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I feel a tremor in the force, as if a thousand CFEclipse users cried out in agony.

# Posted By Damien McKenna | 5/25/07 5:06 PM

All of us long time Homesite users rejoice! I tried to use CFEclipse, but I just didn't like it.... same with Dreamweaver. Only ~30 years old and I'm stuck in my ways. :-(

# Posted By Brian Philippus | 5/25/07 6:04 PM

Glad to hear it!

# Posted By Rey Bango | 5/25/07 6:44 PM

AT least HomeSite will print my code in COLOR! LOL! Believe it or not - the color actually helps when troubleshooting multipage printouts.

# Posted By Sid Wing | 5/25/07 6:54 PM

lol, I was disappointed that Dreamweaver CS3 does not print my code in color. Doesn't everybody have a color printer these days??

# Posted By Kurt DeLanoy | 5/25/07 7:07 PM

FlexBuilder 2 has really sold me on Eclipse and I now do 99% my CF development in CFEclipse as a result. Having said that I would assume ColdFusion 8 support will be available in future version of CFEclipse so I don't really see a need for an Adobe Scorpio Eclipse extension unless it is complimentary to CFEclipse like what happened with the RDS stuff included with the FlexBuilder 2 install. Better debugging would be nice but that is on track with this release anyways. Perhaps if the extension focused on Scorpio features such as CFPresntation.

# Posted By Ryan Favro | 5/25/07 9:19 PM

I've been using Flex Builder pretty heavily since July but I still can't get myself to give up Homesite+

(second captcha attempt...

# Posted By Rick Root | 5/25/07 10:13 PM

As someone who has written VTML, all I can say is - I hope you give a bonus to the poor soul who had to suffer through that. :)

# Posted By Raymond Camden | 5/26/07 9:13 AM

Ben, please, please, please modify the CAPTHA (see Charlie Arehart's article). My last post took 9 attempts.

# Posted By Raymond Camden | 5/26/07 9:14 AM

Sweeeeet. HomeSite for ever!!! :D

# Posted By Ben Nadel | 5/26/07 9:48 AM

Ben (and others), I realize you may well intentionally want the more complicated captcha, but if you're wondering what Ray's referring to, it's a series of blog entries I did on simplifying captchas (when it makes sense), and in particular I show how to easily update the default captcha.xml that underlies Lyla, if that's what you're using.

For instance, in my blog is make all the characters lowercase, and reduce the number of characters required, among other things. You can read about how to make the changes in one entry of the series: http://carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2006/8/1...

In another, you can just get the updated file if you'd rather not have to edit yours. It's drag and drop simple, as discussed at http://carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2006/10/...

I've not had any increase in spam comments, but of course I don't get the traffic you do. Should be easy to monitor and dial up or down the complexity, once you see how easy it is. The oldest article in the series offers my take on when and why we may want to dial down the complexity. Hope that's helpful.

Oh, and great to hear about the HS/Studio tag updates! :-)

# Posted By charlie arehart | 5/26/07 11:26 AM

What added benfit do I get by moving to CFEclipse? Homesite has snippets, lets you configure tons of keyboard shortcuts and has all the tag insights. I tried Eclipse and it seemed a little clumbsy. Someone convince me why I should change.

# Posted By Robert | 5/26/07 3:26 PM

Robert,

I like CFEclipse for following reasons:

- same environment for Flex and Java development
- built in Ant integration
- Subversion (and CVS) integration
- works on my Mac
- Working sets (filters what is visible currently)
- Tasks view (add TODO: comment and it will be listed on Tasks view)

For me it took some 2 weeks to get comfortable with Eclipse but after that there was no going back.

# Posted By Tero Pikala | 5/26/07 5:44 PM

Say what you want but Notepad continues to beat all hands down in speed and reliability. Once you get past the lack of functionality, its very simple to use.

# Posted By Clint | 5/27/07 12:33 AM

Clint, I can't help thinking that your argument in favor of Notepad's "speed" is a false economy. Sure, it may open fastest of the editors mentioned here, but a user of any of them will generally crank out code faster (or more effectively), simply by use of features like tag/function insight, tag completion, tag editing, tag/function help, query builders, and the like. And the RDS-based features in these tools will make one more productive still.

No, not everyone who uses one of the "real CFML editors" uses these features, in which case one could argue they may as well use notepad. But then even the syntax coloring is a big help.

Granted, HomeSite isn't free (though HomeSite+ is free to those who own Dreamweaver, found on its CD). I'm not hear arguing for it so much. I realize that both DW and CFE have their advantages. And tools like cfquickdocs.com can help syntax overcome getting help quickly and easily.

