .php or whatever file extensions on ALL of it's files."

Not sure I grok this. Why would my Apache be setup to handle .aspx if I don't have .net installed? Or did you mean editor?

"Problem is, you can't save any of that wonderful code as a CFM or ASP or ASPX or JSP file."

Your coming at this from the perspective of a person writing server-side apps. Not everyone is doing that.

"Brilliant. A web file editor and design environment that refuses to edit web files."

If it works with .html, .js, and .css, then it is working with web files. You can't argue that.

"If it works with .html, .js, and .css, then it is working with web files. You can't argue that."

I can, because many of those HTML files in common use have extensions that end in .aspx and .cfm and .php. And DW CC has deliberately made it harder to work with those kinds of files.

It sounds to me that you're trying to argue this from some kind of purist standpoint, such that anything that's not .html is not HTML and as such shouldn't be supported. Or arguing that support for literally billions of existing web files with non .html extensions isn't needed.

Unfortunately for that argument, DW CC kept support for PHP, which is still a .php file and not a .html file. And which is still a server-side scripting language and not "pure" HTML.

So. That being the case, continuing to support one server-side scripting language and extension while failing to support others seems to place us pretty firmly in arbitrary-decision-land.

And keeping PHP while dropping support for .CFM, which DW has ALWAYS supported, and which is Adobe's OWN server-side scripting language... well, in my opinion, that's not only an arbitrary decision, but a pretty stupid one.

I cannot speak for the DW team (and I hope all my readers know that my posts/comments/etc are my own, blah blah blah), but I think it is more than fair to say that DW is focusing on client-side and dropping CF was not a big deal since another of our products support it. And the other product ONLY does CF which means it does it better. Why duplicate efforts? Well - DW does do things differently, so that's one reason why, but in general, it's not like we are leaving CF folks w/o a tool. You may not know CFB, but maybe now is the time to try it.

And it's free.

That's still missing the major point: Hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) have used Dreamweaver over the years to create and edit billions of .cfm and .asp and .jsp and .whatever files.

They've used the visual design tools to do so. They've used the built-in CSS editor to do so.

Now a new version of DW appears -- and people can't even OPEN those files anymore. No editing. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. And all for what? So Adobe can made a dumbed-down client-side HTML/CSS editor?

And if a dumbed-down client-side HTML/CSS editor is what they wanted, what happened to Contribute? What happened to GoLive, which was exactly that?

Finally, yes. If you want to do major CF development, then go grab CFB. (I did.) But for many folks, CFB is overkill. And now the designers who might have used DW can't even open or share files with the CFB types.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Curiouser and curiouser. If you open up Preferences > File Types and add .cfm .cfc to the "Edit In Code View" section, DWCC will in fact open ColdFusion files in the browser pane with full code coloring and autocompletion.

I agree, they (the Adobe DW team) have dropped the ball by cutting out all scripting support for everything except php - from the outside with a lack of a clear explanation available this just appears illogical if they are strategically going to be focussing clientside. However, is CF worse off without DW support? - I really don't think so, I always felt that it was shoehorned in with a lack of forethought, just so Macromedia could kill Homesite. Now that was a real kicker. DW CF support never seemed to get any better between releases. I agree it is useful sometimes to be able to use a live view, but personally I probably need this less than 1% of the time I'm writing.

Ray's correct though - thing's move on and you have to be able to roll with that, that is the nature of our world. 20 years ago I was having a hard time using a text editor to write HTML, the tools available today are light years ahead and I hope if I'm still going they'll be even further ahead in the next 20.

Development environments are much like girlfriends anyway, you lavish more love, time and money on them than ever makes sense, until one morning you wake up and find they've just upped and left you for another, more lucrative market.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's having a negative reaction to this "CF Deprecation". However, Ray, your responses to the concerns and complaints are disheartening. You're not listening to your (Adobe's) customers.

With CF taken out of DW, Adobe is essentially kicking CF developers out of CC even though many of us use the other tools available while developing CF applications. So, CF devs get an IDE choice from Adobe of either a stripped down CFBuilder Express for free or have to pony up for the full version which costs more than Windows, itself?

First and foremost, I'd like to see CFBuilder as part of CC. If not, why not include a license (or more) with the purchase of CF itself?

I want to relay how much I appreciate what you've done for CF and the tools you've made available. However, I wonder what the CF landscape looks like from your throne atop Mt. Adobe? From where I sit the status of CF in the world seems to be ever shrinking I'm sad to say.

Paul: To be clear, I've got zero power in terms of the decision of what gets included in CC and what does not. To me, a server product like CF really doesn't feel like a proper fit for CC. Since CFB is tied to CF, it also doesn't make sense. That's just my opinion though. Adobe has *other* products also outside of CC. Those products are important. Do they get as much press as CC? Probably not. We've spent a _lot_ of time on CC, and especially on this next update, so it's been the top priority for the business.

Have you looked at the "stripped down" CFB? Honestly - the only real thing missing is the debugger. In my 15 or so years in CF, I've only used the debugger a few times, and that's just to say I tried it. I do most of my debugging using the template debugging and logging. I can say - honestly - that the free CFB would be more than fine for a *vast* majority of developers.

Every developer? Nope. If you need that debugger than you may have to pay for it. 300 bucks for a developer tool isn't too far off from other dev tools out there. (Check the range of prices for Visual Studio.)

Seriously - if you have not tried to work with the free CFB then you really shouldn't call it 'stripped down'.

"However, I wonder what the CF landscape looks like from your throne atop Mt. Adobe?"

Honestly, the server side is becoming commoditized. As I mentioned above, in many cases I don't need a server - I can just hit Parse and not think about it. Storing data is boring - and in a lot of cases that's all my server is doing. Heck, this blog is really just blocks of text. CF is overkill for it.

Now - as to including CFB in the package with CF, I think that's a good idea. Seems fair to me. But again - I don't set any rules/prices/etc.

I do not sit on any throne.

That comment about ColdFusion in DW being depreciated was stupid and asking for trouble. The fat of the matter is that Dreamweaver dropped support for ASP/ASP.NET, JSP, and CF. Pay attention to that. This was not a CF snub as much as it was a "we are no longer interested in supporting server side scripting in DW" decision. As for why they left PHP support in there, I am assuming that it is because DW's PHP support is just used more, likely by more developers than the support for CF and ASP and JSP combined. That said, it was probably not the wisest decision, and if they were going to pull server-side support I'd have preferred that they do it across the board and consistently. But, again, this is NOT a CF snub. If it were ONLY CF that had been pulled I'd have to agree with the sentiment here, but as it was not, well, I can't.

But, honestly, I had given up on Dreamweaver support for CF a long time ago because Dreamweaver has never been a true ColdFusion IDE. Even back in Allaire days when I worked with the then Macromedia Dreamweaver team to add ColdFusion support, the support was minimal at best. There was one release (MX maybe?) that added some decent CFC support, but honestly, there has been no real DW support for CF since then, just more of the same. And over the years that has frustrated me far more than DWCC pulling CF support does. And so, recognizing Dreamweaver for what it was, the ColdFusion team opted to build ColdFusion Builder, and that's where they are putting their efforts. I understand that many don't like CF Builder, I'm not a major Eclipse fan myself, but CF Builder is a far better CFML IDE than DW ever was, and so that's the focus going forward. And as others have already noted, there are alternatives, too.

