Adobe 38000827 - Macromedia ColdFusion MX Standard Edition Evaluator Manual page 27

Macromedia® ColdFusion® MX Evaluator's Guide
Macromedia Flash MX Integration
As the range and complexity of applications being built on the Internet has grown, the
limitations of HTML as a client programming environment have become increasingly
apparent. As a result, developers are turning to rich client environments such as the
Macromedia Flash Player to provide a higher level of interactivity and a better overall
experience to end users.
ColdFusion MX introduces powerful new capabilities for creating rich Internet
applications that leverage the power of Macromedia Flash. With native connectivity to the
Macromedia Flash Player, built-in support for server-side ActionScript, and integrated
debugging within the Macromedia Flash MX authoring environment, ColdFusion MX
provides the easiest way to develop rich Internet applications with Macromedia Flash.
Macromedia Flash Remoting Service
The Macromedia Flash Remoting service provides a secure, high-performance
connection between ColdFusion MX and the Macromedia Flash player. A native part of
the ColdFusion MX environment, this service uses a high-performance binary message
format called Action Message Format (AMF) that runs over HTTP to speed the transfer of
data between client and server. Encoding and decoding are handled automatically by
ColdFusion MX and the Macromedia Flash client.
Rich
Macromedia
Flash Client
Building Rich Internet Applications with CFML
ColdFusion MX offers more than one approach to developers working with Macromedia
Flash. As discussed previously, any method on a ColdFusion component can be invoked
by a Macromedia Flash client directly from ActionScript (the scripting language used by
Macromedia Flash). As a result, developers can easily create applications that support
both standard HTML clients as well as rich Macromedia Flash clients, without having to
rewrite application logic.
ColdFusion MX also offers developers a direct way to send and receive information from
the Macromedia Flash client from within standard CFML pages. Two new server variables
– flash.result and flash.params – provide a seamless exchange of data between server-
side CFML and client-side ActionScript. This enables easy construction of dynamic Flash
applications that rely on data provided by the ColdFusion MX environment.
Building Rich Applications with Server-side ActionScript
ColdFusion MX also provides native support for server-side ActionScript, enabling
Macromedia Flash developers to use the familiar ActionScript language to connect to
Macromedia Flash Remoting Service
AMF over HTTP
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ColdFusion MX
Server-side
ColdFusion MX
Application