What I want in CF 8 - part 1
There are TONS of great things inside Java that I'd love to see exposed and wrapped up nicely in ColdFusion. The RegEx functions are nice, but I want ALL of the RegEx options from Java. I can use Alagad to work with images, but a real CFIMAGE tag would be great(sorry Doug). A wait() function in place of using a CreateObject to call a java command (http://www.cflib.org/codeView.cfm?ID=959). All these things and more exist in Java, are used by ColdFusion programmers and should be exposed for all in the next release.
Actually, having the ability to create a function library that is part of ColdFusion directly rather than something that has to be either 'on page' or included might be nice. A CustomFunction directory like the CustomTag one.
I think that the CF Product Dev team needs to ask themselves a)what can we do to make the existing functionality better and easier to use (the CFDocument tag comes to mind) and b)what does the CF community actually WANT! Simply creating a new Java with a different name is NOT what the community wants - not in my mind, anyway.
What would be some suggestions? How about some solid AJAX/CF integration? How about some kind of integration with one of the available UI toolkits (YUI or DOJO, for example)?
If I needed Java, I wouldn't want to use another layer on TOP of the existing JVM - I would simply use Java.
But, this is all my opinion, and what the hell do I know? After all, I am just a lone representative of the CF customer base.....