I concur -- the aspect of Visual Design tools, such as UltraDev, in relation
to Fusebox have not been very explicitly detailed ("exploited") yet. A
member of the development team on our current project has already stated
that he thinks Fusebox is a great method, however he has also seen the
benefit of rapid development using UltraDev. He's considering looking into
how UltraDev might be customizable so that some of the "wizards" and such
are actually writing a sort of "Fusebox" style output... I highly doubt this
will be fully realized without a tremendous amount of work.
While UltraDev was able to put out some code VERY VERY quickly for us (it
was really the only way we were going to meet a recent deadline), the code
was absolute sh*t. Out of the box, UltraDev's interface, however it works,
writes truly garbage-style code. But the WYSIWYG interface put out some
user interface screens/forms quickly, and it met the demand.
I remember when I first started using ColdFusion, and I finally had the
opportunity to take a CF Course. I took the course with Ralph Fiol, and you
could ask him -- I bet he'd remember my frustration that CF Studio did not
have nearly the site management features that FrontPage has... and I can
tell you that FrontPage is where I came from so long ago.
It was difficult for me to accept that I was going to lose some of those
cool link/site management tools that FrontPage provides... but after I
really became proficient with straight text editing using CF Studio, I found
that I missed those tools less and less... including FrontPage's WYSIWYG
editor. Now I don't even think about FrontPage, and when I DO have to use
it, it actually pisses me off in some ways. ("Leave my f***** code
ALONE!!!!")
I am rambling... but I think it's true that integrating WYSIWYG editors of
ANY kind, with the Fusebox method, is a long uphill battle.
The best way I have found so far to work with design issues is to have the
person responsible for layout and design show me what the interface needs to
look like using a prototype template, and then I just build
header/footer/block templates for that design using Fusebox methods. So
far, this has been the best way to work, for me.
Would I love to be able to work on a particular page, for example, click
"browse" on the index/fusebox file and be asked "what fuseaction, please"
(and perhaps some other variables/values), and once I provide it, I see my
page, and then be able to perform such editing as creating tables, playing
with fonts and images, and other working with other design elements?
SURE!!! But again, I think that's going to be a long road, to create such a
Fusebox-aware WYSIWYG editor/environment. And there are those among you who
will already agree -- it might not be worth it.
I'd love to know if anyone has even started down that road... and I welcome
your comments.
Marc
-----Original Message-----
From: McCollough, Alan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 11:13 AM
To: Fusebox
Subject: RE: Decision
I think that the notion that Fusebox is difficult to work with for
graphics-heavy sites is a bit off. I can't speak from personal experience,
since I'm a lone-cowboy developer, and I use only CF Studio.
BuTtTt, it seems to me that in a multi-developer environment, you should be
able to isolate the visual design fairly easily.
Lets say you've got a 5-person shop, and one person is the architect. This
person hammers out a Fusebox application framework, and lays in the
fusedocs, which document what does what for each given template. That takes
care of your business logic and what-not.
>From there, you could have coders write the CFML, and have designers do up
the foo-foo pretty HTML part. Basically, as long as these folks understand
how to read fusedocs, they should be able to work 100% with GUI tools.
I might be oversimplifying this, but I think ya get the picture. Fusebox
lets you isolate application logic from visual design, and I think this
benefit hasn't really been exploited yet...
Alan McCollough
Web Programmer
Allaire Certified ColdFusion Developer
Alaska Native Medical Center
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 2:03 PM
> To: Fusebox
> Subject: Re: Decision
>
>
> Chris,
>
> I would wholeheartedly recommend that your group adopt Fusebox for your
> Intranet. I have a few concerns about FuseBox on public sites (although I
> haven't come up with a better idea ... so I use FuseBox) but I think that
> FuseBox is ideal for internal stuff.
>
> The downsides to Fusebox that I see are: added complexity to visual
> design
> and search engine friendliness of URLs. It does take a while for some
> graphic designers to "get" FuseBox. Most Intranets have less visual
> design
> than public marketing sites anyway and there are certainly other folks on
> this list who have created visually appealing FuseBox sites. An Intranet
> probably won't need any sort of search engine coverage so that shouldn't
> be
> an important factor.
>
> The benefits of code reuse, greater organization and 'transparency' of
> code
> and improved team development make Fusebox a terrific methodology to use.
> Its not the only way to go, but if you don't have a significantly better
> solution, Fusebox is definitely the best way.
>
> regards,
> Kevin
>
> --------------------------
> Kevin Marshall
> Certified ColdFusion Developer
> eCalton.com, Inc.
> Vero Beach, FL
> www.ecalton.com
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 561.569.4500
>
>
>
>
> CAlvarado@tma
>
> nage.com To: Fusebox
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> cc:
>
> 12/07/00 Subject: Decision
>
> 11:52 AM
>
> Please
>
> respond to
>
> fusebox
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hello All,
>
> I am pretty new to the Fusebox list but have been working with Cold Fusion
> since version 1.5 (ahh the good ole buggy CGI days)
>
> The company I just went to work for has a pretty nice CF setup. CF Server
> on
> Sparc Solaris, and an Oracle backend. I am effectively the lead developer
> and we are completely retooling the Intranet. The question has risen
> whether
> we should instantiate some sort of standardized methodology such as
> Fusebox.
> After the research I have done I am pretty much convinced that we would
> benefit from this methodology. My question is (and this comes from my
> supervisors as well), is what are the downsides (if any) to Fusebox? I
> have
> already given them my thoughts on the upsides based on my reading / common
> sense. Does the fact that the Fusebox methodology seems to inherently
> generate the use of more .cfm files than 'normal' on the server create any
> kind of performance issues?
>
> Thanks for any and all help.
>
> chris.alvarado
> cold.fusion - developer
> [phone] 512.794.6563
> [email] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [web] http://www.tmanage.com
>
>
> Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. It
> is
> not for use or disclosure outside TManage without a written proprietary
> agreement. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message, or
> agent
> responsible for delivery, you may not copy or deliver this message to
> anyone. Please notify the sender as soon as possible and immediately
> destroy this message and its attachments entirely.
>
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