The ColdFusion product team at Macromedia, that since shipping ColdFusion MX 6.1 in the summer of 2003, has been hard at work building the next major version of CF under the code-name "Blackstone," has been telling developers what they can expect.

"We are very excited about the new features that we have been able to build for this release," says the team, "and think that developers will be excited too."

They've decided, they say, to share a sneak preview of Blackstone so developers can begin to think about how it can help them solve their Web applications challenges in the coming year.

Blackstone has a long list of significant, ground-breaking new features, and the sneak-peek preview of some of the new features planned for Blackstone includes an overview of the current use of ColdFusion around the world.  

The sneak-peek reveals that Blackstone is going to provide a powerful, new set of ColdFusion tags created from the most-requested features from CF developers. Categorically, the top three feature requests center around data entry, printing, and reporting. The team has added a powerful set of new capabilities in these areas that will enable developers to improve significantly the way their end users interact with Web applications.

Blackstone is currently in alpha testing now and is planned for full beta availability later this fall. The product release is currently planned for very early 2005.