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Run Eclipse from your portable USB drive

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 28, 2009 by Nathan

I've got to admit that running basically everything from my USB drive is really nice sounding. Portable everything. I love PortableApps.com. Let's talk about running Eclipse portable.

Step 1: Download Eclipse, extract to portable drive
Step 2: Download Java, extract or install to portable drive
Step 3: Make a new workspace folder on the drive
Step 4: Rig up a batch file or shell script to run it all together. Here is what it needs to have for windows:

start-eclipse.bat
-----------------
@echo off
cd eclipse
start eclipse -vm ../java/bin/javaw -data ../workspace

You'll see it may take only a few seconds longer to start than running it off your HDD.

Once started, you can import your projects into the workspace, add plugins and do your work from right there, all completely self-contained.

I did this initially for my Ant/Groovy presentation. I had my presentation online with Google Docs, and my demos from the flash drive. The idea was to use somebody else's PC, come with nothing to install and leave with nothing to clean up. It worked almost perfectly -- Alan had warned me about his PC, but when I ran the live demo anyway, Ant froze, Eclipse crashed, and I was out of time. Bummer! Anyways, not to detract from the subject, it did work on 3 other PCs. I'm just giving out creative ideas here.

Of course, if you're like me, to use this as your main IDE, you'll want a web server and something that runs CFML. I'm not there yet, but I know some other folks are doing just that.

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Trouble finding things in Eclipse?

posted under category: CFEclipse on August 11, 2008 by Nathan

I've heard it 2 times in the last week that people are having trouble using the find features in Eclipse, so I thought I might be able to help a little.

#1 - Refresh your project files automatically
#2 - The search dialog box

Eclipse search dialog
Hit the link to read it.


#1 - Refresh your project files automatically
Eclipse caches and indexes your code, and when you search, it does not always go back to disk to re-index them. If Eclipse detects that some files are out of date and have not been refreshed, it will just skip them while searching. The solution is to either set up automatic file refreshing or refresh manually. Manually refreshing your files means selecting the part you want to refresh on the Navigator view and pressing the F5 key. You select the root of what exactly you want to refresh, so to refresh a project, select the project root and hit F5. This is not the dreamweaver site refresh thing that makes your IDE crawl while it indexes. It politely runs it in the background in ways you won't even notice it. Do yourself a favor and turn it on:

Open the preferences superdialog - Window > Preferences
Navigate to General > Workspace
Check the "Refresh automatically" checkbox
Hit OK

If you open a project that was closed (right click, open / close project options), these projects are typically out of date, so whenever I open a project, I manually refresh the files first thing.


#2 - The search dialog box
Pressing CTRL + H or navigating to Search > Search brings up the extended search dialog. In Eclipse 3.4, there is a Customize button on the bottom that will allow you to toggle on and off search types that you do or don't want to use. I turn off everything but the "File Search" tab. Seriously, this is the one you need.

The File Name Patterns text field is what files you are searching in. You can put it at "*" to search everything, but I have it at "*.cfc, *.cfm, *.css, *.html, *.js, *.xml" which is all of the relevant files in my project. This field has a limited memory from search to search but sometimes erases entries, so don't trust it.

The Scope area is important.
If you select "Workspace," you will search all of your projects, which may take a while.
If you selected one or more projects, folders or files in the Navigator view, you can search "Selected resources" - this is what I do 99% of the time.
If you have an open file selected instead of items in the navigator, you can search "Enclosing Projects", meaning projects of the files that you have open.
If you have a working set, you can select it here to search, but be careful that the working set contains all the files you are interested in, sometimes they will not see new files.

You can search just for files by name if you leave the "Containing text" area empty.

If you install Aptana, you can use a multiline search. Yep, just like old HomeSite or Dreamweaver.

If that doesn't do it for you, I don't know what will. Anyone care to comment on what other problems they may be having with searching from Eclipse? I've got to say, it works so good for me that I'm shocked when I hear people are having trouble.