Look, at the end of the day this is a business decision. The ColdFusion team has to do what they think is best for the ColdFusion business, and that includes a CF10, a planned CF11, an upcoming conference, and, yes, ColdFusion Builder. Likewise, the Dreamweaver team has to focus on what’s important for them and their numbers, and their client-side focus makes sense to me. Would I like them to do it all? Sure, but that’s not practical, and so they made the trade-off’s and decisions that ever Product Manager has to make. And personally, I like the Dreamweaver focus, it’s long overdue. Do you know that DW6 still had dialog boxes with Netscape Navigator icons in it? Seriously, Dreamweaver was suffering from ongoing feature addition while nothing was ever deprecated or removed. As I said, this was overdue.

I use Dreamweaver extensively for what it does best, client-side work. As I’ve not used Dreamweaver for CFML for years anyway, this new focus actually works for me. For those of you who are still using Dreamweaver for CFML development, I’d take this as a long overdue nudge to find a better IDE. I know it’ll take effort, but you’ll really be better off for having done so.

--- Ben

Hello,

I'm Alejandro, product manager for Dreamweaver. I'd like to comment on a few things related to Dreamweaver and ColdFusion.

We actually began removing CF-related features last September: Tag editing and In-Context editing were both removed at that time. As Ben points out, our CF integration was sub-optimal. Along with certain other integrations, many workflow solutions needed (and still need) real iteration and rethinking.

In this release, we have removed several panels that provided functionality across a range of server-side technologies, which did not include certain back-end technologies that a majority of Dreamweaver customers utilize (php, ruby, node, python etc). Some of the functionality in those panels did include ColdFusion, as well as JSP, ASP.NET, others.

Removing these panels was critical in streamlining Dreamweaver so that we can focus on delivering visual tooling support for relevant front-end web technologies, providing a modern and productive all-in-one web design environment (Later we plan to revisit back-end integrations). We do care about the community, so to mitigate some of the growing pains, we have developed a few extensions, and are working with extension developers to provide workarounds wherever possible. More info to follow.

In addition, many users have complained that we removed the ability to open and edit CFM docs, but this is not accurate. We removed the Dw – Cf file association; by mistake this broke the ability to open CFM directly from within the Files panel. HOWEVER, you can still open CFM docs in Dw as well as drag cfm files directly into Dreamweaver. Details here (download the Word doc):
https://creative.adobe.com/...

Hi,

Apologies - I was working on a post regarding Business Catalyst earlier. In the above comment, I referenced In-Context editing by mistake. Whoops!

If no more ColdFusion support why the need to shutdown CF services to install DW CC?

"In addition, many users have complained that we removed the ability to open and edit CFM docs, but this is not accurate. We removed the Dw – Cf file association; by mistake this broke the ability to open CFM directly from within the Files panel."

Alejandro, whether by mistake or by design or simply through inadequate testing, the ability to open and edit CFM and CFC files was removed from the shipping product.

As was the ability to create new documents, even though one can look through the DWCC application folder on the Mac and still see the template files and the various associations in the XML preference files.

You're right. Back-end integration has always been spotty. For ColdFusion and for ASP and for the other previously supported languages. But that doesn't excuse suddenly pulling the ability to edit the HTML-based files that the program has always been able to handle, and on which many of the sites created with the current product depend.

If you and your team believe the world needs yet another client-side visual HTML/CSS editor like iWeb, RapidWeaver, Sandvox, or whatever, that's fine. Build it. But don't disembowel the current product until you have an effective substitute in place.

Yes, people can use CFB, but it doesn't speak well for CF when Adobe's own product teams fail to support it, and it's the exact opposite of how CF and DW and all of the other product teams fell over each other making sure that every product had some form of Flash integration.

The later showed the world that Adobe considered Flash to be of critical importance and worthy of support. Casually dropping CF support from DW on a whim... yeah, not so much.

In effect, you just did the Adobe equivalent of duplicating Apple's Final Cut X launch, suddenly giving users a new program and new ways to do things... and also giving them a program that was missing core functionality in many places. Functionality that still in some cases has yet to be restored.

Then again, I have to remember that DW has always been something of Adobe's ***tard stepchild, and that it took three product generations before my "code rewriting" bug got fixed.

In reading the announcement yesterday, I was very excited to see the Edge Reflow like additions to DW. I downloaded all the new CC stuff, opened DW and like others went "Where is CF?"

While It's good to hear that the DW team will be revisiting backend integration in the future, I'm disappointed it got removed with nothing to replace it now. And yes, I use and own the paid version of CFB.

Ray's comment that "a server product like CF really doesn't feel like a proper fit for CC. " struck a nerve with me and I think it's the wrong way to look at it. I'm a one man shop, I do front ends and back ends. My work flow included DW and CFB, along with a lot of CC apps. With all the client-side work needed to do "Web 2/3.0", more integration is needed, not less. And considering all the new tags, etc included in CF10 to make that happen, and what Adobe looks to be adding in future versions of CF, it just feels weird to see the opposite happen.

Yes, CF is overkill for this blog and a lot of other things... so is PHP, Ruby, Python and most any other server side engine. So what? It makes it easier, not harder to create something like this and most other big and small projects. And that should be what it's about. Otherwise, what's the point of any server side engine?? And where would that leave CF?

I think Adobe see's at least some of this with Business Catalyst, they integrate it with DW and Muse. What's driving that server side?
Why can't I get Muse, with the ability to do all that wonderful no brainer design and layout integrated with my favorite server side engine (that Adobe just happens to own and control)? Or DW/Reflow the same way? That would be my holy grail.

If "the server side is becoming commoditized" then make it worth something more. Make it end to end and then make it part of CC.

I get the sense that the real losers in all of this are the jack of all trades web/media developers - like me. I jump around between 6 or 7 tools throughout the day.

My overall concern is for the continued health and well being of CF. For the low-end user or the student who is trying to decide what to learn, telling them that they have to buy or learn a niche editor ( cf Builder) with one purpose seems odd. Why raise the price even further to learn/use/love CF? In this time of intent app. bonding ( like AE and C4D- awesome BTW!) why cause a divide? If Adobe was trying to reinvent or reignite CF usage, I would hope that every possible integration point for CF would be leveraged and not hidden in a tool that isn't even suitable for inclusion in CC. They should reboot CF like Superman and include ( and expand upon ) it in everything possible.

DW is like a Swiss army knife to me. I have multiple reasons to use it and one of those reasons was just taken away. It's like that little hook thingy was removed because not enough people were using it. Fine and dandy for those who won't miss it but for the minority who used it every day - it kind of pisses us off.

Oh well, at least the CF and ASP people now have something to cry about together.

@Bill: Again, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but I encourage you to try CFB - the free edition. There is *no* price for it if you don't need the higher end debugger, and as I said (or it may have been another post), I've rarely used it myself. (I use CF's simple template based debugger.)

Ray,

Thanks for your comments. I still disagree with your/Adobe's opinion that CFB doesn't belong in CC. I'll echo everything Stephen Maclean said and add in the fact that DW is nothing but a server product as well. So is Edge Code (Brackets) and nearly every other product in CC used to make apps for the web. They're building apps for web servers. Without web servers they are worthless. I guess what I'm having the most trouble wrapping my head around is why Adobe wouldn't want to offer simply as a way to put their own product in front of developers. From a marketing standpoint it doesn't make sense.

Lastly, I understand you don't set policy and such at Adobe but my impression is that CF gurus like you, Mr. Forta, and others have an inside track to those who do. Perception is that customer feedback you receive will find its way to back to those decision makers. And, frankly, you're the only ones we can contact and be confident we're going to get some kind of response that isn't your typical "thank you for contacting us" form letter BS. I thank you for that.

Since you like my idea of including CFB with CF server, feel free to pass that along to those decision makers :-)

Where do we find this so called "free" CF Builder?

It isn't "free" as in quotes. It is free. Period. An 'express' edition. You just download CFB, and after 30 days (it may be 60), it becomes that edition.

"Alejandro, whether by mistake or by design or simply through inadequate testing, the ability to open and edit CFM and CFC files was removed from the shipping product. "

Again, inaccurate. By changing the file association, we affected the ability to open CFM directly from WITHIN THE FILES PANEL.

HOWEVER, you CAN still open CFM docs in Dw, from your file browser, as well as drag cfm files directly into Dreamweaver.

https://creative.adobe.com/...

Alejandro, if you visit one of the Dreamweaver Help pages for ColdFusion documents or components, I'm sure you'll notice the following rather prominent line near the top of the page.

"Note: Support for ColdFusion is removed in Dreamweaver CC and later."

The fact one can apply a patch to partially restore functionality Adobe obviously intended to remove from the shipping product buys you exactly nothing in my book.

You removed the file associations. You removed the ability to open documents from within the program. You removed the ability to create new CF documents and components. You removed live views. You removed the back-end integrations, debugging, and so on.

In short, "Support for ColdFusion is removed in Dreamweaver CC and later."

And so, no, my statement is not "inaccurate". The intent was clear.

At least the web site is honest about it. So stop with the spin and quibbling and damage control over just how badly you broke DW. It just makes things worse, and it pretty much kills what little credibility you have left...

Raymond, I have been following your hints and tips for some time when I get stuck with a particular coldfusion issue. I sincerely hope that someone can offer me a solution to this latest (and quite frankly greatest hiccup in the world of coldfusion for me). I NEVER post on blogs, forums or otherwise as I can usually find what I need to know if I look around but this is not the case. I was anxiously awaiting the new cc for dreamweaver since the purported tools that would make my development much more integrated with the latest methods only to discover this morning that there was absolutely no coldfusion "anything" in the program. I thought it was the way I set up the panels. But nope...

Now I installed cfbuilder. ok, fine it will cover all of the "programming" part of coldfusion and it looks like it will do that better. I get that.

BUT, how exactly do you take the "ugly" stuff that cfbuilder will help me build and actually turn it into a website that the latest trends require? I understand that I can open the file in dreamweaver and make it "pretty" but the real issue is that so much of the time the "application" that I am building is very much a part of the "website" that I am building - ok, ALL the time. What exactly is the commonly accepted workflow that will make this whole thing flow properly without having to switch between completely different applications all the time.

My issue is that maybe I don't understand that cf is a website language for displaying on web browsers, or am I wrong for the past 10 years...

Yes, I develop "applications" that are not pretty sometimes for the customer that needs a program made for them custom, but that is so rare that it does not accompany a website that holds it all.

How is this accomplished? I know I ramble and I hope I got my point across. Can you help me with finding a solution that will allow me to continue to use coldfusion in beautiful css and jquery websites as my customers have come to expect.

Please reply?

@sasha: I'll be honest and say it has been a while since I did a "traditional" job, by that I mean, client wants some web site X and I have to manage the design, back end, etc. I spent many years doing this of course so I have some context for the work involved.

I can see where DW would be incredibly helpful in the HTML setup portion of my app. I can see using it to layout and create a template.

Once I've done that, I can see using CFB to begin adding the dynamic aspects to my template.

That's how I'd use both tools.

Frankly I see nothing wrong with using multiple tools - as most front end developers are moving in this direction anyway.

thanks for the reply. So, if I understand you correctly, the flow will be as follows:
1. do the design in dw
2. bring the design into cfb and do the cfml development

That would work. I know it seems obvious now but really I couldn't wrap my head around it mostly because I am beginning to wonder if they will kill coldfusion and that is scaring me as I have been using it as my only "language" since 2000. I don't want to learn a new language simply because cf is incredibly faster than php, more intuitive and quite frankly much less heavy on code due to its tags. On top of it, there is no need to go hunting on the web for plugins etc to do almost anything that is needed.

Please re-assure me that it will get better rather than worse? Adobe says on the DW site that they value customer feedback and will attend to it but why did they do this so secretly?

Thanks for your help.
Sasha

@sasha: Well, obviously, I do not think it is a big deal that CFML syntax support isn't in DW as I've not used DW for CF work. Others have.

To me, things aren't worse now. DW has become more powerful for client-side dev. We already have a good CF tool and it is getting better for CFB3, but I can't speak on it. I'd encourage you to consider attending the CF Summit where I believe some more will be revealed about future CF products.

I'm one of those long time CF developers that has been using DW since 2001, and am befuddled with DWCC as mentioned above. So after reading through this post I figure, like was said...it's time to move on. So I downloaded CFB, installed it, created a project for one of my sites, opened a document, made a change, saved it and...couldn't find the "put" button.

I finally stumbled across the FTP synchronization deal, but that forces me to then remote to the server and move the file from the FTP server folder into the site folder. I tried hoping maybe that I could do it from the RDS Fileview, but nada.

Please tell me there is a way in CFB to "put" a file via RDS directly into my test server's site folder. Please! I've always used a test server and have no interest in testing locally. I put and test all day long.

I'm sure I already know what the answer is, but I will await a response before I uninstall CFB, in case I've overlooked something. This has been a frustrating day...

Yes, you can use RDS to edit a remote file, but it isn't doing a sync. You are live editing the file on production.

Personally I would not recommend this. Most production CF servers should have RDS disabled for security reasons anyway. I strongly recommend you edit and test locally, and when you see things are working well, then FTP it up. (And I prefer to use a dedicated FTP client for that anyway.) (And even better would be to use source control to handle this.)

Ray, he isn't RDS'ing to production. His comment specifically stated, "Please tell me there is a way in CFB to "put" a file via RDS directly into my test server's site folder."

So are you going to answer the question, or excuse the tool yet again by telling him why he can't store files locally but still quickly and easily use RDS to send changes to a test server.

Something, BTW, DW CS6 did with aplomb.

Incidentally, this is one reason I used DW for so long, as I have several clients who've completely blocked FTP port access for security purposes, but still allow me to use RDS to tunnel changes through port 80 up to their development and production servers.

You might consider this kind of scenario for the next version of CFB, as it sort of sucks at it...

Micheal, I misread his comment. It happens. If you wish to attack me, then I do not see any value in continuing this conversation.

Whether he uses a remote test server or production server, my advice stays the same - to not use RDS. That isn't an excuse. That is my *professional* advice as a developer. If DW does that and CFB does not, so be it. I'd suggest adding an ER for it on the public CF/CFB bug tracker.

Right now CFB allows you to edit a file on a remote server. Just because it allows us does not mean it is a good idea. Good developers know the difference between what they can do and what they should do.

My 2 cents.

I don't think I could ever understand how developers could prefer pushing EVERY change to EVERY file up to a server somewhere rather than test locally. Seems like a huge time-suck.

@Ray, like I said, some of my clients preferred to firewall their FTP ports. Seems more hackers were trying to gain access via FTP as opposed to doing so via RDS. I guess FTP's a slightly more well known protocol and port. (grin)

And it's true that it's less secure than, say, SFTP over a VPN, but that's their decision, not mine.

The ire was, again, more for deprecating CF in Dreamweaver; deprecating a once supported methodology and protocol; and trying to tell developers to use a tool that seems to only support a certain style of development well. All others are told, "Don't do that."

When again, that's not always the decision of the developer to make.

Which brings me to Scott's comment. Again, the "local test" methodology may be preferable, but isn't always possible.

One of my clients has development servers and development databases with a ton of financial information that are snapshotted weekly so the "test" information stays current. And they DON'T want developers downloading copies of the data.

So... what? Duplicate the database locally (Oracle) and attempt to populate a million or so records with sets of numbers that actually have some relationship to reality... or use the development server provided?

Another uses SQL Server which is somewhat problematic since I run OS X. So again, what? Build a Parallels/Windows/SQL Server stack just for local testing... or use the same development server their developers are using?

Besides, iin an age of high-speed broadband, the file is still saved to the test server faster than I can switch to the browser window and refresh.

RDS: To be clear, Adobe recommends *disabling* this in production as a security precaution. If your dev servers has confidential info (like financial data), then it is safe to assume it should be disabled there too.

That being said, RDS should work for you in CFB. If not, you have a bug and should try the normal routes for reporting bugs. (Not here. ;)

"So... what? Duplicate the database locally (Oracle) and attempt to populate a million or so records with sets of numbers that actually have some relationship to reality... or use the development server provided?"

Yes - duplicate the db or use a development version of the db. Yes, work locally. Multiple developers working on one dev server is a recipe for disaster.

That being said - I understand some clients don't give you a choice.

"Another uses SQL Server which is somewhat problematic since I run OS X. So again, what? Build a Parallels/Windows/SQL Server stack just for local testing... or use the same development server their developers are using?"

Yes. Seriously. I hate to say "get over it", but it sounds like you're saying "it's hard and I don't want to". Tough. Setting up a proper development environment takes time, but there is a reason it's recommended. It isn't just to be cool or anything silly like that. These best practices come from blood, swear, and tears from years of professional development.

As an FYI, I do that (VMFusion running SQL Server Express) myself. It took maybe an hour to setup or so.

At the end - this is my opinion. Take from it what you will. If RDS isn't working to the test server then I'd recommend Adobe Support.

I agree with Ray 100%.

Version control with multiple developers using the same server to test code to is an absolute nightmare.

When I had an Apple computer, I ran a Windows VM to support clients who use SQL Server. It is quick and easy to set up.

When I had clients who did not allow 'developer' data, I would copy the schema to a local db and script out sample data. Where there is a will, there is a way. In my opinion, no code should ever be pushed to a 'server' until/unless it has been tested locally first.

And, high speed Internet connection or not, after you 'push' a file to the server, you still need to switch to your browser window and refresh the page to test it :D

Once again, I fully understand the benefits and drawbacks. But as I've said more than once, I work they way they want me to work. I can make recommendations, but it's not my call.

Scott: Unfortunately, the information is complex and all of the numbers have specific relationships to one another. You can't just setup a loop and throw a million random numbers into the columns. Trust me. You'd spend six weeks programing a system to populate the chains of cross-linked tables with information that's halfway meaningful.

And they're not willing to spend the time nor the money to do so.

As for "not wanting to setup a 'proper' development environment", or not want to learn how to use a VM... ummmm.... check out this set of articles from 2007:

http://www.cfinternals.org/...

I did not mean to imply that you would need to script out a million records. I rarely, is ever, script out as much data locally as exists on our 'test' servers.

But I will not push ANY code up to a server, even if it is a 'test' or 'dev' server until/unless it has been tested locally AND I make sure that all my unit/integration tests still pass.

To do so otherwise is just fraught with danger.

Just out of curiosity, and since we've been talking about how Adobe dropped CF support from DW CC...

Adobe spend quite a bit of time and effort trying to convince people to use Dreamweaver CS to design CF web sites and templates, and then manage and populate the sites using Adobe Contribute.

In fact, DW had quite a bit of template support for editable regions, locked regions, and so forth, something I don't remember seeing in CFB. And the last Contribute update was about a year ago.

Any idea if those people have any kind of an upgrade path?

I know I'm a little late to the discussion, et al, but having just downloaded DWCC last night and then attempting to open some CF files today I, too, felt a bit off put by this development.

My primary concern is that this is all news to me. Nowhere had I heard nor read nor understood that DWCC would be dropping support for (most) server side languages. I'm not saying there wasn't an announcement, but I didn't see it or hear about it and I regularly follow the goings on at Adobe. So, to me this just feels like another EOL debacle for Adobe like with the apps.

Yes, I can agree with many that there was limited to no real good support for CF in DW when compared to CFB, and yes I understand CFB is designed to be the go-to tool for CF development. Unfortunately, Adobe pushed CF development in DW for years, the support of CF in DW was 'good enough' to stay in one application to apply the needed integration between HTML and CF, which DW is, in my opinion, a much better tool for that job than CFB will ever be. I use them both anyway - CFB for my application frameworks and DW for my front-end integrations. They work well together (or they used to lol) and learning a new tool is time consuming and, frankly for an old codger like me, frustrating ;)

For me, this falls under a 'No Big Deal' column because, frankly, I still have CS6 (and CS5 for that matter) installed on my system and will simply continue to use CS6 in my workflow just the way I do now. However I kinda have to agree with others that, regardless of what you thought of the back-end support in DW, many, many, many developers have become accustomed to that workflow over the years and taking it away without so much as a whisper is akin to M$ trying to force metro onto desktops without a start button. It's just a bad decision in my book, and one that is going to leave a bad taste in *a lot* of peoples mouths and bring forth the frothing and spitting angry developers who have grown accustomed to using DW in their CF workflows.

Having said all that, I understand the position of the DW team - who wouldn't want to have *less* work to do to deliver a product? Who wouldn't want to 'streamline' a product and strip it down to it's bare, core essentials? It's less work for the DW team and more work for the CF team. I get that. But as others have pointed out Adobe should be *inclusive* of their own product line within their other products. As soon as they start becoming exclusive, then most of us will have to assume that the writing is on the wall for Adobe and CF, regardless of what the CF team tells us, regardless of road maps, blogs or anything else. The 'proof is in the pudding', as it were. Whether that's true or not is immaterial - it is how most devs comfortable with using DW for CF will see it. Whether Adobe sees DW as the right tool or the wrong tool for CF is also immaterial - its what their customers see. And as a loyal Adobe customer since the early days (and a loyal Macromedia customer too), I think this was a poor choice on Adobe's part.

I also agree that CFB should be part of the CC suite if CF support is removed from DW. We shouldn't have to buy yet another tool (I know, I know... it's free if you don't use all the features - that's not the point here). Companies that have grown accustomed to purchasing DW for their CF developers will by into the CC version thinking that's still the right tool. Then they'll discover that it's useless for CF workflows and will be calling Adobe to seek refunds and this will drive customers *away* from Adobe. Apparently not very many, as the DW team seemed to indicate that PHP is the major back-end technology DW is used for - but it only takes one or two angry customers to set off the trolls in social marketing and bury DWCC.

