From 12/31/2003 to 11/19/2004, this website was running on Mach II. At first it was using an early version of Alan Richmond's PHP version - read about my experience converting from FB3 to Mach II. As of 9/4/2004, this website was converted to ColdFusion and was running on Mach II 1.0.10. On 11/19/2004, I converted this site to use Fusebox 4.1.
Mach II is a framework developed by Hal Helms and Ben Edwards that evolved out of a desire to create a framework that specifically addressed maintenance issues using an OO style. Mach II was originally known as Fusebox MX - Ben and Hal renamed it once it became clear that the framework bore little relation to the procedural Fusebox frameworks. The Mach II framework has been publicly available for several years now - as of this writing (5/7/2006), release 1.1.0 is most current. Mach II is based on an Implicit Invocation Architecture (see the Mach II website for more detail) and directly supports the MVC design pattern. See below for resources where you can learn more about Mach II.
Read why I like Mach II! I published a very simple application (MachWiki) and some filters that my team find useful - see my downloads page (the code was contributed to the OpenXCF project on SourceForge earlier in 2004). Also check out the Mach II Development Guide on Macromedia's LiveDocs system for hints, tips and guidelines on how to design and build applications with Mach II.
I also maintain a bugs & enhancements page (last updated 11/5/2004). So far everything published on that page has made it into the core files (thank you Ben!). Several projects at work are also using Mach II - keep an eye on my blog for details of such projects!
During 2005, I toured a presentation comparing Fusebox and Mach II (and later added Model-Glue to the mix), around CFUGs and at both the CFUNITED and MXDU conferences.
Previous talks ("Mach II at Macromedia") - many of the presentations are available on the conference / user group website:
- PDXCFUG: 8/19/2004.
- CFUN-04: 6/26-6/27 (2004).
- SDCFUG: 5/4/2004;
- SacCFUG: 4/13/2004;
- SCCFUG: 2/11/2004;
- MXDU 2004: 2/24-2/25 (2004);
- BACFUG: 12/18/2003 - the presentation (a Mach II application!) is available for download from their "code" page.
I'll be adding more information to this section over time, including more examples and my experiences building real world applications with Mach II.
Read more about...
- Official Mach II resources:
- The Mach II FAQ, Documentation and Articles.
- Configuring Mach II (PDF).
- Mach II DTD for the XML configuration file.
- The Mach II forum (on the Fusebox website) - also available as an RSS feed.
- The Mach II ColdFusion mailing list (on the Topica website).
- Resources on macromedia.com:
- Resources on this website:
- Why Mach II?
- Getting started with Mach II.
- The concepts behind Mach II.
- The anatomy of the "ContactManager" sample application.
- Stuff you can download for free!
- Bug fixes & enhancements for Mach II core files (updated 11/5/2004).
- Other Mach II resources:
- Mach-II.info - community FAQ and a more comprehensive sample application.
- Robby L's Mach II page - includes filters and plugins.
