Fusebox: Developing ColdFusion Applicatons (Paperback)

If you are new to Fusebox or Coldfusion (or both as I am) then some of the detail that this book goes into may initially be more than you are ready for. But you can still get what you need for a first pass at Fusebox by focussing on the idea of what is being achieved without trying to understand every detail of the how (the explanations of the code in the core files).

The first half of the book provides a detailed and thorough guide to Fusebox 3.0. The second half provides explanation of all stages of FLiP complete with worked examples. This for me is where the book becomes much greater than the sum of those two parts. As you work through the section on FLiP you are introduced to the use of a number of freely downloadable software tools that have been developed to support the use of FLiP. By following FLiP and using these tools the development process not only stands to become far more robust, but in addition should be accelerated by the scope to reuse layout html code developed during the prototyping phase, and the tools' capabilities to automatically create fusebox framework files and test harness files for your application.

Adding even further value are the downloadable sample files to illustrate every stage of FLiP including the finished sample web site.

This is one excellent book.

Incidentally the book refers to the Harness2 software tool. This is (as of mid October 2002) currently unavailable, but a new tool is set to be released at the end of October.

This new book takes a different approach to the old one by Steve Nelson and Craig Girard. From the outset the book explains the new Fusebox framework carefully and in full detail, not just skimming over the core files but working through them line by line.

All of the "new" features are covered in considerable detail and the reader is able to get a full picture of what is happening in the Fusebox 3 framework.
The reader is then taken through the associated project lifecycle process known as FliP and a variety of tools such as Wireframes, Devnotes, QuerySims and Test Harness are discussed in detail. Even new products like Adalon get a brief mention.

The book is thorough and has many examples to help highlight the issues being discussed.
My only complaint is that the reader is pointed to a more detailed discussion on Flash in Fusebox and this doesn't seem to be covered later in much detail, same with web services. But this really is "nit picking" and shouldn't put anyone off buying this book.

All in all this is a hard one to beat and deserves to become the new standard work for Fusebox 3 developers. I would recommend it to anyone using or thinking about using Fusebox.