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CF8 Eclipse plugins updated for Eclipse 3.3 compatibility

posted under category: CFEclipse on August 17, 2007 by Nathan

I almost missed this myself. Dean Harmon at cfreport.org offers us a compatibility patch for the Adobe ColdFusion plugins for Eclipse that were released a couple weeks ago along with Coldfusion 8. This new version simply fixes the error you get when you try to open a query window with the RDS database tools. I installed it and I'm happy it works now. Thanks Dean!

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CFEclipse and Eclipse 3.3 playing well together

posted under category: CFEclipse on July 9, 2007 by Nathan

Sorry for the late update, and I know this is old news, but Mark Drew, the hardest working CF developer out there, released CFEclipse 1.3.1.5, which brings compatibility to Eclipse 3.3. (Thirty?) Three Cheers for Mark!

P.S., In case it's not handy for you, the CFEclipse auto update URL is: http://www.cfeclipse.org/update/. You can always tell for sure if the remote directory contains a site.xml file ;)

P.P.S., Eclipse 3.3 works great on Vista.

P.P.P.S., Vista doesn't work so great.

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Eclipse 3.3 is out, ColdFusion developers wait...

posted under category: CFEclipse on June 29, 2007 by Nathan

Eclipse 3.3 was released this morning, along with 20 other simultaneous releases from the Eclipse Foundation in an effort titled Eclipse Europa. With lots of new features, hundreds of improvements on tools we have been using over the last year, what's not to love? Well how about backwards compatibility with our favorite editor, CFEclipse.

It appears that Eclipse 3.3 has broken compatibility with a number of plugins, including our own CFEclipse, mostly based on changes to the JavaFileEditorInput. There's actually a lot more to it than just that, as some Eclipse 3.3 features override what the CFEclipse developers have worked so hard to make happen, such as dragging and dropping text.

The only way to get Eclipse 3.3 support with CFEclipse is to get enough people to promise Mark Drew enough beers, Amazon wish list items and airfares to conferences via his paypal link in order to motivate him.

Until then, we will all just have to stick with Eclipse 3.2.

Mark, I think I owe you about a dozen drinks of your preference, any time you're in Phoenix.

Help us Mark, you're our only hope...

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Favorite new features in Eclipse 3.3

posted under category: CFEclipse on June 28, 2007 by Nathan

Here are some of my favorite new features in Eclipse 3.3:

  • Text drag & drop - I know the CFEclipse crew had to bend over bakcwards to make it work just for the CFE editor, I'm so glad it's universal now
  • Show invisible whitespace characters - i couldn't find a button but i can link it to a keyboard shortcut
  • Editor area drag & drop - drag files, even from outside Eclipse onto the editor area (puts in "filename.ext") or the editor title area (tabbed bar, opens the file)
  • Automatic spell checker in text editors
  • Updates to the key shortcut prefs - getting better each time
  • Hiding that darn main toolbar area
  • Vista support, including a WPF rendered interface

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Eclipse Europa Release - Friday, June 29th

posted under category: CFEclipse on June 27, 2007 by Nathan

The annual Eclipse project last year, if you recall, was Callisto - a simultaneous release of 10 Eclipse Foundation projects. This year, the number of projects has more than doubled to 21, including the Eclipse Platform 3.3, the Web Tools Platform 2.0 (including a visual page editor!), the Data Tools Platform Project 1.5 (supports Derby), a Dynamic Languages Toolkit (supports Ruby and Python out of the box, when will it support CF?), and a lot more.

You can download the release candidate today at the Europa site, or wait for Friday afternoon to get the finished and full enchilada.

When I say Friday afternoon, their releases are typically hours after I expect them, so just keep hitting the Europa site until it changes. Last year it was around 4:00 PM PST.

I'm not sure yet how the upgrade cycle will go. I recommend creating a new Eclipse install folder and using your existing workspace. Make a backup of your workspace first, just in case. As a side effect, this will dump your old plugins, so you'll have to reinstall them, which isn't bad - you can reflect on which ones you use and don't use, and make sure you get the latest versions of them all.

Finally, the last I heard, CFEclipse wasn't officially supported on Eclipse 3.3, keep your eyes on Mark Drew's blog for any updates. I'll definitely upgrade when 3.3 final is released, and I'll let you all know.

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Eclipse trouble? This solves 80% of plugin issues.

posted under category: CFEclipse on June 15, 2007 by Nathan

If you're using Eclipse and are having plugin problems, be it you think you installed one and it isn't showing up, or you are having some kind of conflict, or an older version is coming back from the dead, there's one easy fix that will solve it most of the time.

Eclipse.exe -clean

That's all it takes. Eclipse will take a few extra seconds to start up as it cleans its plugin cache.

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When is Eclipse 3.2 Coming Out?

posted under category: CFEclipse on June 17, 2006 by Nathan

June 30th is the projected date. But it's not just the new version of Eclipse.

The Eclipse 3.2 release is part of something bigger, the Eclipse Callisto simultaneous release project (more info).

On, or near, June 30th, the Eclipse Foundation will be releasing almost all of their projects at the same time. This is why, if you haven't noticed, Eclipse 3.2 has been stuck on RC7 for two weeks.

RC7, by the way, is usually 99.99% of the final release, so feel free to get it so you can test out the latest CFEclipse nightly build, and the Callisto RC4 projects at the same time.

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Using Eclipse working sets to increase your productivity

posted under category: CFEclipse on March 31, 2006 by Nathan

I mentioned working sets on my Zero To Hero presentation, but here's a googlable rundown of this amazing feature that ships with Eclipse. Thanks to Rob W for asking about it on the Eclipse Users list.

How will it make me more productive?
There are a few great advantages of using the working set feature. Mental organization for one. Like, if I say, "I want to work on the security feature of my site." Well if I make a set for everything that interacts with my security, I can select the set and go straight to work with all the relevant files in view.

The other great use for working sets is the searching. [ctrl] + h brings up the (extended) search window. Right at the bottom you can select a working set to search in. This is great if you want to search a number of projects at once but not others, or if you want to search certain ungrouped subfolders.

How do you make a working set?
In the navigator view (the common one with all your projects), click the down arrow on the top right corner. The top option should be "select working set." A box will pop up and show you a list of your sets (currently empty).

Click on the "New..." button and make a Resource working set - resource means physical files & folders. Give it a name on the next screen and select the projects / folders / files you wan to include in this set. When you're finished, you can select that working set from the list window. If you hit cancel, it won't save your set!

When you hit ok, your navigator will switch to viewing your chosen working set. Hit the down arrow again to deselect your set and go back to the normal navigator view.

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Eclipse WTP bonus feature - Web Services Explorer

posted under category: CFEclipse on March 27, 2006 by Nathan

Something I just found today and felt the need to share with everyone, it's the web services explorer tool that comes with the Eclipse WTP. Wow, I've been looking for one of these (well, many others exist, but this is great, it's built into my favorite IDE, and it's free).

So, how do you get to it? Go to the Run menu and hit "Launch the Web Services Explorer." This runs a JSP container on a random local port. Make use of the icons on the top right (I will mostly be using the WSDL page).

It's weird that I spend most of my days in this program and I'm still finding cool, new stuff. Plus some people look at me like an expert. In reality, I'm figuring this all out as I go, just like you.

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CFEclipse presentation online

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 28, 2006 by Nathan

Updated! Please try the mirror, as the bandwidth in the office here is really hurting!

Mirror: NeedAEngine.com
Watch the flash presentation online Thanks to NeedAEngine, where you go when you need an engine. (also, wmv medium download, wmv low download)

Click to start the screencast: Zero to Hero in 60 minutes - the presentation so good, it takes 75 minutes to watch.

No promises on the audio, I know it started out ok, but seems to kinda waver near the middle. Then I spilled a huge glass of water on my keyboard... anyway, this is the redo from the CFUG meeting last week for all of those who couldn't attend in person, or were out of town/mind/etc.

Downloadable Versions (right-click to download)
Direct link flash (97mb)
WMV Medium Quality (57MB)
WMV Low Quality (16MB)

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CFEclipse, Zero To Hero: Please Wait...

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 27, 2006 by Nathan

I know a lot of people are waiting on the re-recorded CFEclipse talk I had the other day, and I'm sorry to keep you waiting. I know, I know, I promised last Thursday. I just forgot my USB drive at home today, so it won't be up at least until this evening.

I should have 2 downloads. one a 97MB flash movie, and one a 15MB extremely low quality WMV movie. I'll keep experimenting with Camtasia to see if I can make it a little more comfortable to you folks, and make one Quicktime download as well.

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My CFEclipse Snippets

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 23, 2006 by Nathan

The coolest thing that I demo'd for CFEclipse last night was probably the snippets. These things can be killer if you know how to use them. They are a serious WOW feature. So, without further ado:

Nathan's CFEclipse Snippets

Download them, unzip them, and put them in your snippets folder. The default location is in your workspace plugins CFEclipse folder. As an example, here's where mine is:

C:\Documents and Settings\Nathan\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\com.rohanclan.cfml\snippets\

Watch out for that keyCombos.properties file, it keeps the key shortcuts. If you already have one, just merge mine into yours when you copy the folders, it's just a simple text file.

Most of my snippets have a shortcut key. Follow them by [ctrl]+[shift]+[period] (on windows, sorry, don't know the mac combo) to insert the snippet. Here's some of my favorites:

fun = cffunction tags
arg = cfargument
q = cfquery
r = cfreturn
d = cfdump
a = cfabort
p = cfparam
getset = getter and setter functions
todo = a todo comment

Provide feedback in the comments!

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Zero to Hero, Links from the presentation

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 23, 2006 by Nathan

Here are the promised links to all of the various plugins I talked about or showed off during my presentation.

CFEclipse.org
http://www.cfeclipse.org/

Web Tools Platform
http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates/

Fusebox Plugin
http://cfopen.org/projects/fusebox3cfe/

QuickREx
http://www.bastian-bergerhoff.com/eclipse/features/web/QuickREx/toc.html

XPath Explorer web site
http://www.purpletech.com/xpe/index.jsp

Subclipse
http://subclipse.tigris.org/

Spikefu Filesystem Plugin
http://www.spike.org.uk/blog/index.cfm...

MyEclipse
http://www.myeclipseide.com/

Fusebox 3 for CFE
http://cfopen.org/projects/fusebox3cfe/

SQLExplorer
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eclipsesql

QuantumDB
http://sourceforge.net/projects/quantum

DBEdit
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dbedit

Microsoft JDBC Drivr Download
http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/jdbc/
jTDS alternative JDBC driver: http://jtds.sourceforge.net/

Flex Builder
http://labs.macromedia.com/

OSFlash.org
http://www.osflash.org/

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Could have been better...

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 23, 2006 by Nathan

Thanks to all who showed up to the meeting tonight, in person and virtually. We had some technical difficulties, to say the least :(

For starters, our room was booked up, so we got sent upstairs into an awkward room, out of the way. Then, we had some bandwidth issues. Maybe it was all saturated by the folks who were using our usual conference room. The audio & video were kind of sporadic, we lost a few minutes in the middle, then it completely quit near the end. Finally, I suck at using Breeze, but it was my first time.

On the positive side, we'll be rerecording it, probably tomorrow (Thursday), this time without the technical distractions. I hope all of you got at least something good out of it. Stay tuned for the snippets and links I promised.

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CFEclipse, Zero to Hero in 60 Minutes - Watch it Live

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 22, 2006 by Nathan

Here's more popularity than I expected. If you're part of the CF Online Meetup Group, you can RSVP and show up for my presentation remotely via Breeze. Sorry for the short notice, but this is kinda surprising.

This is actually a huge surprise to me. I came back from lunch to have my coworkers tell me that tonight had just become way more popular. Those Adobe guys do talk to each other, and now, through a couple of back channels, it's going to be out there for all of you to see.

