What's New in Mach-II 1.8.1 - A Maintenance Release for "Simplicity"

A Quickstart for Current Mach-II Developers

The Ethos of Mach-II 1.8.x

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Mach-II 1.8 Goals

In addition to the introduction of new features that Mach-II developers have requested, we had several other goals during the development of Mach-II 1.8.

• Maintain backwards compatibility. Mach-II 1.8 is 100% compatible with existing Mach-II applications currently running on earlier versions of Mach-II.
• Build new features that not only provide a great value to framework users, but are simple, powerful and elegant to use.
• Refine and expand features introduced is previous versions of the framework.
• Set the stage for future version of Mach-II (1.9 and 2.0). We made several behind-the-scenes changes that will enable functionality we have planned for Mach-II 1.9, which we are currently targeting for late Q4 2010.

Mach-II 1.8.1 Feature Overview

Although in terms of version numbering Mach-II 1.8.1 is a maintenance release for Mach-II 1.8.0. This version provides bug fixes and general performance improvementsto the Mach-II 1.8.x series of the framework. Since this is a maintenance, there are no new features in this release.

Fixed Defects from Previous Versions

• 542 Property manager dumps and aborts when a property is an M2 EL expression
• 545 Improve wording for classpath exception
• 565 AddLink() with type of icon in HtmlHelper does not compute asset path
• 594 ExpressEvaluator does not support method calls on event object
• 606 TimeSpanCache does not properly reap when storage scope is session
• 613 HtmlHelper erroneously appends file extensions when link is external and urlBase is ""
• 641 MachII 1.8 UrlRoutesProperty and Site in subdirectory
• 662 Fix broken unit tests when upgrading MXUnit
• 541 Form/view tag library incorrect says that HTML helper is not available
• 598 Option tag should support ""labels"" attribute for list data types and create a "clean" id
• 659 SES URLs should support using all slash delimiters, including module delimiter
• 543 Extra cfdump/cfaborts leftover in PropertyManager
• 631 Exception handling type differs on CFML engines for getProperty() etc in bootstrapper
• 660 Fix broken unit test SelectTest
• 540 Loading the Utility Connector
• 564 Options.cfm ListFindNoCase should use the delimeter value passed in attributes
• 593 ColdspringProperty autowire error message
• 663 Missing Output=false on several functions
• 667 Certain form tags incorrectly sets the focus id
• 669 Input attribute autocomplete does not work
• 674 Framework does not load when onSessionStart() is called if application name is shared
• 702 Parsing URL routes in RequestManager performs double call
• 676 Module Name Case Sensitivity

Known Issues

None at this time.

Differences in Behavior

Auto-dimensions in the HtmlHelperProperty is not supported on Google App Engine

The auto-dimensions for images in the HtmlHelperProperty is not supported because the Java java.awt.* package is a restricted package on Google App Engine. Any image without width or height attributes that normally would get auto-dimensions is just ignored and no width or height is appended to the HTML img tag.

Special Thanks

Team Mach-II would like to send a special thanks to the following individuals that helped us produce Mach-II Simplicity by providing feedback, testing nightly / release candidate builds, test cases / application or finding defects (in no particular order):

• Doug Smith (The Lampo Group, Inc.)
• Eli Tapolcsanyi (The Lampo Group, Inc.)
• Ty Delong (The Lampo Group, Inc.)
• Phil Thomas (The Lampo Group, Inc.)
• Brandon Culpepper (Direct Solutions International, Inc.)
• Derrick Jackson (The United States Senate - Sergeant at Arms)
• Joel Cox (Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company)
• Chris Irwin (WolfNet Technologies)
• Adrian Scott (Allura Direct)
• Brian Klaas (Johns Hopkins University - Bloomberg School of Public Health)
• Brian Pickens (Forum Communications Company)
• Jonah (Creori)
• Shaun (Net Grow)
• Mike Rogers
• Dave Shuck
• Dan Skaggs
• Jorge Loyo
• Zack Pitts
• Joseph FitzGerald
• Jayel (no last name given)

We hope that the above list shows how great of a community we have for Mach-II and that it inspires more people to become involved. Just a few minutes of your time saves hours for others. Think about contributing today.

This list is by no means a complete list of people Team Mach-II would like to thank. If you participated by filing a defect, patch, enhancement and have been inadvertently left of this list, we're so sorry we forgot you. You're efforts have not been forgotten and please consider yourself thanked!

What You Can Do To Help

First and foremost, thank you for using Mach-II! We continue to strive to make Mach-II the best MVC framework for CFML development, and your use of and feedback about Mach-II is a vital part of our development process.

If you'd like to help further, there are many ways to do so:

• Write an FAQ or other documentation on the wiki (don't fear the wiki!)
•  Report a bug
•  Request a new feature
• Add your site/company to the "Who's Using Mach-II" page on mach-ii.com (coming soon!)
• Contact us to set up an interview or case study that we can publish on mach-ii.com
• Tell your friends and colleagues about Mach-II

In terms of helping us, a little goes a long way. If everyone using Mach-II spent even 10 minutes helping out with documentation, that translates into a massive number of man hours contributed to the project.

The Road Ahead

After we recover from the 1.8.x series of release, we're going to dive right into Mach-II 1.9, which we're targeting for release in the late Q4 2010.