Charlie Arehart, CTO charlie@newatlanta
description
Transcript of Charlie Arehart, CTO charlie@newatlanta
Charlie Arehart, [email protected]
Browsing Within CF Browsing Within CF Studio/HomeSite+Studio/HomeSite+
Improving Productivity Vastly for All CFML Improving Productivity Vastly for All CFML DevelopersDevelopers
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Goals
How and why to use “internal browse” feature Why you don’t need RDS setup to do so
And just what is RDS anyway?
Using browse feature for CF, BlueDragon, JSP/ASP/PHP
How and why to use “external browse” feature Keyboard shortcuts for invoking both browse
methods Solving common problems, explaining
frequent confusion
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Resources
Presentation based on my August 2003 article of same name in ColdFusion Developers Journal
Provided in print form here for attendees Available online at
http://sys-con.com/coldfusion/article.cfm?id=638
Features also discussed in Macromedia docs Using ColdFusion Studio Using HomeSite+ for Dreamweaver MX
Both available online at livedocs.macromedia.com And in Studio/HomeSite+ help window (help>open help
references window)
For those not familiar with HomeSite+ Is simply latest revision of CF Studio, essentially identical Available only on DWMX/Studio MX CD See my June 2003 CFDJ article, "Getting into HomeSite+"
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
About Your Speaker
CTO of New Atlanta Communications since April ‘03
6 yrs CF experience (20 yrs Enterprise IT) Co-author of ColdFusion MX Bible Frequent contributor to ColdFusion Dev Journal Past accomplishments of note
Tech Editor, CFDJ Team Macromedia Member Allaire/Macromedia Certified Instructor Allaire/Macromedia Certified Adv CF Developer (4, 5, MX) Macromedia Customer Advisory Board Member Contributor to Macromedia Devnet, Dev Exchange
Frequent speaker to user groups, conferences worldwide
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Challenges Getting Setup
Have you ever tried to use internal “browse” tab or F12?
Probably got an error message Not too helpful, and not clear what you need to do What’s a “server development mapping” anyway? Where doc’d?
Development Mapping Simply this: the URL to use when browsing files in a given directory Can have many mappings, or let one control all under given dir Key point
When you use browse in Studio, it looks in mappings for URL to use for directory (or ancestor, if none) of currently edited file
Kind of like process of looking for application.cfm (but not quite) Let’s see an example
Can create mapping for any web server-enabled directory Even works for mapped drives or UNC paths (and RDS paths, if used)
Also now see why it applies to any web page extension such as ASP/JSP/PHP
Studio doesn’t care as it’s just mapping a directory to a URL
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Mappings Editor
So, how to define mappings? Several ways… Options>Settings>Browse>Development Mappings Alt-M keyboard shortcut Debug>Development Mappings (or corresponding button)
These all open the mappings editor window May be blank first time you open it Let’s see it
Understanding “RDS Server” dropdown list Used to distinguish mappings for multiple servers hosting code
May be populated with localhost by default depending on install choices
Could easily choose “Add RDS Server” to define one for localhost See manual for more details on creating RDS Server definition
See article’s “sidebar” on handling when multiple servers are listed It’s NOT important to have RDS support enabled to do browsing
Again, concept of RDS would of course not apply for browsing PHP/JSP/ASP
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Adding a Development Mapping
Select Add button Prompted with 3 empty fields, only first and last important
for browsing Let’s see it
Studio Path is NOT the path to locate CF Studio! Is the path for the directory of files you may want to browse Could use c:\inetpub\wwwroot\somedir\, for example
But remember concept of ancestor search mechanism Better to create single mapping for all in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\
Note available folder icon for selecting directory in file system CF Server Path can be ignored for browsing
Used only for internal debugger (supported only in CF 5 and earlier)
Can leave it blank. See Manual for more info Browser Path is URL needed to browse the directory in
Studio Path For example above, could use http://localhost or
http://127.0.0.1 Note available prompt for port, as needed for CFMX internal
browser (8500) or BlueDragon Server internal browser (8080)
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Browsing Your Goods
Open a file in your webroot, press F12 or Browse tab
If all goes well, should now see edited page in internal browser
Life as a developer should be much more productive now! Hit F12 again (or Edit tab) to return to editor
No more need to flip back and forth to external browser, entering URLs
What if you prefer to use external browser? Such as to launch IE, Netscape, Opera, etc. Can indeed use the development mappings to launch
external browser, as we’ll see later Can also make life easier for editing form action pages or
passing in URL query string data. See article for more info.
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Browsing Challenges
What if you get an error using browsing feature?
Return to mappings editor and correct your settings
What if browsed page does not reflect latest edits?
May just be a browser caching issue. Right-click browsed page and choose “refresh”, or use available icon at top of browsed page
See article for more on IE browser caching settings
Also, be aware of options for browsing unsaved files
See end of article for more details
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Browsing Challenges
Can you browse files opened on an RDS connection?
Yes, just create a mapping pointing to the filepath Studio shows at the top of the editor window when opening a file via RDS
How about files opened via an FTP connection? Background: you can create an FTP connection to a remote
server (in the “Macromedia FTP&RDS Servers” option in Windows Explorer/My Computer)
In doing so, you indicate what the “root URL” to be used if you were to browse files on that FTP site
Great news: if you browse a file opened via FTP in Studio, it will just automatically detect it’s opened via FTP and will prepend that root URL to the path/filename of the file being edited
No need to create a “development mapping” for such FTP connection
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Browsing Externally
Can be more useful and powerful than internal browsing If you have IE, Netscape, Opera, etc. installed when
Studio/HomeSite+ is installed, it detects them Then you can browse page externally using F11 (versus F12)
or available “magnifying glass” icon when in browse mode Opens edited page in “default” external browser
Can choose which is default, or add newly installed browsers, using Options>Configure External Browsers
Can reorder them, since first in list is what’s launched by F11 Let’s see it
Can also now choose which browser to use with “View external browser list” icon at top right of toolbar
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Summary
That’s a whirlwind tour of internal/external browsing
Powerful feature, misunderstood by many Hope these tips save you lots of time You can comment on the article at bottom of
online sys-con article page Or drop me an email: [email protected]
April 21, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC