Simon Horwith (pictured), ColdFusion Developer's Journal editor-in-chief, will be at MAX 2005 in Anaheim, CA, this week and invites CFDJ readers to be sure to stop by and say hello.

It was exactly one year ago that ColdFusion Developer's Journal began focusing heavily on a different topic every month. The feedback that I hear from our readers at conferences and via email indicates that it has been a well-received change in format. While there is no plan to stop this practice, there are other ideas that I'd like to experiment with in order to try and give our readers the most useful content possible. The specialized focus issue format was introduced in order to make each month's issue more informative and to offer something for everyone, regardless of the level of expertise. The new format will be to have both focus and non-focus issues, but with certain common themes that are touched upon all year round.

The idea is that with deliberate focus, CFDJ will become the most valuable resource possible for CF developers. I've been spending a lot of time recently looking at and thinking about trends in technology and on the web. I've been talking with different folks at Macromedia about some of their future initiatives, including how their vision of the future is evolving and/or coming into realization. I've also been looking at the newest research from Microsoft, Sun, Adobe, and a couple of other companies. Last, but not least, I've been paying special attention to the trends, discussions, and opinions within the ColdFusion development community. CFDJ is going to place more emphasis on these trends and on deficiencies that I believe require special attention. CFDJ will strive to focus on topics that will make all of our readers more marketable and that will raise the quality of applications being developed by educating less about niche topics and more about topics that affect us all. In short, my goal is to make our readers more successful. This may be a tall order, but if nothing else it's a noble effort.

In order for this to work, I am going to rely on the community more heavily than ever to submit great articles and topic ideas. Please check my blogs at http://www.horwith.com or http://simon.coldfusionjournal.com from time to time to find out what topics I'm looking for authors to write about. I currently have several topics that are going to be woven into CFDJ in upcoming issues. Many of them deal with technologies and products other than ColdFusion, but with a focus on introducing how they work and how we can take advantage of them from our CF apps. Of particular interest is Flex and Rich Internet Applications in general. Macromedia has said that RIAs are the future for several years now, and Microsoft will is finally be jumping on the bandwagon in the near future. Flash player support is finally coming to mainstream mobile devices in the U.S. Soon, I believe that RIA development will not only be a realistic cost-effective option for ColdFusion developers to deliver but will also be a pleasure for us to develop.

Other area I plan to pay more focus is frameworks, methodologies, and best practices in general - whether they're for application development, architecture, management, planning, testing, or deployment. I am writing this editorial a few days prior to the TeraTech Fusebox and Frameworks conference, which I'm really looking forward to. Having always been fairly vocal about not being much of a fusebox fan in the past, this year will be my first time at the conference, where I'm giving two presentations ("Introduction to Fusebox," which I had to learn for the conference, and "Developing Applications Without Frameworks"). While at the conference I will approach the leading experts for each of the major frameworks that are available and ask that they develop an application and contribute an article describing the code for next month's issue. Each framework will implement the same application. So, it will be a frameworks extravaganza!

I thought it would be interesting for our readers to get a side-by side comparison and explanation of all of the major frameworks that are out there.

I have recently agreed to release the methodology I use for development, so expect to see more on that as well. Just over two weeks from now I will be at the MAX conference in Anaheim (and CFUnderground on the Saturday prior to MAX registration). Check the CFDJ web site at http://coldfusionjournal.com for SYS-CON TV MAX podcasts and other conference reports and news. In addition to examining frameworks, expect coverage of the Fusebox and Frameworks, CFUnderground, and MAX conferences in next month's issue.

Turning our attention to the now, we have several great articles this month. By the time this is published, the CFMX 7 Updater will have been released. This month, Macromedia's Dave Gruber introduces the new features in ColdFusion MX 7.0.1. Some of the other notable articles this month include the return of BF on CF (Ben Forta) after several months on the road, another installment of Hal Helms' popular etude series, and an article from Rob Gonda about a very hot topic - AJAX.

I hope to meet many of you at the Fusebox and Frameworks, CFUnderground, and/or MAX conferences in the next several weeks. If you attend any of these events, be sure to stop by and say hello. As always, I welcome feedback about CFDJ and what you think of the direction it takes under my guidance. If you have thoughts or advice, or want to contribute, don't hesitate to email me at simon@horwith.com.