There are still quite a few pieces to implement before Fusebox 5 is ready for alpha testing but enough of the core files are working to power this blog and the main part of my web site (two separate applications). No code changes were made to these Fusebox 4.1 applications other than modifying the index.cfm file to include /fusebox5/fusebox5.cfm instead of /fusebox4/fusebox4.runtime.cfmx.cfm.

What's left to implement? Plugins, error templates, several verbs, super on pre/post fuseactions, more compatibility around the myFusebox and application.fusebox structures, quite a bit of validation code...

What does work then? Most of the core verbs (as custom lexicons), some of the basic Fusebox parameters (e.g., development / production mode, default fuseaction, fuseaction variable), basic pre/post fuseaction functionality, global pre/post process, the all-new XML namespace-based custom lexicon machinery (which is essentially how the core verbs are now implemented).

For more information, join the Fusebox 5 mailing list (and keep an eye on this blog, obviously!).

Does you plan to work with Mike (Fusebuilder) or any other tool vendors to make any tools for Fusebox 5?

Are you going to add any features to fusebox 5... what's new for the next generation?

Since Fusebox 5 is backward compatible with Fusebox 4.1, all existing tools should continue to work just fine. Support for new features will need to be added at some point and I intend to provide thorough documentation for those new features.

What new features? You can now have multiple Fusebox applications within a single ColdFusion application (just like Mach II and Model-Glue allow). The loop verb now supports collection= and list= (Fusebox 4.1 already supported the other three loop formats). Custom lexicons are now core to the framework (with a new syntax but again with support for Fusebox 4.1's old lexicons). Almost all of the core verbs are implemented as custom lexicons in Fusebox 5 and user lexicons now use correct XML namespace syntax and nest correctly (with a start / end execution mode, somewhat like custom tags). There will also be two new hooks to support per-application initialization (Fusebox 4.1 introduced pre-request initialization).

Once Fusebox 5 is released, I intend to offer custom lexicons that make it easy to use ColdSpring and Reactor with Fusebox.