Web Biz

    I was working on some remote files the other day, and being the CFEclipse fan that I am, I decided to use CFEclipse for my remote development instead of Dreamweaver.  I usually resort to using Dreamweaver whenever I need to connect to a remote server via FTP to perform my development, whether I am working on a CF or PHP project.  The main reason is that the FTP utility included in CFEclipse absolutely BLOWS!  But, I decided to give it another shot… after hearing that major improvements were made following the 1.3 release.

    I fired of Eclipse, hit the File Explorer tab, and created a location for my FTP site.  Right away I ran into problems.  First, it said the folder did not exist, when indeed it does.  I double-checked and triple-checked the path, and sure enough it was correct.  So, I restarted Eclipse, removed the location, and tried again.  This time I was able to connect, but good lord, it was SOOO slow.  Kinda reminded me of Adobe’s livedocs server…

    But I was determined to never open Dreameaver again.  I know there has to be another way around this I thought… and then I remembered that Aptana has an FTP interface built into their File Explorer.  I already use Aptana for the majority of my CSS and JS development (alongside my CFEclipse plugin).  So, I switched the the Aptana perspective, click on the File Explorer tab, and there it was… FTP.

    To setup an FTP connection in Aptana is really simple, just right-click on FTP in the File Explorer window, and click ‘Add new FTP site’.  I was setup in a few seconds, clicked on the connection, and BAM, I was connected and viewing files right away.

    If you use CFEclipse for your CF development work, I highly suggest that you utilize the FTP connection abilities of Aptana instead of CFEclipse’s.  I think you will greatly appreciate it’s simplicity, quickness, and how it JUST WORKS!

    Thanks Aptana, keep up the good work!