I'm just arguing that if you're still using Notepad, and you don't own DW (to use it or HS+) and don't want to buy HomeSite, then you would do well to invest the time to at least learn to use CFE, which is free. There are also other editors out there people use for CFML (Jedit, PrimalScript).

Any of them will make you far more productive than Notepad, if you use any one of their CFML-based features.

# Posted By charlie arehart | 5/27/07 8:50 AM

Charlie, it's not intentional or an attempt to avoid additional spam, it's just a matter of getting it done. Right now I am using default settings because, well, they are default settings. ;-) I am also running older versions of Ray's apps and need to update those. And I still have some Flex 1.5 apps here that need to be moved to Flex 2. It's just a matter of finding time to get it all done. But, point taken, will prioritize it.

--- Ben

# Posted By Ben Forta | 5/27/07 9:27 AM

Ben -- What other editors will Adobe provide tag insight for?

The more the better IMO.

# Posted By Sam Farmer | 5/27/07 10:16 AM

Robert -

Also, CFEclipse has all the functionality of HS as far as snippets, insight, short-cuts, etc. But it's being actively developed and improved. Not to mention you can use other various plugins for JS (JSEclipse), CSS and HTML (Aptana), SQL (SQL Explorer via JDBC), various XML plugins, Java and PHP plugins, CVS and SVN support, and on and on... it's about a week learning curve if you give it your best effort. ;-)

# Posted By Aaron Longnion | 5/27/07 11:39 AM

IMO the best!

# Posted By Darts | 5/27/07 11:41 AM

Notepad? Wow man you really need to look at what else is out there. Atleast use textpad for goodness sake.

# Posted By Brian | 5/27/07 6:32 PM

Charlie and Ray, I hope this is more to your liking.

--- Ben

# Posted By Ben Forta | 5/27/07 10:13 PM

After 10 years of using HomeSite and it's children nothing comes close to it's powerful simplicity.

# Posted By Fred B | 5/28/07 8:25 AM

I tried to buy HomeSite last week. I couldn't buy it seperately, they were forcing me to buy Dreamweaver. I lost my hard drive, and for life of me, I couldn't fine a copy of HomeSite here at work. Anyhow, I've now officially switched to Eclipse, but sometimes, I really do miss HomeSite. (I did download the trial for a bit too, to help smooth out the transition).

# Posted By noname | 5/28/07 8:53 AM

Yea! Thank you, Ben (for updating the captcha to be simpler). I caught your note saying you were concerned for lack of time. Trust me, I totally understand. I'm still on 5.005 of BlogCFC for that same reason. I realize updates can be challenging. The beauty of the captcha update, as I hope you say, was that it really is as simple as dragging and dropping the file to replace the default. I think many will sing praises of the change in many of your blog entries as they encounter it over in coming weeks and months. :-)

# Posted By charlie arehart | 5/28/07 10:08 AM

Charlie, not totally painless, but not difficult either. The updated XML file that you linked to earlier actually caused BlogCFC to throw some weird variable not found errors. But I had another version (one Ray used for KidGamers) so swiped that one and it worked flawlessly. Thanks for nagging me to do this, without the nagging it would not have gotten done. ;-)

--- Ben

# Posted By Ben Forta | 5/28/07 11:43 AM

Well, bummer to hear it wasn't as simple as hoped. I suppose it may depend on the version of BlogCFC you were running. I had confirmed that the default xml file was the same between 5.005 and 5.5 beta 1, when I made the file available at the time. Fortunately, about that time (Oct of 06) Ray was then offering the updated captcha.xml file (with simplified captchas) as the default, which was great to see. Anyway, I just clarify all this for anyone else watching who has an older form of Ray's BlogCFC, if you too would like to simplify your captchas. Again, Ben, thanks for doing it.

# Posted By charlie arehart | 5/28/07 11:16 PM

I dunno. The day I can't use HomeSite.....is gonna be sad. Glad to hear there will be updates for the VTML

# Posted By Kevin Sargent | 5/30/07 10:28 PM

Anyone know if the Homesite/CFStudio VTM files are out yet for CF8?

# Posted By Mathew Ford | 7/22/07 8:11 PM

Hey Ben, I'm hearing rumblings from folks that DW CS3 no longer includes HS+ on its CD. Do you know if that's the case? Or can anyone else confirm? I've tried and tried and find no info about it (to confirm or deny) on the Adobe site.

# Posted By Charlie Arehart | 8/29/07 10:56 PM

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