Naturally, we'll be recording it, so if you miss it tonight, you can watch it tomorrow. You can look here, or on the meetup group web site for the link to the recorded breezo.

One more thing, the WST all-in-one I mentioned in my last post, apparently it includes ALL of the Eclipse SDK and the WST. This means, you only need to download that 185MB file (and Java) to be ready for tonight.

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Coming tonight? Important downloads...

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 22, 2006 by Nathan

I put this up on the CFUG list, but not everybody reads that...

John (our CFUG manager) had a good thought this morning. If you're planning on coming to my CFUG presentation tonight and you plan on setting up CFEclipse along with me, you'll want to download Eclipse before we get there. The UAT's bandwidth is notoriously flaky, usually slow, so do yourself and all of us a favor by downloading the Eclipse SDK to your notebooks early.

It's incredibly simple to do.

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ Just click the large text in the middle of the page, "Download now: Eclipse SDK 3.1.2". It's about 103 MB.
The fastest way is actually to hit the torrents, right next to that link, there's really good ratios there.

Also, make sure you have Java. I recommend installing the latest JDK ( http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp), but it will work if you already have a 1.4 version (*cough* but 1.5 is faster *cough*).

One last thing, to really tax your bandwidth, download the WTP all-in-one package. This one is not required, but I recommend it. Here's how you get it, go to http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/downloads/, click the 1.0 link, and find the all-in-one SDK. The all-in-one is a huge time saver, but it's 183 MB. If you already have Eclipse running, you can add the update address to your install manager, instructions here: http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates/
If you can't, for any reason, download all of these, don't sweat it, we're planning on burning it all to a CD that we'll share with anyone who needs it.

If you're not installing along with us, again, don't sweat it, I promise it will still be educational and entertaining (edutational?), and won't be all about downloading and installing the entire internet.

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This week, come see CFEclipse at the AZCFUG!

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 20, 2006 by Nathan

I'm presenting CFEclipse to the AZ CFUG this Wednesday, Feb 22! Please come, show up, attend, and be present for my first CFUG presentation ever!

What will we be talking about? The original title is CFEclipse Tips & Tricks, but I think, really, it will be more like CFEclipse: Zero to Hero in 60 Minutes. I'll start with the most basic parts of Eclipse, show you how to get everything set up and then get into all the cool stuff you may have been hearing about. We'll be testing out the cutting (and sometimes bleeding) edge release of CFEclipse and cover all the plugins you need to turn Eclipse into the best tool for almost any job. We'll talk about how it compares to HomeSite+ (and CF Studio), and Dreamweaver, what it's better at and what it's worse at.

What should I bring? Bring questions and frustrations you may have had, and we'll talk about them and try to sort things out. Feel free to bring your notebook (if you have one) and set up your own Eclipse environment along with me.

What will I get? A very strong grasp on the Eclipse platform, and how you, as a developer, can leverage it. You also may win some prizes, there's always a giveaway for neat schwag like Macromedia/Adobe branded t-shirts, pens, mice, etc., or some quality reading material.

Where Is It?
University of Advancing Tech
2625 W Baseline Rd, Tempe, AZ - google map

I hope to see every CF developer in the valley there. Bring your friends!

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CFEclipse.org : Write a how-to, be famous

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 16, 2006 by Nathan

Surfing around this morning reminds me of the CFEclipse User Docs page, which is supposed to be full of how-to's written by you, the CFEclipse user. I'll lay the blame directly at myself for not getting you guys involved earlier.

So, now, I'd like to open up the CFEclipse How-To's section to the community. If you can think of an article to write, please write one! There's only 1 sample up there now, and there's no real format. You can include screenshots and pictures, and talk about any Eclipse or CFEclipse related tips or topics you can think of.

Here's the rundown:

  • Has to be Eclipse or CFEclipse related
  • Has to be helpful (aka, how to open a file from a project = not useful, how to open a file from windows explorer = useful)
  • Has to be more than a sentence or two. If it's less, I may put it on a small collected tips page
  • Will include your name and a link to your web site or another site you want linked
  • Send your documents to me, using my contact form, directly to one of my many email addresses (with _nospam_'s removed), or send it to one of the CFEclipse mailing lists, (users list, contributors list)
  • Submit early, submit often, we need your help!

Ok, honestly, there's not a big gain for you, I was thinking of giving away free copies of CFEclipse, but come on, it's open source.

This is a standing offer, and you can keep submitting articles until you're old and gray.

PS, by submitting, you are allowing the CFEclipse crew to fix spelling, grammar and inaccuracies if functionality changes.

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Eclipse WST 1.0 - Download it free, or your money back!

posted under category: CFEclipse on December 30, 2005 by Nathan

I just noticed the Eclipse WST (Web Standards Tools project) 1.0 made its way out the door a week ago. I should really get on a mailing list or something, it seems like I'm always a week or 2 behind on their releases. This download, available through the standard Eclipse update mechanisims, brings in editors for HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, and an enormous host of other file types.

The previous stable release, 0.7, came out almost 5 months ago, and I've been using it every day since, so I'm anxious to see what's new and how much better it works.

If you're looking for a good all-purpose web file editor, and have been wanting to give Eclipse or CFEclipse a try, this may be your chance.

On a related note, it looks like I'll be giving a talk at the next AZCFUG on CFEclipse, how to use it, how to make it useful, that sort of thing. If you're in the area, stop on in!

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Rob Rohan on CFEclipse at Macromedia.com

posted under category: CFEclipse on November 14, 2005 by Nathan

Congrats to Rob for getting published on Macromedia.com. As noted by a few of the heavy-hitters in the CF blogsphere, Rob wrote a great introduction to Eclipse and the CFEclipse plugin. It's a good read, especially if you don't know what CFEclipse really is about. Oh, and check the links, yep, the section right before the end - that's a link from Macromedia.com to Dopefly :D

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Discovering the Eclipse Local History Feature.

posted under category: CFEclipse on November 14, 2005 by Nathan

If you haven't seen the "local history" feature in Eclipse, try it out! There's really not much to explain, so follow along quickly:

  1. Find a file that you want to check the history on
  2. Right-click on it
  3. Find the "Compare With >" menu item
  4. Choose "Local History" on the menu

I told you it wasn't hard, and it's 3 steps too many for most of us, 4 for some.

From the Local History window, you can check the status of your file day by day, update by update, line by line like WinMerge. By default, Eclipse keeps the latest 50 changes to every file you modify over the past 7 days. These options are in the Eclipse prefs under General > Workspace > Local History.

This is another incredibly useful feature, if, say, you destroy a file before you check it into your version control, or worse, if you have no version control --yeesh, good luck fixing a file from a couple days back with dreamweaver.

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CFEclipse: The REAL Nightly Build

posted under category: CFEclipse on October 13, 2005 by Nathan

Insane props to Rob Rohan, who worked out an ant script yesterday to export direct from the CFEclipse CVS repository, build the plugin, zip it and upload it onto his web site every night.

So for those of you complaining about not having err, wishing for a real nightly build, this is it.

Head over to Rob's Blog and find the CFE NIGHTLY section on the right side to download.

Installing is as simple as unzipping and matching folders with your eclipse folder, then restart Eclipse and you're in business. If it blows up or has unwanted features (very likely), close Eclipse, delete the folder and start it again.

If you wanted to be really bright, you could make an ant script to download the zip file nightly, unzip it and install it into your plugins folder for you. Then blog about it and share the code or send it to me because I'll be jealous. :)

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Eclipse Tip: projects/folders open every time Eclipse starts

posted under category: CFEclipse on September 30, 2005 by Nathan

If you have the problem where a number of folders are stuck open in your Eclipse Navigator View, that sure gets annoying, doesn't it. Here's how you clear it out easily.

Open your workspace folder, wherever that is, then find the \.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.ui.workbench\workbench.xml file. Open it up with your favorite editor and navigate to something like:

/workbench/window/page/views/view[@id='org.eclipse.ui.views.ResourceNavigator']/viewstate/currentframe/expanded
Delete all the elements in the expanded node, and the next node, selection. Save and close the workbench.xml file and start Eclipse. Problem solved!

This is as much a future reference for me as it is for anyone else out there.

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Check out Eclipse WST

posted under category: CFEclipse on August 4, 2005 by Nathan

Looking for that perfect companion to CFEclipse? Something to edit your html, javascript, css, xml, xsl and sql? (and who of us doesn't need at least some of that?) You need to check out the Eclipse Web Standard Tools project.

WST is actually just a subproject of the much larger Web Tools Platform project, which, in turn, is a subproject of the Eclipse Platform.

Version 0.7 was just released on Tuesday. I've got it running and so far it looks good.

Now, how do you install it? WARNING: large downloading ahead.

The easy way if you aren't an eclipse user yet, is to download the whole WTP all-in-one zip file. It will give you Eclipse, all the prerequisites and the WST. Just add CFEclipse and you're set.

Those of us using Eclipse already will have to work a bit more, but download less (as long as you're already on Eclipse 3.1). Open Eclipse's built-in updating tools to download the prerequisites. It's under Help > Software Updates > Find and Install, then choose "Search for new features to install" and check mark the Eclipse.org update site. I noticed E3.1 gives you a list of mirrors (yay), In the US, I recommend the TDS mirror. On the features screen, check mark these: emf-sdo-xsd-SDK-2.1.0, GEF-SDK-3.1, and JEM-SDK-1.1. Finish the install and Eclipse will restart.

In the meantime, go to the Web Tools download page and grab the platform runtime zip. Unzip it into the matching folders of your current eclipse setup and start Eclipse.

I'm sure I make it sound harder than it really is. I'll make sure to update my CFE resources page soon to recommend this instead of the old sourceforge JS & CSS editors.

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Setting up a databse plugin in Eclipse

posted under category: CFEclipse on July 15, 2005 by Nathan

Dan Switzer explains how to set up the DBEdit plugin in Eclipse for SQL Server 2000. Great job, Dan!

He's also got a link to Shlomy Gantz's Blog entry from last December, detailing how to set up the SQL Explorer plugin. Thanks Shlomy!

I know this is a requested feature for a lot of CF developers on the Eclipse platform. One day, time permitting, I'll install both of these and write up a little-review.

Oh, while you're downloading DBEdit, make sure to skip over the card games plug-in. That's a time-waster, for sure. And pretty well made. And kinda fun. And I kinda need to get back to work, but I kinda am working because at least I'm in Eclipse.

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CFEclipse.org

posted under category: CFEclipse on June 29, 2005 by Nathan

CFEclipse.org is open for business! Thanks to Spike and Simeon for getting this up and ready. These guys are hard workers and put in a lot of time on the CFEclipse project, worthy of many, many thanks.

The easiest way to thank them, is to download CFEclipse and start using it, then get involved with the community however you can.

Notice the design is familiar? The reason behind it is the Mozilla foundation has similar goals and objectives as the CFE project, plus it's a good clean look. The site runs on Farcry, an open source CMS.

Soon, members of the community will be able to write articles and documents for the site, so think of what you'd like to see and write it or suggest it.

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It feels good to be famous

posted under category: CFEclipse on February 15, 2005 by Nathan

I think the real title should be "CFEclipse featured in the CFDJ," but that was just too boring. Anyway, you can find the article at:

http://sys-con.com/story/?storyid=48235

And you'll even see a link to my CFEclipse resource page at the bottom. I'm glad people find it useful. As always, let me know what else you'd like to see on it.

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Cool Things CFEclipse Does (part 5)

posted under category: CFEclipse on November 17, 2004 by Nathan

If you haven't seen it yet, open the Dictionary View in CFEclipse by going to Window > Show View > Other, then selecting Dictionary from the CFEclipse views folder. This is your dictionary for HTML, Javascript and ColdFusion. Expanded documentation with examples is coming soon, so this panel is going to get much more useful!

