Browsing Within CF StudioHome Site Improving Productivity Vastly

Browsing Within CF Studio/Home. Site+ Improving Productivity Vastly for All CFML Developers Charlie Arehart, CTO charlie@newatlanta. com

Goals n n How and why to use “internal browse” feature Why you don’t need RDS setup to do so n n n And just what is RDS anyway? Using browse feature for CF, Blue. Dragon, JSP/ASP/PHP How and why to use “external browse” feature Keyboard shortcuts for invoking both browse methods Solving common problems, explaining frequent confusion 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Resources n Presentation based on my August 2003 article of same name in Cold. Fusion Developers Journal n n n 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 n n Using Cold. Fusion Studio Using Home. Site+ for Dreamweaver MX n n n Both available online at livedocs. macromedia. com And in Studio/Home. Site+ help window (help>open help references window) For those not familiar with Home. Site+ n n n Is simply latest revision of CF Studio, essentially identical Available only on DWMX/Studio MX CD See my June 2003 CFDJ article, "Getting into Home. Site+" 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

About Your Speaker n n n CTO of New Atlanta Communications since April ‘ 03 6 yrs CF experience (20 yrs Enterprise IT) Co-author of Cold. Fusion MX Bible Frequent contributor to Cold. Fusion Dev Journal Past accomplishments of note n n n n 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 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Challenges Getting Setup n Have you ever tried to use internal “browse” tab or F 12? n n 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 n n n 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 n n Can create mapping for any web server-enabled directory n n 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 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 n Studio doesn’t care as it’s just mapping a directory to a URL 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Mappings Editor n So, how to define mappings? Several ways… n n These all open the mappings editor window n n n Options>Settings>Browse>Development Mappings Alt-M keyboard shortcut Debug>Development Mappings (or corresponding button) May be blank first time you open it Let’s see it Understanding “RDS Server” dropdown list n Used to distinguish mappings for multiple servers hosting code n May be populated with localhost by default depending on install choices n n 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 n 18 September 2020 Again, concept of RDS would of course not apply for browsing PHP/JSP/ASP New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Adding a Development Mapping n Select Add button n Prompted with 3 empty fields, only first and last important for browsing n n Let’s see it Studio Path is NOT the path to locate CF Studio! n n Is the path for the directory of files you may want to browse Could use c: inetpubwwwrootsomedir, for example n n Note available folder icon for selecting directory in file system CF Server Path can be ignored for browsing n n n But remember concept of ancestor search mechanism Better to create single mapping for all in c: inetpubwwwroot 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 n n 18 September 2020 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 Blue. Dragon Server internal browser (8080) New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Browsing Your Goods n Open a file in your webroot, press F 12 or Browse tab n n n If all goes well, should now see edited page in internal browser Life as a developer should be much more productive now! Hit F 12 again (or Edit tab) to return to editor n n No more need to flip back and forth to external browser, entering URLs What if you prefer to use external browser? n n n 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. 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Browsing Challenges n What if you get an error using browsing feature? n n What if browsed page does not reflect latest edits? n n n Return to mappings editor and correct your settings 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 n See end of article for more details 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Browsing Challenges n Can you browse files opened on an RDS connection? n n 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? n n n 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 n 18 September 2020 No need to create a “development mapping” for such FTP connection New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Browsing Externally n n Can be more useful and powerful than internal browsing If you have IE, Netscape, Opera, etc. installed when Studio/Home. Site+ is installed, it detects them n Then you can browse page externally using F 11 (versus F 12) n n n Opens edited page in “default” external browser Can choose which is default, or add newly installed browsers, using Options>Configure External Browsers n n n or available “magnifying glass” icon when in browse mode Can reorder them, since first in list is what’s launched by F 11 Let’s see it Can also now choose which browser to use with “View external browser list” icon at top right of toolbar 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

Summary n n n 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: charlie@newatlanta. com 18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

18 September 2020 New Atlanta Communications, LLC