Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing- do not buy unless you're brand new to CF
Review: I had high hopes for this book, and it has let me down. This book is absolutely huge (~1500 pages), and it does not contain the level of detail that I was expecting. Here's an example: I wanted to know what the valid returntypes of CFFUNCTION tags are (returntype is an attribute of the tag). Pretty reasonable, no? There is a chapter specifically designated to user-defined functions (i.e. the cffunction tag). That chapter tells me to refer to the appendix for information on the cffunction tag attributes. So, I look in the appendix, and the description of the RETURNTYPE attribute is: "Optional; name of data type that will be returned." Well, DUH! I wanted to know what the valid return types are (e.g. integer, boolean, string, etc.), not the definition of what a return type is! This is the kind of basic information that I would expect to find in this book, as it is essential to programming in CF MX. However, it was astoundingly omitted, leaving me to scour the Internet for the information that I thought I had purchased with this book. This is just one example, but it's a common theme throughout the book (CFLOGIN is another area where not nearly enough detail was presented, even though it's brand new in CF MX). The IsUserInRole function is a perfect example. What is this new concept of a "role"? How are roles set, so CF can know if a user is in a role that I'm checking against? I wanted some basic explanations of the intricacies of how this all works. However, none of this is covered, and I had to figure it out myself. They just give a simple definition and a vanilla example, and I have to figure out how the function works through my own trial-and-error, defeating the whole purpose of the book. The vast majority of topics that I tried to lookup in this book ended up with the same general outcome as I describe above. I think that a big part of the problem is that this book has numerous authors, and it does not appear that they collaborated nearly enough. There is a great deal of redundant information, and the index is absolutely horrible. I would recommend to anyone who already knows the basics of web programming to instead use the documentation provided by Macromedia (developing apps in CF MX and CFML Language Reference). I've found those books to be many times more helpful than the Forta books. Also disappointing is the Advanced book does not elaborate any further on these issues- it just covers different material which it deems to be "advanced". Overall, I'm very disappointed with this book, but I'm not sure there is anything better (yet). Hopefully the book from O'Reilly will be better- I will certainly be checking it out. It's just not available yet as of the time I'm writing this review.
Rating: 
Summary: My Favorite CFMX Book
Review: I have about 5 books on CFMX and this is the only one I use anymore. It seems to be a book that is either loved or hated with no room in between. I loved it and in the past I have not liked Forta's books. I learn best by getting the big picture and seeing how the pieces fit rather than learning about the pieces and then building the big picture. This book allowed me to see the bigger picture and how the pieces fit in it. Another reviewer complained about the explanation of the cflogin function. This was the very reason I loved the book. I looked at the code and glanced through the text for any needed explanations and the confusion I had was cleared up in a matter of minutes. An hour later the administrative site I was working on had much cleaner code and it was working properly. Not every tag is covered in detail but most of what is covered in the body of the book was easy for me to understand. If you learn like me I highly reccomend it.
Rating:
Summary: Dynamic Development made Simple
Review: I have just started this book but am already very impressed with how much I have learned. Coldfusion makes it very straightforward to create dynamically generated pages. This book provides step by step instructions along with examples which you can use in real-world applications. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in ColdFusion programming. Start here!
Rating:
Summary: Serving up Fusion MX just like I like it: COLD!
Review: I have to say this is one KILLER BOOK! What makes this book so great is that you could pick this book up having no prior experience in web anything and finish with a solid foundation in Coldfusion MX and how the Web, Internet and SQL work. I will agree most of us have web experience so some of the beginning material is a bit elementary, but for me being all self taught, it reaffirmed my knowledge in the basics and gave me confidence in what I am doing. I think anyone with the patience and desire to learn can become a coldfusion guru and THIS BOOK HELPS YOU attain that goal.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible cold fusion resource!
