Web Biz

    If you havn’t tried Eclipse already, give it a try!  If you have already tried it and didn’t like it, try it again!  Why?  Well, a lot of additional plug-ins and improvements have been made that just might tip the scale in it’s favor over your current IDE.  Being a previous Dreamweaver user, I couldn’t bring myself to working with eclipse.  However, I have given it another shot, and this time I am pleased with the setup I am using: CFeclipse, Aptana, and Subeclipse.  Everything appears to be working together and seamlessly.  If you haven’t tried aptana, I highly suggest you check it out!  It does some really cool things for JS and CSS coding, plus Ajax support:

• Code Assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, including your own JavaScript functions
• Outliner that gives a snapshot view of your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code structure
• NEW: FTP/SFTP uploading, downloading and synchronization
• NEW: JavaScript debugger to troubleshoot your code
• Error and warning notification for your code
• Support for Aptana UI customization and extensions

    So, here is my Eclipse installation that work best for developing ColdFusion Applications:

• Download and install Eclipse: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
• Install CFeclipse using the Install/Update features with the url: http://www.cfeclipse.org/update
• Install Aptana (for CSS and JavaScript support among others) using the url: http://update.aptana.com/install/
• Install Subeclipse (for use with SVN repositories): http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.0.x

    After posting this article, I have been using CFeclipse instead of Dreamweaver.  As I am discovering new pluses and minuses, I have decided to start a wish-list for CFeclpise (and will gradually build it up over time).  So here it goes:

My Wish list for CFeclipse:

• Remove Comment - ability to remove the selected comment(s), no matter what style
• ‘Insert Comment based on selected’ is great, but what if I want to specify the comment style?
• Locate file in workspace - similar to ‘Locate in Site’ in Dreamweaver
• Close a tag after typing "</" instead of after typing the opening tag’s ">"

    Today, Microsoft announced a special promotion to kick off the Microsoft adCenter.  The adCenter is Microsoft’s new approach to combat Google’s increasing dominance over the search advertising market, having around a 70% market share.  The offer details (see official terms of course!):

• Must sign up for a new account
• $200 credit doesn’t apply to one-time $5 activation fee
• There is a minimum bid requirement of $0.05 per clickthrough
• The promotional credit must be used within 90 days of signing up
• Any expenses accumulated over $200 must be paid for (duh!)

    Wondering where to sign up?  Visit the Microsoft adCenter before 1/15/07.

    Finally, after several months of owning a new MacBook Pro (upgraded from a 14in. iBook) I decided to install ColdFusion MX 7 developer edition.  I started out with the idea that this would be relatively simple and painless and only take a couple of minutes, well, I guess I was wrong.  It took a little bit of research and tweaking to discover the easiest way to install CFMX 7 on my MacBook.

    So, here is a step-by-step of what it took me to finally get ColdFusion MX 7 up and running on my MacBook Pro with a MySQL Datasource:

1. Download ColdFusion MX 7 Developer edition for FREE
2. Install ColdFusion using the setup.  Be sure to install a multiserver or J2EE installation.  I could not get the single-server installation to work on the Intel MacBook.
3. After the setup completes, grab this very cool CFMXLauncher utility.  Why?  Because you (like most of us) upgraded to Java 1.5 as a system update through Apple.  And, ColdFusion 7 required Java 1.4.2 and will not work with 1.5.0.  So, you can either change the CurrentJDK symlink located here: /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK, or you can use this utility.  It uses the default installation paths to start ColdFusion using Java 1.4.2 automatically.  This allows you to keep using 1.5.0 system-wide (in case you have Java apps that require 1.5), and not make any hacks or modification to your current setup.
4. Once you have that setup, download and install MySQL 5
5. Installation instructions for MySQL from Apple may help.  Thankfully, I had already installed MySQL on my MacBook, and running on the standard port.
6. Before your MySQL Datasource will work, I had to download the latest MySQL JDBC Driver in order for ColdFusion to work with MySQL 5.  Read over the ColdFusion Technote for instructions on how to upgrade the JDBC Driver for MySQL.
7. Test your installation!

Well, thats the short version of what it took to get CFMX 7 and MySQL up and running on my MacBook.

Adobe has launched a new web site for developers/maintainers of open source projects that utilize Adobe software such as ColdFusion, Flex, and Flash.  The site, RIAForge is located at www.riaforge.org.  The site provides a simple and elegant user interface that provides a collection (currently rather small collection) of most of the popular free projects such as BlogCFC and cfjson.  According to their site:

Now you can integrate existing or new open source projects in a centralized repository with simple functions and options for managing projects and more complex options for managing source code. RIAForge provides a consolidated hosting environment that transcends tools, geographies and functional teams and enables more efficient use of your time and resources.

Create your free account and start setting up your projects. RIAForge provides the following services that you can choose to use with your project:

• Blog
• Bug Tracker
• Subversion
• Forums
• Download and View Stats
• Ability to point to external resources (for those who already have an existing infrastructure).