Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Used together, Dreamweaver and ColdFusion provide an efficient, rapid
development environment for building powerful Web applications. In addition
to the powerful Flash Remoting capabilities already available in ColdFusion
MX, ColdFusion MX 7 adds the ability to create rich Flash complex, multi-step
forms. HTML form maintenance is a time-consuming and tedious task, but
creating Flash forms is fast and intuitive for a ColdFusion developer. New Flash
forms controls such as data grids, tree controls, and calendars are also available
in ColdFusion MX 7 and can be easily used within the CFFORM tag to add
rich controls to your applications.
To summarize ColdFusion has been used to write millions of Webpages and is
generally recognized to be the easiest dynamic Web page language for people
coming from straight HTML to learn. This is partly because it is tag-based like
HTML is, and also because of the strong user community around ColdFusion.
This includes user groups, listservs, conferences, and the Fusebox methodol-
ogy for organizing ColdFusion code. You may want to explore ColdFusion first
if you begin to engage in using server-side technology applications in your Web
portfolio development process. Out of the popular server-side applications, it
has the easiest learning curve for people familiar with HTML.
Conclusion
The server-side technologies presented earlier vary in their technical difficulty
levels, cost of use, learning curves, and capabilities. All server-side applica-
tions allow dynamic content to be exchanged by users and servers. This content
may contain feedback or user data that will be beneficial to the Web portfolio
author. Also enabled by server-side technology are database driven forms and
functions and Web application tools such as guestbooks and hit counters.
Server-side components are not needed to create a great Web portfolio
experience for your user. However, as your technical abilities grow and your
content increases, you may want to think about database-driven methods for
managing data. You may also think about how to raise the level of interactivity
and responsive communication with server-side technologies.
We move now from technical jargon to real life cases and interviews. The next
chapter deeply explores the Web portfolio in action with hopes of providing
creative inspiration to motivate and guide you as your involvement in electronic
portfolios and Web portfolios increases.