Review: I looked up and down for the best cold fusion book for my specfic need...to build an enterprise quality content management system. I am a registered pharmacist and self taught HTML-based web developer who wanted to take a crack at cold fusion because of I heard it was the easiest to language to learn when developing dynamic web sites. Because I only knew HTML, I found myself using PHP code snippets from open source web sites to create some dynamic attributes to my pharmacy network's website (6 pharmacies). I originally wanted to have a simple "news publisher" so I could provide updates to the other staff. I grew frustrated because I didn't "really" know PHP and debugging was near impossible since I didn't know the code. Then along came this book, recommended by my sister who is a windows application programmer. She said Ben Forte writes the most comprehensive books/tutorials on cold fusion. She was exactly correct! Without getting into the details, I worked through this book from cover to cover and completed the tutorials on the included CD. 7 months later I have created a dynamic content management system for our pharmacy network that tracks transferred medications, provides news updates, online refills to customers, a daily revenue DB application for my director (which he can search by date range), an online store with customer history available, searchable policy/procedures online, etc. All this after only 7 months!! My advise for people is to learn HTML well before delving into Cold Fusion, but if you know HTML well, you will find this book to be your web design bible rather quickly. If I can do it anyone can...The hosptital I work for is even wanting to purchase the app from me now because it's such a valuable asset to the network's infrastructure. GO BUY THIS BOOK if you want to do something like I did with whatever business/site you want. With some dedication you can achieve it and not have to look further than this book.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible cold fusion resource!
Review: I looked up and down for the best cold fusion book for my specfic need...to build an enterprise quality content management system. I am a registered pharmacist and self taught HTML-based web developer who wanted to take a crack at cold fusion because of I heard it was the easiest to language to learn when developing dynamic web sites. Because I only knew HTML, I found myself using PHP code snippets from open source web sites to create some dynamic attributes to my pharmacy network's website (6 pharmacies). I originally wanted to have a simple "news publisher" so I could provide updates to the other staff. I grew frustrated because I didn't "really" know PHP and debugging was near impossible since I didn't know the code. Then along came this book, recommended by my sister who is a windows application programmer. She said Ben Forte writes the most comprehensive books/tutorials on cold fusion. She was exactly correct! Without getting into the details, I worked through this book from cover to cover and completed the tutorials on the included CD. 7 months later I have created a dynamic content management system for our pharmacy network that tracks transferred medications, provides news updates, online refills to customers, a daily revenue DB application for my director (which he can search by date range), an online store with customer history available, searchable policy/procedures online, etc. All this after only 7 months!! My advise for people is to learn HTML well before delving into Cold Fusion, but if you know HTML well, you will find this book to be your web design bible rather quickly. If I can do it anyone can...The hosptital I work for is even wanting to purchase the app from me now because it's such a valuable asset to the network's infrastructure. GO BUY THIS BOOK if you want to do something like I did with whatever business/site you want. With some dedication you can achieve it and not have to look further than this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The best of ColdFusion book
Review: I read many ColdFusion books from different author. Ben's book is the best..!!! especially, when there is Nate Weiss as the co-author. The content is clearly presented.
One more thing..., I agreed with the other reviewer said there is no or very little XML section in the book. Ben should cover XML because XML is the main feature of ColdFusion MX. - LT
Rating: 
Summary: Missing Several Chapters
Review: I recently bought this book and it is missing complete chapters.
24 - Enhancing Forms with Client-Side Java
30 - Working with Stored Procedures
32 - Generating Non-HTML Content
33 - Interacting with the Operating System
35 - Event Scheduling Each of these chapters are listed in the table of contents with a heading only and when you turn to the page listed, there is a cover page and that is it. There are no pages missing in the numbering which leads me to believe they were all printed this way. Between missing pages and typos throughout, it looks like they decided to skimp on the editing process. Quantity does not equal Quality. Had I noticed how sloppily this book had been put together, I wouldn't have wasted the money.
Rating:
Summary: A Gold Mine of Information
Review: I'm new to Cold Fusion...have only used ASP...and started creating a practice CF site using Macromedia's documentation which I found somewhat helpful but not entirely what I needed. Since this book wasn't immediately available, I purchased another CFMX book and was greatly disappointed...lots of theory and little practical application. Not so with Ben Forta's book. Within a half hour I was creating the Security Login page I was looking for and it worked perfectly the first time! This book is easy to read, understand and possibly the most useful book of its type I have ever used! I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Another Good Book From Forta
Review: I've read about a third of the book, and once again I'm pleased with Forta's work. This is an ideal book for beginners, but much of the material is too rudimentary for experienced ColdFusion programmers. I probably would have bought the O'Reilly (that's what I chose for my CF5 book), but it's not available yet. I'm a little bummed out that I have to buy another book (the Forta Advanced) to get the whole picture on MX.
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