iPhone Missing Features - Email

This is the first in a series of posts I'm going to make about the iPhone. After months of use, its just amazing that they iPhone is missing core features that I need and want, I was holding off thinking they will be included with the next update, but they don't seem to be coming.

This post I will talk about the features missing in Email.

• You can only view 200 messages, that's like a day's worth for me, useless, cant get to messages I received or sent last week. The blackberry had a last 30 days option, with the iPhone memory there is no logical reason to have such a small limit.
• You can't search messages, if they fix the limit of 200 messages, they need to add search so that you can search and find a message your looking for.
• When you reply to an email you get an icon indicating you replied, but there is no way jumping to or seeing that reply
• No way to set message importance, don't get this, it's like iPhone decided no one uses this and left it out.

I encourage you post your issues with iPhone email features, they have done a really half ass job of this, and its all fixable via a software update. When BlackBerry people talk to be about how I like my iPhone I tell them I miss the features of a BlackBerry. You can't really do business email on an iPhone.

How Close is ColdFusion 9?

Am looking at setting up some new servers which will require some additional ColdFusion licencing. But was wondering how far ColdFusion 9 is.

I don't want to be one of those people who buys a licence and then a week later sees the post of anyone who buys now gets a free upgrade to ColdFusion 9 and I've wasted my money.

Reading between the lines of a lost of posts etc, it seems pretty close to me, but I'm not sure if that means 3 months or 6. While I might be able to hold off 3, 6 will be a stretch.

So anyone with any info on when it might be available or when they will announce buy CF8 now get CF9 free when it's released, let me know

ColdFusion 9 Needs ActionScript Support

I've talked about this in part in other posts and on other blogs. It seems everyone I talk to about it thinks its a good idea, but that doesn't mean it will happen.

What am I taking about, well it is now common knowledge that ColdFusion 9 will support full script syntax, that means that if you wish you can write all your cfc's without a single tag.

Great, cant wait, there is no place for tags in clases IMHO, and yes they are classes as far as I am concerned not components.

Adobe are on a big push about how ColdFusion 9 and Flex 4 will play so well together, well if they are serious about this, they need to bridge the gap and do it now, not in ColdFusion 10 or later, as they will miss the boat.

And by bridge the gap, I mean, they need to have a common (or similar) syntax between both ColdFusion & Flex. There is no reason they cant do this, the cfc's are parsed and compiled before anything is executed, so its just a bit of extra parsing.

Some examples, if I may

Script: var q = new Query();
ActionScript: var q = new Query();

Now technically ActionScript 3 would have
var q:Query = new Query();
But seeing as ColdFusion is loosly typed, this isn't necessary, thus the above two are equilivant, perfect, Im a happy man.

But this isn't always the case.

Script: Component {
ActionScript: public class {

This one annoys me, why ColdFusion people needed to call a class a component is beyond me. Especially annoying since a component in Flex is something completly different, everyone else calls it a class, so lets call it a class.

The next one is annoying because of how often you write it

Script: private function query getEmployee(employeeId) {
ActionScript: private function getEmployee(employeeId):query {

now this might seem minor, but if you are swapping back and forward from CF to AS all day, it will be very annoying.

Now the major reason they should do this and now, is that there are a lot of legacy Flash developers, moving to ActionScript 3 and Flex who are looking for a back end. They try things, I've seen them on twitter asking what to use, amfphp, weborb, coldfusion. Now if coldfusion supported an actionscript style syntax, it would be a no brainer, and we might turn a large user base of ActionScript people over to ColdFusion.

Now, I'm not saying we should drop old school cfscript syntax or tags, these should work also, as backward compatibility is important, but there is no reason why the parser cant support both. I urge all you who agree to comment, post a blog, comment on the Tim Buntel or Ben Forta blogs. Make a noise and lets lock in a long future of Flex and ColdFusion.