A vulnerability has been identified in ColdFusion 9, which could allow access to collections created by the Solr Service to be accessed from any external machine using a specific URL. A solution to the reported vulnerability has been posted online.

Lee Brimelow has a way with words. I mean pictures.

Want to join the Adobe RIA team? We are looking for a talented and highly motivated Architect or Technical lead to help deliver the next generation presentation services (composite RIA, mashups and client architecture). A successful candidate will have a proven track record as a client side architect on enterprise applications and RIA frameworks. See this job posting.

There is a broad and growing ecosystem that surrounds Flex and the Flash platform. And we've just posted a comprehensive list of products and projects which provide support for the Flex framework.

One of the most intriguing features of ColdFusion Builder (now on Labs) is its ability to support extensions written in CFML. Adobe Developer Connection is running an article by Brian Rinaldi entitled Creating self-updating ColdFusion Builder beta extensions.

ColdFusion Builder is built on Eclipse, and Eclipse can be used for many different languages and types of development, each of which likely has different editor needs. To address all of the different requirements of different languages, Eclipse supports a feature called perspectives. A perspective is a simply a group of layout configuration settings that you can activate as needed. And as you switch between development platforms or languages or stages in development, you simply change perspectives, or have them switched automatically for you.

Just like every other Eclipse plug-in, ColdFusion Builder has a default perspective, a default editor layout for ColdFusion development. And I don't like it. I find the editor area too small, and I don't like where views are placed and grouped. But, Eclipse makes tweaking perspectives really easy, and so I've been tweaking away for a while. And here's where I have ended up:

• I like a big coding area, so I don't like views in panels on both the left and right. So, two panels on the left.
• The top panel on the left contains two views, Navigator and File.
• The bottom panel on the left contains five views, Outline, RDS FileView, RDS Dataview, Services Browser, and Snippets.
• And then I still have the ever useful tab panel beneath the coding area, and it contains Servers, Console, Problems, TailView, Extensions, and Progress.

Much better. At least for me. If you have other ideas or layout tweaks that work for you, please share!

ColdFusion Builder is the planned and eagerly anticipated IDE built specifically for us ColdFusion developers. Lots has been written about ColdFusion Builder already, and lots more will undoubtedly be written. But one feature that has been mentioned and not discussed in much detail yet, an absolutely vital feature for me personally, is the FTP integration. And having been using it extensively this week, and realizing in doing so that it is sometimes less than intuitive (although to be fair, the product is still in beta and not quite finished yet), I thought I'd share some notes on how to get started with ColdFusion Builder's FTP integration.

But first, a quick introduction. ColdFusion developers don't (well, shouldn't ever) write code on production servers. Ideally, they use a local Developer Edition (it's free!), write and test, and then deploy to another server, perhaps a staging server or a production server, as the case may be. Moving files to remote servers often requires the use of FTP, and so ColdFusion Builder features built in support for FTP (as well as FTP's more secure cousins, SFTP and FTPS). Using the FTP integration it becomes possible to easily upload and download files (or folders or even entire sites), compare local and remote file versions, and more.

To use ColdFusion Builder's FTP integration, you first need to define your FTP server, including specifying login information. To do this, open the ColdFusion Builder File view (by default is it on the left, under the Navigator view), and scroll down to find the FTP connection types (FTP, FTPS, SFTP). You can then right-click on the FTP connection type, and select the Add New FTP Site option to display the Create A New FTP Connection dialog box.

You'll need to specify the following:

• Site Name: A unique name for each defined FTP connection
• Connection Type: Should be set correctly based on the FTP connection type you right-clicked on
• Server: FTP server host name or IP address
• Username: FTP login name
• Password: FTP login password (or leave blank to be prompted for it when needed)
• Remote Path: Path to starting directory on FTP server (this will usually be / unless you have multiple sites defined, if it's wrong you'll know when you browse the server and see the wrong files and folders)

Once you have filled in the form, click the Test button to make sure you can indeed connect to the server. And finally, click OK to save the connection.

Note: ColdFusion Builder will default to using FTP passive mode. To change this if needed, click the Advanced Options button.

Once your FTP connection is defined, it'll show up under the appropriate FTP connection type in the File tab. You can expand and collapse the defined FTP connection to browse and access remote files and folders.

So far so good. But now let's connect this to ColdFusion Builder projects. When you work in ColdFusion Builder you define a ColdFusion project, which is accessed via the Navigator view. ColdFusion projects can be associated with FTP connections so that you can easily upload, download, and synchronize files. To do this, right-click on the project in the Navigator view, and select Synchronize, and then select Create New Synchronize Connection.

You'll be asked to define the connection, as follows:

• Connection Name: A unique name for each defined connection
• Path Local: Select your project, if it is not already selected
• Path Remote: Select the FTP server connection from the drop down list

Then click OK to save the connection.

You've now associated an FTP connection to your project, and you can use the synchronization options available from within the project right-click menu. To upload a file or folder, right-click on the desired file or folder, select Synchronize, and then select Upload. To download a file or folder, right-click on the desired file or folder, select Synchronize, and then select Download. You can also select Synchronize to perform a full synchronization, which will upload, download, and update, all in one step. This option displays the Smart Sync screen, which is used to actually manage the synchronization.

Note: Smart Sync runs based on the selected folder, and also includes all child folders. To Smart Sync an entire site, start from the site root. To Smart Sync a specific folder, make sure that folder is selected when you launch the Smart Sync window.

The Smart Sync screen lists all files that are not in synch, and indicates which way the synchronization needs to go (based on which is newer, the local file or the remote file). You can skip specific files and folders by clicking the Skip column, and can also instruct Smart Sync to delete orphaned files (ones that don't have matching files on the other end). Once you have identified the files and folder to synch, click the Start Sync button to initiate the synchronization process.

Note: By default, the Smart Sync screen displays all files and folders in a long list that can quickly become unmanageable. You may want to click on View Options and select Tree to display the Resources in a tree view.

One last tip to keep in mind. You can see exactly what the FTP connectivity is doing (down to each FTP command executed and the response received) in the Console view (by default this is under the editor area). The Console view is used for all console output. If it is not displaying FTP information, click on the Display Selected Console button above the view and select Aptana Synching Console.

Flash and gaming boast a long and thriving relationship. Indeed, the Flash Platform is the leading platform in the world for developing games on the web. And the just launched Flash Platform Game Technology Center is a great place to start learning how to develop your very own Flash games. You'll find example games, articles, tutorials, as well as demos highlighting various aspects of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 on mobile platforms, including the Palm Pre, Motorola Droid, and Google Nexus One.

BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web. BrowserLab has just been updated, and now users have access to additional functionality such as testing local and active content.

WorkflowLab is a new AIR based application that provides an easy way to learn about, track and share workflow best practices. It provides designers, developers and project managers with a common way to learn, build, annotate, share and track workflows for designing and developing projects. WorkflowLab includes a number of workflow starting points and enables users to easily share and track workflows. WorkflowLab is currently in development and a beta build is available for download from Adobe Labs.

InfoQ has posted a great Flex platform roundup article entitled The State of Flex RIA Development Ecosystem.

Per the recent release of the Open Government Directive, federal agencies are required to develop and deploy agency specific websites to inform the public on all activities and processes related to Open Government initiatives. Public facing dashboards that visually illustrate the status of the agency's effort will be an important feature on these websites. As the requirements of Open Government continue to mature, the ability to rapidly develop and deploy becomes essential to ensure timely responses rather than long development cycles. I'll be presenting a 1 hour online seminar on January 28, 2010, discussing and illustrating the benefits of Adobe ColdFusion as the platform of choice for Open Government dashboards. Details and registration information are online.

I'm still waiting for an unlocked GSM version of the Palm Pre. And here's one more reason to like it, Palm has announced that Flash Player 10.1 is coming to WebOS within the next few months.

The ColdFusion Throwdown is intended to bring awareness to amazing projects within the ColdFusion community, by providing an environment where developers can compete for prizes and recognition for their ColdFusion powered creations.

The current ColdFusion Throwdown is the Mura Plugin Throwdown, which runs until January 29th, 2010.

Learn about ColdFusion in the cloud (including how you can deploy your next ColdFusion application on Amazon EC2) at an online seminar on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 11:00 A.M. West Coast time. Registration is now open.

Adrian Ludwig demos the upcoming Flash Player 10.1 running on the new Android powered Google Nexus One phone:

Hemant Khandelwal is the ColdFusion Engineering Manager. DZone chatted with him at MAX 2009 about ColdFusion 9, and posted the video interview entitled A Deep Dive into ColdFusion 9 (as a follow-up to my own interview with them).

JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA has long been a top notch Java IDE (and has long been the tool of choice for many on the ColdFusion engineering team). But IntelliJ IDEA does more than just Java, and the new version 9 improves its Flex and AIR support, too.

Over the past few days I referred several people to the Adobe Developer Connection Learn Flex and ColdFusion page, none of whom knew it existed! And so, linking it here too, just in case.