I anticipate a backlash at the CF summit regarding this, so I hope the CF devs are well prepared to take a tongue lashing from developers about this, and come prepared to do damage control.

Hear hear, Denard!

I was lucky my boss was happy to purchase CF Builder (in addition to re-imbursing me every month for my CC subscription).

I must be doing something wrong with CFB because it does not do code completion (like closing tags) like DWCS6 for some unknown reason.

And the link to the online docs is broken.

Where can I find documentation for CFB?

Hey Peter,

In Adobe's defense, there is actually an excellent article written by Matt Gifford that helps transition developers from Dreamweaver to CF Builder 2.2 at:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet...

CFB doesn't, exactly, mirror the 'tab' functionality of DW out of the box, though I've heard rumors that buried somewhere in the preferences is a way to enable this functionality - I never needed it.

CFB does have code insight which does do code completion (CTRL + SPACE to invoke). There's a video of this feature in action via the above link.

But yes, getting used to CFB when you're used to developing in Dreamweaver is night and day. Having done Java prior to CF I'm accustomed to this style IDE and CFB does replicate the functionality for CF that I used to enjoy for Java.

I suppose the paradigm has shifted more towards API centric back-ends and HTML, CSS and JS centric front-ends so, despite my visceral reaction to the change for Dreamweaver, I could get accustomed to using it if I did strictly API based back-end development.

Unfortunately, that's not what's out there - what's out there is old crappy spaghetti code that Dreamweaver was perfect manipulating and patching up. Not any more. :(

Online documentation for CFB: http://help.adobe.com/en_US...

Does CF Builder have an extension that allows it to recognise HTML5 tags? It's not much use these days if it doesn't. Or at least the "problems" tab is useless anyway. For example it reports <article> and <footer> tags as errors.

To be honest I'd have thought these days, a brand new product like CF Builder 2 Update 1 would have support for HTML5 out of the box.

Unfortunately no. Let me ping Ram (CFB Engineer) to see what he can say - if anything - about CFB3.

@Mike, you can turnoff HTML validation in CFB 2.* by going to Preferences->HTML->Editors->HTML->Validation and uncheck 'Tidy Html Validator'.

We are going to provide complete support for HTML5 tags in the next version of CFB.

-Ram
Adobe ColdFusion Team

@Ram that's a big pity. So I can't use Dreamweaver for ColdFusion development any more, and I can't use CFB for HTML development because it's over a year out of date.

Not only that, there's no local help files, so I can only use the product when I'm on line, the online help files don't match the delivered CFBuilder 2, and the tutorials on the Adobe TV site are for the beta version of CFBuilder 1. In other words, Dreamweaver has been pulled out from under me as a CF development tool, and the much -vaunted replacement product is already falling short in several important ways.

People keep telling me that Dreamweaver is not a "real" IDE, and I have to say that my experience with the "real IDE" is a long way short of a professional product. No wonder Adobe doesnt want to include it with the rest of the CC subscription.

@Mike, You can certainly use CFB 2.0 for HTML development, but you won't get code assist for the new HTML5 tags.

Yes, CFB help is not bundled with it (and is available online), but CFML reference is bundled and integrated with CFML editor. For example, if you type <cfajaxproxy >, and press F1 (in Windows) on it, it opens help panel within CFB. It shows a short description of the tag and provides a link for detailed description. If you click that, you get detailed help on the tag/function. Even hover help for CFML tags and functions is available in CFB.

-Ram
Adobe ColdFusion Team

I'm still trying to connect my remote DEV server with CF Builder (local is fine).

Following the docs is useless as it has steps and options that don't appear in CFB2 U1.

Sigh!

Peter, please try the CFB Forum: http://forums.adobe.com/com...

I am one of those people who actually liked Eclipse, used CFEclipse, and then CFBuilder.

However my entire professional career has involved programming CF so far, and most of those 15 years, have involved using some Allaire/Macromedia product to do CF development.

CFBuilder and CFEclipse have never been viable options in any of the companies I have worked at. For us to get our jobs done effectively, it had been Homesite, then CFStudio, and then ultimately Dreamweaver.

CFBuilder/Eclipse, just takes up way to much resources on my 8gbRAM 8 core processor machine. When you have CF server, and other java based apps running at the same time, Eclipse/CFB just cannot hack it. No matter how many times you tweek the eclipse.ini And I work with 30-40 others who have also tried and failed.

Basically to quickly access and edit our files, and to quickly and effectively use the RegEx find/replace, there has been no other substitute to Dreamweaver. No we don't do the front-end stuff, or any of the Design View crap. And yeah, our only other alternative is Notepad++.

Wow, what an utterly awful piece of software Dreamweaver CC has become. Adobe outsourced development to India, totally lost communication between departments, screwed over the customer and now expects us to pay for it.

Adobe.... you're losing the web community slowly but surely. Adobe products should integrate and work with each other. Most web people are developing and designing at the same time. We need a tool that makes the design work easy and also has an IDE built-in to do ColdFusion work.

ColdFusion is your own product and you don't support it in your main web design tool Dreamweaver? Are you retarded?

Here's my take... Adobe are getting ready to sell ColdFusion off. They put the entire team in India, separated it from their main product lines (hence its not included in CC membership), providing no marketing for it, and telling everyone its deprecated.

If Adobe even has a strategy for product development then I strongly urge them to rethink what Dreamweaver and ColdFusion can do for the web TOGETHER. Everybody has hoped that Dreamweaver would grow into both a front-end and back-end tool, but instead Adobe have gone completely the wrong way.

Poor show, very poor. Turn this around quick or you are losing customers by the second.

@Token: If you can truly say Adobe is abandoning CF even though a) they are working on the next version and b) working on the next version of the editor (a pretty significant update) and c) running a new conference *just* for ColdFusion, then I don't know what else will convince you.

No one is saying it is deprecated. The *one* blog post mentioning that was mistaken.

There *is* marketing for CF - and a dedicated team member for it.

The fact that DW is focusing on the front end is - to me - just a natural evolvement of the product - especially since we have MULTIPLE other editors with different focuses and one DEDICATED to ColdFusion development.

If I were Ben Forta, I'd refrain from calling my customers "stupid."

When did he call customers stupid? He was calling the text (*our* text) about CF/deprecated being stupid. As in, it was badly worded.

Look on the Adobe forums how people have reacted to DW CC.... so far the positive reactions can be counted on a single hand probably.

Everyone is either suffering with it somehow with workarounds, or are trying to put DW CS6 back on the computer.... like me.

This is not just about dropping CF support... its the product as a whole. The CSS designer wastes tons of space - try using it on a 13" laptop and you'll soon give up scrolling up and down. The CSS pop-open panel was far easier to use.

Does Adobe do any kind of product development research before making such changes to well-established products? I can't see how they do this and end up with a product like DW CC.

I'm willing to place a bet that Adobe will get bought out by another company within this decade.

I'm not on the product development team - but I can tell you we certainly do. I think it is obvious that when a product changes, some folks may not be happy with it. It does not mean everyone is. That may be rough, but, it is honest.

Interesting then that market research has said that customers want DW to be devoid of any development language support and become effectively Microsoft Frontpage soon.

