Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

At CFUnited 2007, I did a couple of presentations showing CFEclipse, which at the end of the presentation I mentioned was actually running on Eclipse 3.3. Not bad going considering that Eclipse 3.3 was released on the day of my first presentation huh? The issue now is getting everything REALLY working, I did a number of smoke tests and even did a whole presentation running Eclipse 3.3 but there are some things I want to tidy and other changes I want to make before I do a release (just doing a compatibility release seems a waste of time at the moment, considering the effort involved!) So, what and when should you expect? Well, I am going to be checking in stuff this week, I only do checkins against an issue so I have to create the right ones (if they are not there). You should see more activity over at the CFEclipse Trac website. Also, if you are planning on adding a ticket to Trac, make sure there isnt one there already, I have spotted a few been adding about Eclipse 3.3 already, there is no need to add more! I want to send out a big thank you to Dean Harmon as he did all the Eclipse 3.3 compatibility including the backwards compatibility stuff. Now, stop saying that Adobe does nothing to contribute!!! So, there it is, a semi-official announcement... saying not much... but at least now you know.

So, I am all packed, sipping the last of the coffee, about to leave in a few seconds to Gatwick to head to CFUnited 2007! I am really looking forward to this conference, it should be a blast! Those that can't make it this year, I promise, I shall try and blog and take as many photos as possible to keep you all in the loop. (ahh, promises promises!). So without further ado, see you on the other side of the pond!

I want to thank Ray Camden, Charlie Arehart and all the people at TeraTech that let me do a preview presentation before CFUnited. You can check out the recording of the presentation over at http://experts.acrobat.com/p70538852/

With CFUnited looming (only a week to go!), the Online ColdFusion Meetup Group have asked me to do a quick (20 mins) preview presentation on my forthcoming CFEclipse session for CFUnited. The description is as follows:

In this 20-30 minute session, Mark Drew will preview his one- hour class, CFEClipse Plus!, presenting how to use some advanced features in CFEclipse, with an in-depth look at modifying the libraries to add your own tags, using ant as part of your development process and demonstrations of the new features in CFEclipse. This presentation is geared towards current users of CFEclipse.

So come one, come all, especially if you cant make it to CFUnited! When: Thursday, June 21, 12:30pm EDT (GMT-4) (What time is that for you? See http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=12&min=30&sec=0&p1=25) Where:http://experts.acrobat.com/cfmeetup/

Finally I have my flights booked to CFUNITED! I am arriving at D.C.'s Ronald Ray-Gun Airport on Tuesday 26th of June at 16:18. Anybody else arriving around the same time? Fancy sharing a bus thingy? Or is it tube-able? (I can't remember if Ray-Gun was on the tube or not) I am very excited about this conference, I think I might be releasing the final project (heh, right) for the summer called Project:C but details still need to be worked out (so if I dont release something, dont kill me ok?)

I just wanted to send out a big thank you to whoever sent me the Reservoir Dogs PS2 Game! It is very appreciated when I get a mystery gift through the post, of course, the only problem (or benefit depending on your point of view) is that when Amazon sends a Wish List item, it doesn't tell you who is from. But CFEclipse user... I thank you and salute you! (Oh, I added some more items to my Wish list finally! ... not that I am hinting or anything!)

Oh yes J.R. I shall be donning my best shoulder pads tonight and trying not to get shot (or was it a dream sequence?) and will be presenting for the Dallas/Fort Worth CFUG tonight. It will be a late one for me (about 1am BST) but will be worth it. I shall be going over what CFEclipse is, installation and things you can get done with it as well as some of the new features. If you care to join, you can hook up via Adobe Connect and join the fun! Hopefully the connection will be better and that Dave manages to record it!

I just joined a site called OHLOH and added the CFEclipse project to its listing which does some code checking and finds usernames etc and says how much work they do on the porject (I presume by commits etc) I know its not completely acurate but if you wanted to buy CFEclipse, well, you have to pay me somwhere in the region of $3 Million dollars (now, why do I feel like Dr. Evil when I say that?) Some fun stats: UPDATE: Since I added the old repository, this has gone up to nearly $6Million! Spike, Rob and Oliver were really busy at one time!

I have seen a lot of posts on various lists about this, and rather than making everyone hold out for the next release of CFEclipse (I am a bit behind due to having a flu since I got back from Scotch on the Rocks) I thought I would post up the dictionary file for ColdFusion 8 beta so you can install it yourselves. Now, pay attention, I am going to detail the process here and wont be providing support for INSTALLING it. If you notice if any tags are wrong, send me the tag node from the XML and let me know the change and I can keep the master copy updated. Here goes:

1. Download and unzip the following file: cf8dictionary.zip, you should have a file called cf8.xml
2. Browse to < eclipse install path >/plugins/org.cfeclipse.cfml_<version number>/dictionary/ and move cf8.xml into that directory
3. open up the dictionaryconfig.xml file that is in that directory and add the following XML above the cfmx701 entry <version key="cf8" label="Coldfusion 8">
                  <grammar location="cf8.xml" />
                  <grammar location="user.xml" />
               </version>
4. Restart (or start) Eclipse.

You should now, if you look under CFEclipse in a projects preferences, have ColdFusion 8 added as a language. Enjoy!

At the CFEclipse presentation at Scotch on the Rocks last week, Project X was finally unveiled. SnipEx is a new server side project, written in CF which allows CFEclipse's Snippets View to get snippets from a remote server. The Server The SnipEx server is made up of a couple of CFC's as well as (currently) a MySQL server. The database interaction is pretty simple so this can be ported and modified to suit the needs of most people (such as adding notification and custom workflows). All the code behind it is in CFML so users should not have any problems adapting it to suit their needs both for internal snippet storage and for external display. The code for the SnipEx server will be released to the community this week on RiaForge. The Client The client is simply CFEclipse. You can subscribe to up to eight SnipEx servers including an upcoming CFEclipse.org hosted one and one hosted at CFLib.org (with a big thank you to Ray Camden) and you have the ability then to insert snippets from remote servers into your CFML documents as well as (if the server has been configured to do so) submit your own snippets to servers. A big thank you has to go out to Robert Blackburn, that apart from developing the CFUnit plugin has also developed the core of this feature. Also a big shout out to Andy Jarrett for the server side part of it! Finally, you might be wondering when this will be released? Well, it will have to be in a couple of days time, as it will be part of a bigger release. So hold on for the moment!