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CFEclipse 1.1.17 is out!

posted under category: CFEclipse on November 12, 2004 by Nathan

Read about it.

If you have Auto-update enabled, Eclipse will ask you to update your CFE plugin the next time it starts up.

1.1.17 has a few of my personal favorite features added in, including code collapsing, drag & drop text, bracket highlighting, ctrl+double-clicking on tags selects the tag, ctrl+shift+double-click selects the tag block, intelligent tag insight (cffile action=copy has different attributes than action=upload), new preferences including trim trailing spaces, and over 15 bug fixes.

If you tried CFEclipse before and didn't like it, try it again! If you've never tried it, head to my CFEclipse Resource Page to learn about it and get help installing it.

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Cool Things CFEclipse Does (part 4)

posted under category: CFEclipse on November 10, 2004 by Nathan

It's been 2 months since an official release on the CFEclipse project. Another release is due any day now. What new feature can you expect to see in this one?

Something new (if you haven't tried Spike's nightly build), is bracket matching. Put the text cursor near a bracket and it will highlight it's matching pair. Soon (hopefully in time for the next release), it will have preferences so you can have it match #'s and quotes.

There's a lot of good stuff coming in this next release. We'll advertise it in all the usual channels, so get ready for it.

Just as a side note, I'm seeing a few things in the source that might interest a few people, including some FTP classes. Stay tuned!

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Cool Things CFEclipse Does (part 3)

posted under category: CFEclipse on October 26, 2004 by Nathan

Something new: Code Folding.

New builds of CFEclipse will search for CF tag blocks and put fold icons in the left margin. Highlight and it shows you your chunk. Click and it collapses the area. Very useful, thanks guys!

Spike keeps an updated, usually working version on his site. Download CFEclipse Latest build.

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CFEclipse - Vote for new features!

posted under category: CFEclipse on October 6, 2004 by Nathan

Ollie, the CFEclipse project leader has announced "Get 'chore votes in!" That's right, it's time to vote on what features you most want in CFEclipse. If you use CFEclipse, or would like to except for this reason or that missing feature, etc., this is your chance to put in some feedback and get what you want.

Here's how it works:

- Head to the web site - Log in (or create an account)
- 'Join' the CFEclipse project and the users mail list
- Send an email to the list to get your 'Join' status upgraded to an official 'Observer'
- Browse the issues list - When you find a feature you like, click on "Vote For This Issue" -- you must be logged in
- You get 10 votes, and you can use up to 3 on any one item

There you go! Join us in making CFEclipse the best tool it can be!

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Cool Things CFEclipse Does (part 2)

posted under category: CFEclipse on August 25, 2004 by Nathan

It grabs TODO comments and adds them to the task view list, as well as adding a little blue icon next to your code where you wrote your TODO task.

<--- TODO: check the task list --->
<cfscript> // TODO: this will be a task too! </cfscript>

Now the problem, is that it's still in the CFEclipse source, to be released with the next version, whenever that comes out. In order to use it, you'll have to build it from the source. Read my CFEclipse resource page to find out how. It's really not too hard.

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Cool Things CFEclipse Does (part 1)

posted under category: CFEclipse on August 18, 2004 by Nathan

I find myself constantly finding new features in CFEclipse that I didn't know I couldn't do without. My latest favorite is the tag attributes.

When you are typing out a tag, say, <cflocation. Then you type or select (from the tag insight dropdown) your first attribute, usually something like url="index.cfm". Now when you hit the space bar to see the tag insight again, it no longer displays the url attribute, only the remaining attributes, in this case, addtoken. Neat trick CFE team! Keep up the good work!

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Nathan is a software developer at The Boeing Company in Charleston, SC. He is essentially a big programming nerd. Really, you could say that makes him a nerd among nerds. Aside from making software for the web, he plays with tech toys and likes to think about programming's big picture while speaking at conferences and generally impressing people with massive nerdiness and straight-faced sarcastic humor. Nathan got his programming start writing batch files in DOS. It should go without saying, but these thought and opinions have nothing to do with Boeing in any way.
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