I finally found a bit of time to sit down and pull out some results from the CFML IDE survey:

393 Results (4/9 – 4/28)

1. Which of these describes your role best as a CFML user?
- Application Developer (172)
- Web Developer (129)
- Application Architect (60)
- Other included “superdude” and “all around scrub”

2. Which IDE(s) do you currently use for CFML development?
- CFEclipse (319)
- Dreamweaver (133)
- Eclipse (118)
- Homesite/CFStudio (91)
- Flexbuilder (82)
- Other – Aptana, Notepad++

3. What is your platform of choice for development?
- Windows (320)
- Mac (101)
- Linux (57)

4. Which features in your IDE do you most commonly/frequently use during development?
- Syntax highlighting of code (351)
- File Explorer (237)
- Help for CFTags/Functions (220)
- HTML editing (217)
- Source code control (205)
- CSS editing (160)
- Javascript editing (94)

5. How important are the following features for you in a CFML IDE?
Must Have:
- Syntax high-lighting of code (288)
- HTML editing (237)
- CSS editing (210)
- Javascript editing (199)
- Help for CFTags/Functions (193)
- Source code control (185)

Very Important:
- Integrated debugger (124)
- Framework Support (121)
- Intelisense on CFCs (114)

Useful:
- Integrated CFC explorer (161)
- Integrated log viewer (146)
- Integrated CRUD wizard (126)

Nice To Have:
- Integrated RDS data explorer (104)
- Customizable code coloring (83)
- Simplified Flex/Air development (71)

Unnecessary:
- Integrated CRUD wizard (71)
- Integrated RDS data explorer (50)
- Simplified Flex/Air development (31)

6. What in your opinion would be the right price range for CFML IDE?
- Under $100 (138)
- $100-500 (124)
- Free (109)

7. What features would you like to see added as one click install to an CFML IDE?
- Source control (294)
- XML tools (240)
- Documentation generation tools (220)
- Diff / compare tools (216)
- Unit testing tools (203)
- Other: “The ability to harness the magical powers of the internet.”

Still disappointed in the low number of results.  According to this recent article in Infoworld…

Adobe officials cited analyst estimates of 400,000 developers using ColdFusion

So 400 results seems a tad low.  So either people just ignored the survey, or there is a huge number of ColdFusion developers that don’t know about my blog :)  I’d love to know what kind of results Adobe got on their IDE survey.

So the CFML IDE Survey has been up for a few days… some quick numbers:

• The post on my blog had about 200 hits
• Survey admin says: Total Number of Survey Results ~ 300

Hopefully there are more than 300 ColdFusion developers out there… :)

If you haven’t taken it yet – please consider taking a few moments to take the survey!

I’ll wait a few more days and then post some preliminary results…

Ray Camden kindly gave me access so I could setup a survey using his Soundings Survey application (it rocks!).

I’ve copied the original questions from the Adobe survey and added a few John Farrar sent me after some discussions on this open Aptana support ticket.

Once we collect some data I’ll publish the results on a regular basis (Ray’s app supports PDF, Excel and HTML export!). If we need more data we can do another survey….

The idea here is to collect some feedback on what you (the CFML community) want to see in an IDE. This data will be available to anyone who wants to help support CFEclipse or roll your own IDE.

So spread the word: Link to survey!