Thought Delimited

So overnight an update to ColdFusion Builder was released. According to the update instructions, if you're running ColdFusion Builder as a plug-in to Eclipse (like I am), you need to start/restart Eclipse clean, which can be done by typing "eclipse -clean" at the command prompt within your Eclipse folder.

The problem I ran into was I couldn't do that on my MacBook Pro. I opend up a Terminal window, navigated to my Eclipse folder, tried the command, and was told "command not found."ﾠ

I had an eclipse exec file in the directory along with the normal Eclipse.app application bundle file, so I'm not sure why it didn't work. I probably either did something wrong or perhaps there's something funky about my Eclipse install.

But fortunately I found another way to launch Eclipse with the clean option in an old set of Eclipse (3.3) documentation.ﾠ Here's what I did (after installing the ColdFusion Builder update):

• I opened a Finder window and navigated to my Eclipse directory.
• I right-clicked on the Eclipse.app application bundle icon, and selected "Show Package Contents" from the context menu.
• In the new Finder window that popped up, I went into Contents/MacOS, right-clicked on the eclipse.ini file, and chose to open it in TextEdit.
• I added "-clean" to the top of the eclipse.ini file, saved the file, then closed it.
• I then restarted Eclipse.
• Once Eclipse was up and running, I re-opened the eclipse.ini file, removed the "-clean" line, and saved it again.

ﾠ

Earlier today, Dan Vega tweeted:

"this is pretty freaking cool, works in ColdFusion Builder! http://wireframesketcher.com/blog"

So I went and checked it out. WireframeSketcher is an Eclipse plug-in that lets you create wireframe page mockups, similar to Balsamiq Mockups.ﾠ I download the trial version and took it for a brief spin. You simply create a new blank Screen file and start dragging and dropping page elements from the Palette view (labels, text boxes, tabbed panes, etc.) onto the Screen, resizing and re-positioning as you go. When you're finished, you can export the file as a PNG or a PDF file.

The WireframeSketcher website mentioned that the layout information for each screen was stored as XML data, so the thought crossed my mind that maybe you could feed the XML to a parsing script that could use that data to output actual HTML/CSS. Unfortunately (as I kind of suspected), the positioning of the wireframe elements is achieved with hard-coded x and y pixel coordinates, and it would be hard to translate that into the kind of relative or "in the flow" positioning used on most web pages.

Still, if you want to add a wireframing tool to your toolset and you already use Eclipse or an Eclipse-based IDE (by the way, these guys specifically name Flash Builder and ColdFusion Builder as compatible IDEs, so props to them for being aware of the Adobe tools), this is probably worth checking out. You can try it out for free for at least a week before you get prompted to pay for a license.

Over the past few days, one particular CFC in my current project has grown rather large (a few hundred lines of code), and as it grew larger it became harder and harder to edit it in ColdFusion Builder (the second beta): the editor would struggle to keep up with my typing, pausing for a few seconds before displaying the changes I'd made.ﾠ

Not being in the mood to try and break up that CFC into several smaller ones quite yet, I did some experimenting and came up with two short-term solutions to the problem:

• The chief cause of the performance lag seems to be the syntax checking. You can turn off the syntax checking in the editor by going into Preferences, navigating to ColdFusion -> Editor Profiles -> Editor -> Syntax Checking and unchecking the "Enable Syntax Checking" box. The setting change takes place immediately (no need to restart Builder). The drawback of course is that the editor will no longer point out syntax errors until you change the setting back.

• I discovered that collapsing the code blocks I wasn't currently working with also dramatically improved performance (I'm guessing that the syntax checker ignores the code in collapsed code blocks, which makes sense). You can selectively collapse code blocks manually by clicking on the minus signs in the line-numbering column to the left of your code, or you can right-click on the line-numbering column and select Folding -> Collapse All from the context menu to collapse all of the code and then just expand the parts of the file you're working on.

  The drawback to this solution is that the collapsing/folding isn't preserved when you save the file:ﾠ if you close the file and open it again, all of the code will be visible. I couldn't find any option for preserving the current viewing state of the file.

As a whole, I like the new ColdFusion Builder IDE. I've run into a few quirks and roadblocks while trying to install it and set it up the way I want it on my machines, but I suspect that's more a result of how my machines are set up than a failing of the product, and hopefully I'll get it all straight soon.

But CF Builder is missing one feature that I need to make it my sole, do-it-all IDE: support for the WebDAV file transfer protocol. At the university where I work, WebDAV is THE protocol used to allow developers to upload, download, update, and delete files on the web server because it makes it easy for the web hosting unit to delegate a certain amount of control to departmental representatives in what is essentially a shared webhosting environment.

This isn't exactly a new problem for me: CFEclipse didn't provide any WebDAV support of its own either. While there is an Eclipse plugin in existence that provides both FTP and WebDAV support, it's old, doesn't support the secure WebDAV implementation that we use, and is no longer being worked on/developed further. So while I've been doing my coding and testing locally using CFEclipse, I've had to rely on Dreamweaver or a stand-alone WebDAV desktop client to actually upload my files to the server. It's not the worst process in the world, but it would be nice to be able to handle it all in one program/IDE.

At CFUnited, I asked Adam Lehman (Product Manager for ColdFusion at Adobe) if there were any plans in the works for adding WebDAV support to Builder (seeing as how Dreamweaver supports WebDAV). He indicated that he didn't think so, but suggested that I submit a feature enhancement through the CF Builder bug database.

So I did: it's request #79437.

If you have any interest in seeing WebDAV support added to ColdFusion Builder (whether because you also have a need to upload files via WebDAV, or because you simply feel Builder should be capable of handling any file management protocol), please visit the CF Builder bug database, log in with your Adobe ID and password (if you don't already have an Adobe account, it's easy to sign up for one), go to the request record, and use the "Bug Votes" option to vote for the request and/or the "Comments" option to weigh in on the topic.