I just fired up CF Builder 2 to see if there was anyway it could be as usable as DW..... and the first thing I notice is that I can't see my stored procedures in the RDS panel. In DW I can see them fine!

A so-called professional IDE for web development does not even show Stored Procedures in the databases panel. Whereas DW has had this feature for many years. Come off it Adobe, you suck. You took Macromedia's lovely product range and totally ruined it for everyone.

Token, saying we suck is not constructive. I think you've made your opinion known now.

I just noticed that the Insert dialogue in DWCC still contains CFML and CFForm elements, so, um, it's not quite dead yet.

My problem with this change is that CF is so tightly integrated into HTML that it's very, very, very useful to have a visual editor for CFML files, much more than a visual editor for, say, .js or .css files. (IMPORTANT NOTE: That was NOT a call to remove JavaScript and CSS editing from DWCC! Fingers off the triggers, there, Adobe!) As an all-in-one developer who builds sites from server to screen and all in between, I'd much rather have some basic tools to create, open and edit CFML files in a WYSIWYG editor than a really good text-only CFML IDE.

One of the beauties of CFML was the ability to just slap some tags in a page and it works, making it ideal for rapid development. When you have a boss that has no idea how long it takes to develop a web site and then tells HIS boss some insanely tight deadline that you then have to make work, that agility saves your bacon. (This has happened more than once in my career. Not that I'm bitter.) Removing the "one stop shop" and fumfering back and forth between multiple IDEs to tweak this code or that graphic diminishes that agility.

Look, I know there's been talk about new versions of CF and its supposedly rosy future, but you must understand that Adobe dropping the ability to even _see_ pages for one of their own products from within another of their own products does smack of either a lack of confidence or a lack of foresight. Not sure which is worse.

As are many on here, I am really disappointed with this development. With the combination of using Ray and Ben's WACK books to learn CF and using DW for development, along with Ray's comments that we now need to use a tool for front-end development in DW, a backend tool (CFB or Eclipse with the CF Eclipse extensions), a FTP tool for transferring to a remote server (as RDS is a security risk) and who knows what other programs to do what we could do in DW is really just pathetic.

I am starting to feel the open-source people had the right idea.

Let me be absolutely clear. My development process is what works for me. I recommend it to others because it works for me, but I do not expect it to work for everyone. No process will work for everyone.

Frankly, most of the developers I know are moving towards multiple, smaller tools to handle different aspects of their development process.

That allows for more precision in my opinion.

DW has evolved. It has changed in a way that doesn't work for you, and I understand it upsets you. At the end of the day, I hope you do find something that works for you. I'd be happy to talk more about my process if you are open to it.

Regarding workflow...

If I want to do some html/css/js work on a .cfm file that a programmer has worked on in CFB (presumably), how should I go about doing that? Should I be using DW for that, or a different tool? Since I can't open the .cfm files, am I to assume I need to begin learning how to use CFB to do my html/css/js work now?

Did you try this?

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-pr...

You can still open the file with DW CC. (I just did one.) You don't have to learn CFB, but it wouldn't hurt to give it a try.

Yes - that helps. Thanks!

My constructive criticism (for what it's worth): It's funny how a seemingly small thing like file association can be such a big deal, but it is. Hopefully Adobe looks at this from the user's point of view for future updates to DW. The current situation is sort of like, say, if Photoshop users tried to open a common image file format only to be greeted with a "I have no idea what that is, please take your crazy file type somewhere else" message. It's frustrating.

My work just installed Windows 8.1 on my new computer. We also purchased the Creative Cloud. I installed Dreamweaver CC. I could not believe that all I saw was PHP.
This is terrible and a slap in a face for Coldfusion developers who have to do both UI and backend development. I have been so busy over the last few months building web and mobile apps that I missed this change.

Adobe/Macromedia has been pushing DW and CF for over a decade!
Adobe also pushed Flex. We pushed what Adobe had to say to management about Flex. Adobe then drops the product to Apache(Probably a good thing). Unfortunately we immediately stopped using Flex. What a waste of time and resources.

Adobe is definitely portraying that it does not care about developers. You CANNOT TRUST them. I really sympathize with all the Flex developers,

This is the final straw for me. We have two CF 9 servers running and two CF10 servers.
I think this will be able to get the organization through the next few years. I am seriously considering skipping CF 11. I am starting to think that the open source and PHP is the way to go. That is Adobe's language of choice in DW CC.

With that said, I want to thank you Ray for all you do. Your blog helps out so much. I appreciate what you do for the community.

- dishearten CF Developer

I just had to voice my disappointment in dreamweaver cc's lack of support for CF coding.

I'm trying to migrate from Flex to HTML5 and jQuery. I purchased dreamweaver CC subscription about 4 months ago and started working with CSS and jQuery as time permitted, and finally figured I was ready to start adding CF.

Nope.

Sure, my fault for not reading up on the product, but still its difficult to get over the time and money investment.

I do (now) understand the idea that DWCC is trying to be the same client-side development tool as Flex was. Thing is, and perhaps this is because I've not fully understood CSS and Javascript / jQuery, but I don't believe one can build in the same completely independent manner as Flex and CF with HTML5 (jQuery / javascript) and CF. If so, what is the HTML5 equivalent to the http service, data provider model? The equivalent to states? Viewstacks? Repeaters? I guess I don't believe I can build without sprinkling a little CF into my HTML.

And the kicker for me is that, by incorporating php, I don't think Adobe believes it either.

Perhaps I just have a ways yet to go in understanding HTML5, so maybe someone can point me to a dreamweaver / cf builder created site that has NO cf code in the html markup / javascript, and NO html / javascript code in the CF templates?

@Jason: Respectfully, I think you are confusing a few things. Flex is a framework, not an IDE. DW is an IDE, not a framework. As it stands, there are multiple different editors out there that work with Flex. So to your question about, "what are the equivalents to the http service, data model, etc", there are multiple JavaScript frameworks out there that can help with this. Look into Angular, Knockout, Backbone, etc. There are many - all with their own way of doing things. You should spend some time looking into them to figure out which works best for you.

"I guess I don't believe I can build without sprinkling a little CF into my HTML."

To be clear, CF isn't going into your HTML. CF doesn't go to your browser. CF just generates HTML (and JSON, XML, etc). It is a tool to *generate* HTML, nothing more. It is a darn good tool and kicked butt for me for many years, but is not the only tool.

"Perhaps I just have a ways yet to go in understanding HTML5, so maybe someone can point me to a dreamweaver / cf builder created site that has NO cf code in the html markup / javascript, and NO html / javascript code in the CF templates?"

Again, this makes absolutely no sense at all. There are no web sites with CF code in them. Period. CF may be generating the HTML, but it isn't in the HTML markup. CF doesn't care if you use HTML, HTML5, or HTML9. It just outputs what you tell it too.

With that being said, if you want to learn HTML5, you need to stop thinking about CF and just focus on HTML itself. (Ditto for JS/CSS.)

I'm a small business owner with multiple coldfusion servers. My programmer does all the heavy lifting and I deploy the design/themes to our client base of over 500 CF based websites. I've read through these posts and appreciate the comments made. In short, I've been using and advocating CF and (macromedia - adobe) all the way back to the "Allaire" days. Of course when CC came out... I jumped at the chance to see all the great benefits and it's been nothing but a slap in the face. I don't program... I take simple tags written by my programmer and place them into html pages saved as .cfm files. Adobe has completely disrupted our workflow by removing the ability to go FILE > OPEN > .CFM file. Much like selling me a car with monthly payments (that i can not stop) they removed the steering wheel in the middle of the night, and suggest I purchase a wrench (CB2)as a replacement for $300.00 which doesn't work nearly as well.

I'm really not sure why Adobe would limit the ability to open files... pull out the heavy stuff and let programmers work out of programmers software. Leave us with a html editor to work with though!

If all you need to do is open a CFM to paste some code in, you can do that right now with DW CC. You can also use this guide: http://helpx.adobe.com/x-pr....

If you already had DW CS6, you can keep using it *and* use CC.

"Much like selling me a car with monthly payments (that i can not stop) they removed the steering wheel in the middle of the night, and suggest I purchase a wrench (CB2)as a replacement for $300.00 which doesn't work nearly as well."

1) You can cancel CC.
2) "middle of the night" - well, the fact that DW CC doesn't have CF support has been "out" now for many months. But ok, maybe you missed it.
3) "purchase a wrench" - if by wrench you mean a tool built by the CF team specifically for CF, then yes. But as I said, if you don't need CF syntax coloring, or code hinting, then you can still open the file in DW CC. Problem solved.

Hi Ray,

thanks for the quick response... actually I've been told by Adobe that (1.) I cant cancel until the end of my 12 month term. the primary justification for transitioning to CC was that it allowed me to move from win to mac (plus new features). So going back to CS6 complete OS change over too. (2.) I didn't notice the initial deprecation because as stated I use dreamweaver as an html editor... I don't touch anything related to CF programming. The tutorial mentioned no longer works as of last weeks update (per adobe tech support). (3.) Correct, i really don't have any need for code hinting or cf syntax... just a simple need to go from FILE > OPEN > .CFM. I guess Adobe thinks we only need to work in .htm or .php files for now. Again, I know very little about a programmers needs but Dreamweaver CC has unnecessarily deprecated itself (for us on the visual end) into a useless html editor. Software should get better and easier to use with age. Best wishes!

1) Sorry that you can't cancel. In terms of CS6, back when I transitioned from Win to Mac, I was allowed to transition my CS license. You should be able to as well. Please call support. If you can't get help with this ,let me know. At minimum we should be able to get your preferred DW working for you on Mac.

"I guess Adobe thinks we only need to work in .htm or .php files for now. "

*sigh* We are talking about one product. Not all the products. Adobe ships *multiple* editors and ships one specifically for CF.

Thank you for your insight and help, Raymond... much appreciated! I was able to work with Adobe on a cross-grade over to mac and downgrade back to CS6.

All this pushing of CFB really does not address the concerns of a lot of people, that being, where once we had one tool to do it all (the meat of web app design), now we are being forced to use two, which I suppose is ok where you have separate “front end guys” and “back end guys” but what about those places that don’t? (Freelancers for example)

Yes Dreamweaver was never a “comprehensive” IDE for ColdFusion but it allowed many people including myself to be jack of all trades without switching tools and I imagine a lot of the complaints above are from those in similar positions to myself.

I personally uninstalled DW CC a few minutes after I installed it (the day it was released) and have been using CS6, the question I have is this, how long will adobe allow me to do so ? And being technically minded, is the total in lost sales due to the removal of CFM support (code hinting) really greater than the cost of its implementation into Dreamweaver CC ?

@bjmurray: Is it wrong to use 2 tools? I do both back end and front end dev and have quite a few tools that i use. IMO, the industry is moving more towards smaller, more focused tools than "one app to rule them all". But that's just my opinion.

CS6: Adobe can't remove that from your computer so I'm not sure how to respond to your question. In theory, five years down the line, your computer/OS may be so different that CS6 can't run, but that isn't the same as Adobe "removing" it.

Hi there,

Downloaded DWCC - disappointed the CF isn't supported but ho-hum - in a post you mention: ColdFusion Studio

And that it can be used free - where?? I can't find it.

Cheers

Jan

I said Studio by accident. The real name is ColdFusion Builder, which you can download over at Adobe.com.

Cool - thanks for that - I downloaded it - but it doesn't seem to be free apart from the 60 day trial. Is that right?

It isn't very obvious, but it IS free after the trial ends. Some features are removed, but imo, nothing big. This details the differences:

http://cfdocyard.blogspot.c...

Cheers chum

Unsubscribe.

Scott, I know I could just IM you, but for everyone else, if you are subscribed to the comment thread and want to stop getting the emails, there should be an Unsubscribe link *in* the email itself.

This Dreamweaver decision in addition to flex losing the graphical ide
is a lack of respect for all the teachings and maxx conferences and evangelist's like yourself have tought us in the past.
Quite frankly this make's you want to forget about Adobe for anything other then Photoshop.
It is like a slap in the face to find out after a decade of supporting Coldfusion and Flex and Dreamweaver and Adobe that Adobe wont stand behind their own technology. Why code for it then or pay extra for licenses if it is free in CF Studio then why is it not good enough for the most toyish application for website building out there.
To tell you the truth I am out going to Java and I am not looking back.
You guys lost my trust and your dictatorship of who whats and where and how is not for me.
Good luck with this new direction you have insulted every developer that backed up Adobe with Coldfusion and I think it is a sign of Adobe's downfall.

Adobe has once again let me down. Ray You, Scott, Ben squared and many others are amazing resources and I look up to you all, but lets stop defending Adobe on this one. For all you who are hating on Adobe right now, know that they have heard you. It was said above by product manager that they are going to revisit server-side technology in DW CC. so lets give them a chance to save face. In the meantime, as developers it is our duty to provide our customers and employers with the best possible solutions. Is that still CF. In my opinion yes. Is it Adobe CF? Probably not. Railo is really taking charge on this vertical. Is Dreamweaver CC the best IDE for CF anymore? Apparently not. IS CF Builder a good replacement. According to Back-end CF developers yes, but according to multi-stage developers such as myself the answer is no. DW CS6 was as close as it came for me. I had pretty good js support, pretty good css support, pretty good CF support, pretty good phonegap support, pretty good dB support, pretty good snippet support, pretty good site/ftp/rds/drive-mapping support and pretty good code coloring and inteli-sense/code autocomplete support. What does DW CC have? responsive design, mobile, html and that bleeping php support. CF Builder is jacked into Eclipse which I personally don't really enjoy. Soooo, long story short, evangelists, you all rock, but let Adobe defend this one on their own. Don't take the hits for them. Adobe screwed up. I think we should all except that FACT. But lets take the product manager at his word and wait for DW CC to revisit server-side languages. Hey Adobe until then can you take php out as well, so as to not pee in the cereal of all your loyal ColdFusion developers. Maybe if you take out PHP we will truly believe that it was a decision to remove Server-side languages. Good luck all my ColdFusion brothers and sisters. Let's hope to see another release before they sell the product off.

Had to reformat and reinstall my Mac, and so I needed to download the latest CC apps. Out of curiosity, I checked the current state of affairs, and as of May, 2014, Adobe still hasn't "revisited" the use of .CFM, .ASPX and other server-side file types in Adobe Dreamweaver CC, version 13.2.

Apparently they're still convinced that it's the early '80s, and every source file served from a web server ends in .html. So be it.

In this comment thread, Ray, and others, told us that we shouldn't tie ourselves to a particular IDE and that we should grow and learn as developers. That we should simply download CFB and move on.

Upon reflection, much of that statement made sense, and so that's what I did: I moved on.

However, instead of downloading CFB I downloaded Xcode, and put my prior C, C++, and OOP background to better use doing iOS app development. It's more rewarding, it's a heck of a lot more in demand, and it pays much, much, much better.

So thanks guys. It's been fun.

@Michael Long:

I really, really shouldn't be replying, but I just can't help myself.

I open up DW CC, click to make a new file, and see: HTML, CSS, Less, Sass, Scss, JS, PHP, XML, SVG, and more. So your statement couldn't be more far from the truth.

You do realize that Adobe released ColdFusion 11 and CFB3 in the past few weeks, right?

So if your entire basis for your opinion on Adobe, at least related to CF, is built in support in DW, then I'm not sure *anything* could make you happy.

Now click New and try to make a .CFM file. Sorry, I thought my last comment was running a little long, so I pulled the paragraph that discussed .cfm, .cfc, .asp, .aspx, and all of the other nice little file extensions in which people save server-side code to be rendered as HTML. Glad Adobe still supports CSS and XML, though.

Be that as it may, it's been a year with no significant updates or changes to DW at all. No "revisits" or indications that they paid any attention whatsoever to the comments made here and elsewhere last year. And that's what prompted my post.

But hey, CF11! Wow. Minor improvements to PDF gen (which it already had), web sockets (which it already had), REST (which it already had), major script enhancements like ListEach, and perhaps the biggest of them all, FB Like button generation. (grin)

I suppose we should be thankful that FB Like and ListEach aren't Enterprise only. At least they finally fixed the JSON query generation issue that's been around since, what? CF9?

Ray, I'm sorry. I'm venting and I shouldn't be venting. But I'm simply not impressed with Adobe's vision of how to keep CF relevant. Years ago, Java and .NET passed them on the Enterprise side, and PHP, Ruby, Node, and everyone else passed them on the OSS side.

They tried to stay relevant with Flash integration, and Apple zapped them there too. Which brings us to the final CF11 addition...

Now you can use CF to write PhoneGap applications. Really? So, basically, Adobe is letting developers use CF to create a layer over JS on PG, which in itself is a Chrome/JS layer on top of the iOS and Android platforms.

Further, the new PG generation features were released just before WWDC, so should Apple release anything really cool that developers need to support, Adobe should have an update out... when? Sometime next year?

PG development is tough enough when you have to wait for the PG team to catch up with the latest mobile platform changes. Now you have to wait for Adobe CF to catch up with PG? On Adobe's semi-annual release schedule?

Yeah, that should work well.

@Michael Long: Ok, well, I can accept you not liking CF11. I may not agree, but I can accept that. The argument that some made, and I thought you did as well, that Adobe didn't care about CF because of DW CC, is what I can't accept.

To say care or not care is to put things into a black and white perspective, and I don't think it's that simple. I think it does, however, give a clear indication of Adobe's priorities.

When Adobe wanted to promote Flash, they moved heaven and earth to make sure each and every possible product had at least some level of Flash support. That they could display and even generate Flash files and components. But in this case, Adobe choose to strip all support for their own product from DW.

You and others have said that it's because they wanted to "focus" on client-side HTML only. But they left in support for PHP while again, stripping support for CF.

Others have suggested that the removal was accidental, demonstrated by the fact that some level of support could be restored with a few simple commands. But it's been a year now, and there hasn't even been the simplest point update to correct that "mistake". I mean, it's Creative CLOUD. Continual patches and bug fixes and hot fixes are supposed to be the order of the day, right?

Or at least, they would be, if doing so were a priority.

So, does Adobe "care" about CF? Sure. To the extent that they've made an investment in it, that it generates some level of income over and above it's expenses, and that dropping it totally could upset some of their major corporate clients.

But is it a priority? No. High on the radar? No. Worth making an extensive effort to support it in their other products? No.

Ray,
I've just installed DwCC version 13.0
So, I cannot have CF toolbar and do CF developmens like it was on DW cs5?

If you do not see it, then no, but, you are in luck, as the latest ColdFusion Builder was released a few weeks ago. And it is free (runs w/ a few features disabled, but nothing big). And it handles HTML, JS, CSS *much* nicer than before. I'm using it a heck of a lot more than I have in a long while.

Thaks, Ray, I will try CFB3

Ray,

I just install Creative Cloud for Photographers with Photoshop, Lightroom, and some cool Behance stuff.

My question is, in the context of CC and these apps, where do baby animals come from? I'm afraid my mother lied to me, but if I ask her directly she will yell and throw cigarettes at me.

Also, I need to write some software for my employer, can you do it for me?

Thanks,

jason

Yeah, all this technical mumbo-jumbo is great, but it detracts from the whole point of this.

My employer wants me to make a clone of Google using php. It needs to be completed by Friday. Will you write my code for me or not?

Wait, CF11 provides a tag to create a Facebook 'Like' button? Srsly?

First, I want to say I have the utmost respect for you (Ray), Ben Forte & Ben Nadel. Over the years you have provided the ColdFusion community with many solutions and helped hundreds if not thousands of developers. I don't think we, as a community of ColdFusion developers, could ever repay all you have done.

I can't, however, appreciate what Adobe has done by blindly "pulling the rug out from under the CF Community's feet". Whether I have been using Dreamweaver wrong for years, it has been the one and only tool I used to code, design and FTP all my websites. And it worked for me. I was able to do my job clean and quickly. DW offered my ColdFusion tag support, a design view when I needed to see how my code was working, and a clean and easy way to check in/out my files.

So, if this newest ideology is that DW was broken and not the correct process for developing ColdFusion websites for all these years, then I have built over 300 hundred websites incorrectly. What amazes me is that the websites I have built using Dreamweaver over the last 10+ years work, provide my clients with a cost effective solution, and has offered me as a sole developer & business owner an incredibly affective application...that is until Adobe saw fit to "fix it".

The only thing that is wrong with Dreamweaver now is that Adobe broke it for ColdFusion developers and I still don't understand why. Even after reading this entire post as well as several other posts on other forums, chatting with someone at Adobe, and even getting replies to emails from people that I greatly respect.

I have yet to read anything that convinces me that what Adobe has done was to the benefit of anyone, especially the ColdFusion Community. The only reason I can see that Adobe changed Dreamweaver is so they can now sell us a subscription based solution for all the other products we have used for years as well as the full version of CF Builder where before I could do everything I needed to do by just opening up Dreamweaver and getting to work. In realty, the only two programs I have ever really needed over the years are Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Now I need DW, CFB, Photoshop and an FTP product.

Again, I am not writing this to or against anyone's opinion here, except maybe those who claim to be true Adobe employees. I am simply stating what I see as my perspective of what has and is happening. As for those from Adobe that have posted here, I hope you are listening.

As for Ray, thank you for trying to help us make since of what Adobe is doing and offering advice that you believe will help. The truth for most of us though, as I can see from those writing on this post as well as other forums, we didn't need Adobe to "fix" Dreamweaver by moving ColdFusion support to another program. We were happy with the way it was and it worked for us.