CFMX upgrade woes

August 4, 2002 6:55 AM

Matt, when you changed server you seemed pretty pissed off with CFMX. Do you still stand by that? I reckon your opinion on this would be of a lot of use to those thinking about using it or upgrading.
posted by Zootoon to MetaFilter-Related at 6:55 AM (5 comments total)

I was planning on putting up a page chronicling all the problems I faced with the upgrade. I eventually found a lot of workarounds, but some problems still go unsolved (the high ascii character thing, for instance).

The software feels a lot like a beta that was rushed to market. Talking with Macromedia beta testers, they reported many of the errors I did, but they weren't fixed before the release of the product.

If you spend a few hours digging through Macromedia's discussion forums, you can see a lot of people struggling with CFMX. If I have time this week, I'd like to get a page of all my problems and workarounds.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:47 AM on August 4, 2002

Cheers Matt, I'll check that out. If you get time for that page you talk about, that would be great too. Any mefiers using CFMX? Communication Server? That multi-webcam thing would make a great celebrity-squares panel on metatalk!
posted by Zootoon at 3:39 PM on August 4, 2002

For Mac users, there's a great piece on O'Rielly about rolling your own OS X port of CFMX by using JVM as a go-between. This could thereby open a niche of possibilities for anyone currently running JGenerator.
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:37 AM on August 5, 2002

I haven't used CF, but if you've got OSX, you've got Apache, PHP, and MySQL is a double-click install away. So what would be the advantage of CFMX, besides sending $800 to Macromedia? Is it really that easy to use? Is the loss of control worth the price of convenience?

Also, I'm something of a newcomer to this area (database/server scripting languages) is this anything like the Mac/PC can-o-worms?
posted by joemaller at 10:08 PM on August 5, 2002

It's not usually that contentious, Joe. Most people who know one of the server-side scripting languages are usually at least marginally conversant in one or more of its competitors, from what I've seen.

And they all talk to every possible database, so the familiar pairings (ASP/MSSQL, PHP.MySQL) aren't always the ones people use.

FWIW, PHP on OS X is only just barely supported right now, although CFMX isn't supported at all, either, so I suppose it's choosing the lesser of two risks. PHP has a long and stable history on BSD, though.
posted by anildash at 12:40 AM on August 6, 2002