If you are looking for a FREE ColdFusion engine that, unlike ColdFusion Express, continues to be actively developed, look no further than New Atlanta Communication's "Blue Dragon Server" (http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/index.cfm). Your best bet is to install version 6.2 alongside IIS on Windows XP Pro or Windows Server 2003, enabling ColdFusion on the default port 80, as well as its own port, 8080.  

Linux however is more problematic. New Atlanta 's documentation recommends RedHat 9 for free BlueDragon, but RedHat no longer supports that distribution. The good news is that it will install on Fedora Core 3, though in my experience with this configuration, it won't integrate with Apache. Regardless, you can develop and test your ColdFusion apps on port 8080, making BlueDragon definitely worth a try on either Windows or Linux.

Did you know that JavaScript supports "data hiding" inside user defined objects? Consider the differences between how the two properties myVar1 and myVar2 are declared inside the following constructor function:  

function MyObject() {
  this.myVar1 = "public";
  var myVar2 = "private";  
  this.getMyVar2 = function() {      
    return myVar2;
  }
}  

myVar1 can be directly accessed because it was defined using "this", but myVar2 cannot because it was defined using "var"; myVar2 can only be accessed via a "method", e.g. the inner function "getMyVar2", as demonstrated below:  

var myObj = new MyObject();
alert(myObj.myVar1);        //returns "public"
alert(myObj.myVar2);        //returns "undefined"
alert(myObj.getMyVar2());   //returns "private"  

Think of "this" as the equivalent of the "public" access modifier in other object oriented languages, and "var" as the equivalent of "private". Read more about this technique at: http://devpapers.com/article/291