Ben Forta has compiled an enormous amount of information on ColdFusion and put it into an easy to use format. One can go through the book in order to be walked through a complete web site construction, or use the chapter guide to find specific information to meet your needs. One side note; the book comes with a companion CD. Make sure that you get this also as it contains the last 4 chapters of the book.

I'm still in the middle of this book and I can say it is one of the best written tutorials I've ever read.

I bought this book to learn Coldfusion to maintain websites at work. I know various other dynamic web languages(php,asp,.net) but not CF. If you are a web developer/programmer already, this book will bore you to tears. Based on what I have seen, Coldfusion is not a great language to write in, if you know any others. And if you don't know any others programming languages... learn them instead.

Este é um livro para programadores iniciantes e experientes. Um guia de referencia, com teoria e exemplos, mostrados de forma easy de entender. Se voce quer se tornar referencia em CF, voce precisa ter este livro.


This is a book for beginners and experienced coders. A reference guide, with teory and examples, easy to understand. If you want to be a reference on CF, you must to have this book.

This man is amazing. I can feel his passion for ColdFusion when I read the book. I also have his Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes and it's the same way. I have a library of technical books, mostly software and programming language books but I don't have any that are as easy to understand and as fun to follow as the Forta books. Lastly, I love reading classical literature as well. Some of my favorites are Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost (Tom Sawyer, Edgar Allen Poe, Dostoevsky...). I rank this ColdFusion book as one of the best pieces of literature that I've ever read. That's how good it is to me.

This is the first book that I bought to start learning Cold Fusion(along with the Advanced Development), and it is by far one of the easiest books to read and make use of. Everything is written clearly, great explanations, great code samples each with tons of comments. Must read for any soon to be or already a CF developer.

I have been designing web sites for over ten years, but working with data-base driven sites has always been a major pain in the butt. Not until I stumbled onto this program and this book. WOW - Should cover my feelings on this topic. Talk about simple and POWERFUL. Imagine this - instead of writing over 200 lines of HTML, writing 40 lines of Coldfusion, operating an entire site from one page and from a 170 pages down to 9 (no joke). If you're using MS Access or MySQL, it makes no difference, instant and simple. In less then a week I had the site up and running - bug free. Finding a proper hosting company that runs Coldfusion is somewhat of a pain, but it is completely worth it. If you have never made a data-driven site before, this will make the experience extremely pleasant and if you have written many, this will make you wish you knew about this before.

The book is as easy to read as the software is as easy to use.

I just finished reading this book and I am now going back through and building the exercises before I move on to the Forta Advanced ColdFusion book. As the Director of Training for a Macromedia Authorized Training provider I have the responsibility of previewing and reading hundreds of books for our software training services. I believe that this is one of the best software learning books that I have ever reviewed.

My programming background is ASP, ASP.NET, and JAVA and I am now learning ColdFusion. I have often heard from other programmers that this book was a great starting poing for CF learning and this is correct. Well worth the investment!

This book is not suitable for those on a Macintosh platform. The concepts are not really the same.

This is the best intoductory programming book I have ever used. Cold Fusion is an extremely well thought out web application development tool, and this book gets you going quick to building powerful web applications. It is very logically organized and easy to follow. I would reccomend it to any beggining to intermediate Cold Fusion developer.

This book does an excellent job at introducing and explaining Cold Fusion Components, which have proven to be an invaluable, and flexible, methodology for developing applications.

I have done extensive programming ASP, ASP.Net, VB, SQL, and basic in C and C++. I wish I would have had a tool as good as this book when starting in these other languages.

Disappointing Forta release. Not much different than the last versions. Save the $35 and stick with the last MX version.
Rush job, indeed. Copy editor anyone??

Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 was launched recently and it's still a new "toy" at stores. And the book Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 WebApplication Construction Kit come right before this new great software and it's available for developers and curious people. Ben Forta and Raymond Camden begin with web overview and this approach enables the understanding about why and how to use ColdFusion for building secure and reliable web applications. Then, the reader is able to know deeper all about ColdFusion architecture in the next chapters.
ColdFusion main characteristic is the facility to create dynamic web applications and because that, we have two chapters about database basic concepts and another only about SQL language. Beyond database connection and web services, ColdFusion MX 7 has more incredible features: Flash Forms, print service, reports, event gateway, etc. ColdFusion MX 7 WebApplication Construction Kit explains all features in a detailed way and that makes this great book a very good source for studies and researches and foundation for a future certification.

I've been programming with ColdFusion for awhile now and I do know a good book when I read it. While this book does provide some good content, it is full of errata. Of course, as soon as some others read this review, they'll surely reply saying things like "it's hard to catch every mistake" or "every book comes with mistakes." While this is true, this book has way to many mistakes in the sample applications.

I've bought many of Forta's previous books and found them most useful, but this one is unacceptable. If I were Ben Forta (and the other authors), I don't think I'd want to put my name on a book with so many mistakes. It's just plain sad that you have to spend a lot of correcting mistakes in the book.

I bought this book to teach a class. I'm a graduate student and convinced the administration of my Business school to use ColdFusion instead of .NET or PHP by saying things like "it'll be easier for non-programmers to learn instead of .NET or PHP" and "ColdFusion will let the students concentrate on creating web applications instead of spending the whole semester learning a programming language." So, I spend my time going through the book again and again since I'm not using an instructor's copy.

Oh well, I guess it's like most everything nowadays, without accountability.

This is still probably one of the best books to learn Coldfusion, but sadly lacking in the editorial department. Be prepared at times for illogical flow and too much or too little information

I've had the book for about a month now and have worked thru the first 10 chapters so far, so good. The explanations with sample code really works for me as far as learning. And the CD includes sample data and files to work with so that you have data to pull from instead of just seeing that your code looks nice. No complaints thus far other than minor grammar errors here and there along the way, but I can understand with all us CF addicts screaming for them to hurry!

Like any other newbie on web app technology, Ben helped me to understand how it works. Also found that CFMX 7 is a trully web RAD language, as I was abled to build an intranet site in a couple of days, with reporting and user interaction in a very intuitive way. Thanks Ben.. fusion is now colder...
Javier Ayelli - Chile.

This is a great book! As an experienced CF developer, I have used this book as a resource many times to find solutions in 5 minutes to problems that would have cost me an hour or two. This is a very well-written book packed with good information.

I just finished reading ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit. This is another master piece from Ben Forta. This book is definitely "significantly enhanced" than the previous version.

Like previous version it includes all the basic concepts from installing the ColdFusion to Database concepts, from data-entry forms to new Flash integration features. It is great as a guide to planning and making decisions about development than as a comprehensive reference. I have to say it is great in the manner of which it is written, and is easily understandable. All time favorite explanations in the book like next-n paging, error handling, User Defined Functions (UDF) and ColdFusion Components (CFC) are explained in same lucid and easy to understand language with examples.
In this new addition, the Flash applications are described in details with examples. The new features of Graphing, Printing, and Reporting are covered in length. The tricks and tips of the MX 7 like recursive directory search using cffile, flash forms, flash paper, Dreamweaver MX 2004 extensions are explained very well by authors.

Do not forget to read the additional chapters from CD-ROM. The appendix of the book is almost same as previous version with few changes. I will say this book is essential for beginners and advance ColdFusion MX 7 developer.

Pinal Dave (Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer)