We have released today a cool module that will do HTML compression for your ColdBox and ContentBox applications.  This module is based off the HTML Compressor and Minifier project (http://code.google.com/p/htmlcompressor/).  This module will compress your HTML with certain compiler rules, compress your inline CSS and even your inline JavaScript.  It can also keep track of compressed HTML in any CacheBox provider for you, so compression is done efficiently.  So if you are looking to optimize your applications even more, then check out our HTML Compressor.  If you are using ContentBox, you can just go to the Modules tab > ForgeBox.  Then click install and watch it download and install it for you in your ContentBox system.

We have already seen tremendous bandwith benefits already by using this module, so what are you waiting for!

Downloads

• GitHub Source: https://github.com/ColdBox/cbox-htmlcompressor
• ColdBox Module: http://coldbox.org/forgebox/view/ColdBox-HTML-Compressor
• ContentBox Module: http://coldbox.org/forgebox/view/HTML-Compressor

Just a reminder that CFObjective is almost here and also our slew of ColdBox trainings before this amazing conference.  This year we will be offering three courses and here is a little discount code for you guys: cboxrulez

CBOX 100 - Intro To Core ColdBox

Core ColdBox is our 2-day flagship intensive training course that will get you started with ColdBox even if you have no previous OO experience. The course is constructed in such manner that both gurus and novices can take advantage of our materials.

Syllabus:  http://www.coldbox.org/documents/courses/cbox100-CourseDatasheet.pdf

CBOX 203 - ColdBox Modules

CBOX-203 is one of our advanced courses dealing with ColdBox Modules, Architecture and Modularization spread in 2 intense training days. In this course you will learn all about modular architecture, planning and the power behind ColdBox Modules. You will have both theory and hands-on workshops that will sharpen your skills and challenge you.

Syllabus: http://www.coldbox.org/documents/courses/cbox203-CourseDatasheet.pdf

CBOX 204 - Testing, Mocking, Stubbing, Oh My!

CBOX-204 is one of our advanced courses that focus on testing principles, TDD (Test Driven Development), mocking and ColdBox application testing. In this 1-day course you will be exposed to testing theory, types of tests, working with MXUnit, application testing, tools of the trade and finally learn about Mocking and Stub objects. You will have both theory and hands on workshops that will sharpen your skills and challenge you.

Syllabus:  http://www.coldbox.org/documents/courses/cbox204-CourseDatasheet.pdf

There are still only a few seats left for our April Zurich Boot Camp, so hurry now and get some cool discounts: http://coldbox-zurich.eventbrite.com/?discount=bestfriends.  Also remember that if you purchase the bundle for all 3 courses, you get a cool Apple iPod Shuffle or a $50 Gift Card as a welcome gift!

The courses we will be offering are:

CBOX 100 - Core ColdBox

Intro to ColdBox is an intense 1 or 2 day training course that will get you started with ColdBox Application Development. This course focuses on the main aspects of ColdBox Development and it delivers a one-two punch to get you started. You will get hands on experience and an in-depth overview of the main development aspects of the ColdBox Platform as it is applied to MVC web development.

CBOX 203 - ColdBox Modules

CBOX-203 is one of our advanced courses dealing with ColdBox Modules, Architecture and Modularization spread in 2 intense training days. In this course you will learn all about modular architecture, planning and the power behind ColdBox Modules. You will have both theory and hands on workshops that will sharpen your skills and challenge you.

CBOX-204: Testing, Mocking, Stubbing, Oh My!

CBOX-204 is one of our advanced courses that focus on testing principles, TDD (Test Driven Development), mocking and ColdBox application testing. In this 1-day course you will be exposed to testing theory, types of tests, working with MXUnit, application testing, tools of the trade and finally learn about Mocking and Stub objects. You will have both theory and hands on workshops that will sharpen your skills and challenge you.

We are so proud to announce the 3.5 final version of the ColdBox Platform!  After almost 9 months of development, research and testing, we are ready for more great stuff to come.  There are tons and tons of fixes and updates in the release, which actualy makes it the fastest ColdBox release ever (Especially under Railo, wow it is fast, with vanilla framework requests executing at 1ms!).  So let's look at some resources for you:

• Download
• What's New With 3.5.0
• Upgrading to 3.5.0
• Milestone Tickets

As part of release week, we are proud to announce yet another release to WireBox, our Dependency Injection and AOP Framework.  Here are the resources:

• Download Version 1.3.1
• What's New With 1.3.1
• Milestone Release Tickets
• Documentation

WireBox is a ColdFusion Dependency Injection and AOP Framework that can work with any ColdFusion framework or no framework at all.  The major features of this release are laid out below or you can read our What's New Guide for full Geeky details!

• Lots of fixes on concurrency and DI automation
• Binder declarations now take precendence over annotations
• Setter injections now allow you to declare the name of the argument used in the setter instead of by convention.

Welcome to release week! Our first release in our list is CacheBox version 1.3.1.  Here are some useful resources:

• Download
• Milestone 1.3.1
• What's new with version 1.3.1
• Documentation

This release focuses on several critical fixes for using Railo caches or ehCaches embedded in ColdFusion 9 and above.  We have also improved considerably the reporting engine for the caches and also gave you the ability to create caches on the fly and register them in any cache factory.

cache = cacheBox.createCache(name="AwesomeCache",
			     provider="cachebox.system.cache.providers.RailoProvider",
			     properties={name='ehCacheLite'});

We are very happy to announce 3 training courses before this year's http://www.cfobjective.com/http://www.cfobjective.com/ in Minneapolis in May: http://coldbox.eventbrite.com/.   We will be offering the following courses side by side on May 14th - 15th and then 1 course on May 16th.  We also have special discounts for students, non-profits and CFObjective attendees.  So if you qualify on any of those categories, e-mail us at training@coldbox.org to receive your discount codes.

If you will be in the vicinity of San Francisco March 8th, then please drop by to the Bay Area ColdFusion User Group at 6:30 PM.  We will be showcasing our new ColdBox powered product, ContentBox.  So come and learn about this great new open source content management engine and how ColdBox Modules powers it!

JSMin Compressor is a plugin that interfaces with our own flavor of JSMin to minify css and js files.  It can also compress several files of the same type into a single include, that can be cached in your ColdBox applications.  This release fixes our java parser to compress more complicated CSS3 notations correctly.

Using our compressor can be as easy as this:

#getMyPlugin("JSMin").minify('includes/js/myscripts.js, includes/js/jquery.js')# #getMyPlugin("JSMin").minify('includes/css/site.css,includes/css/boxes.css')#

Just a quick announcement that we now have finally implemented a validation engine and aggregator in ColdBox for 3.5 release.  And in true professional open source style, fully documented: http://wiki.coldbox.org/wiki/Validation.cfm.  It has an embedded validation engine but it also allows you to use ANY validation framework within ANY ColdBox application as long as it satisfies a few interfaces.  Check out our documentation page but here is a little teaser: