Though ColdFusion Thunder is the next version of ColdFusion Builder (the last version was 2.0.1), it is like a new IDE because it’s a major re-write. Past versions of ColdFusion Builder were built on top of Aptana. I had noted some of the challenges in implementing ColdFusion Builder a couple of years back, when CFB 2.0.1 was released.
ColdFusion Builder (till version 2.0.1) used a very old version of Aptana. Aptana later re-wrote and improved their IDE and released it as Aptana Studio 3. The integration points in Aptana Studio were changed to such an extent that integrating CFB in it would have meant re-writing it. So we decided not to base ColdFusion Thunder on Aptana and implemented many features that Aptana had contributed earlier – most notably editors for HTML, JavaScript, CSS and XML. This also meant CFML editor had to be re-written because it was based on Aptana APIs to integrate HTML, CSS and JS editors in it.
The task was huge and we, in the ColdFusion team, had been working very hard during the past two years to – first build all (or most) the features of CFB 2.0.1 in Thunder, and then to add some more features. If you have used ColdFusion Builder in the past, then you will see great performance improvements in all the editors in Thunder. Specifically you should see difference when editing large files. The memory footprint is also improved.
Here are some of the new/improved features in Thunder – Continue reading “ColdFusion Thunder – It's all new IDE”