Andrew's ramblings

ColdFusion Builder 2 and my current thoughts on this up coming release.

Tags: General, ColdFusion Builder

Unless you have been living under a rock, then you would have missed that ColdFusion Builder 2 is sitting on Adobe Labs, currently sitting as a public beta.

So far I have not really seen any difference in using this product, in comparison with builder Version 1 . Now I state this in using the product to do my work, and I really don't see any difference in the way I use it. Which I believe if this is the case would the new features be worth the upgrade, the answer is maybe not for me.

Sure there are some very nice features in this release, but honestly I don't see myself using to many of these features on a regular basis.

So what are some of the new features in Builder Version 2?

Editor enhancements

It looks like Adobe has put a lot of effort in getting this implemented better, and provide some really nice enhancements. And to be honest they have done a fairly good job so far, and even though I don't use these features, I can see how this feature can be a god send to some.

Being able to say type <cffunc and then CTRL+SPACE will then display that you must want cffunction, and after selecting this via the pop up. It displays the following:

This could be good if you are still using and developing with tags more than cfscript, but as I do I have found this useless for me as a developer. I am not sure how they would do it for script based code, yet it would be nice to include it for script coding as well as tag coding.

Now having said that with this enhancement, I do like the fact that the functions available, to give more information provided to the developer, like the arguments the function takes. Which I do find appealing, and a very nice addition to the editor.

Persistent Code Folding

Now this is one feature that if it was implemented correctly, I would use to the hilt. The problem at the moment is that there are a lot of functions and tags, that code folding is not applicable to for some reason. If Adobe was to fix this so that all tags that can or do have closing tags, could be collapsed, then I would also love to have this feature. Until then it will not be something that I am interested in using at the moment.

The other thing that does really turn me off is when a file is opened, that you actually see the code collapse. It would be great if the user didn't see this happen, and personally it is a turn off when I see that. So this will be another feature that will not tickle my fancy at the moment either, but being a beta release it could well be that this will be fixed prior to release.

I know a lot of people might not understand this feature, but to have all collapsed when opening a file based on what you like. Makes the developing process that much more enjoyable, and not to mention more productive when not having to search and read through code that you are very familiar with. It's a way of looking at code and saying well I already know what happens here, so I will have it collapsed and if I ever need to look into it I can reopen if I need too.

But I also find that it helps when re-opening a file I can quickly see what I might have been looking at last time, although this is not a feature of CFB, it is however something that I got used to with CFEclipse. In that I would open the code that I was interested in, and then if I closed the file and revisited it, I could see what I was last looking at with much greater ease. Especially if you have to open and close files during the development of some code.

Quick Fix

This is one feature that I might use, however during my development process I am still debating on this one. But I think that this is rather one nice feature, the fact that it works both within cfscript and normal tags is fairly impressive to say the least. From what I can tell it could do with some better formatting when inserting the code, like use the code formatting to insert the code, but I am still impressed with this feature.

Tag Block Selection & Jump to Matching Tag

This seems interesting to say the least, not really sure why this was added. I think if you got into the habit of using the code collapsing it would maybe make this a little obsolete. Might need to play around with this one some more, and maybe see the benefits to it, but I could see its usefulness if there was no code collapsing though.

Hover Help

This is also another nice feature but not something I would use that much, but I can certainly see the huge benefits to this feature. But the one thing that I do like is that it works with custom methods, as well as the internal functions to ColdFusion. However it looks like it might be based of the hint attribute/annotation to the cffunction/function, which most people should be using to document your code anyway. It is not something that I might use that much, however if you are coming back to a project or code that you haven't touched for awhile, then this could provide some very good insight into what the function does without opening the file to read the code.

Code Formatter

This again is not something that I would use a great deal of either, but this is also another great feature that has been added to CFB. The only problem that I have with it at the moment is that it is not very configurable, well it is, however it requires more options. When trying to get the formatter setup to abide by the Coding Guidelines that I am used too, it was near impossible to get it to come even close to being perfect.

I believe this is one feature that is still being addressed, and hopefully by the time of release, this would have been given a lot more options that will suit the vast majority of users to CFB.

Advanced Find and Replace

Now this is one feature that I went WTF!!!! I think this feature is going to take some time to get the hang of, I was blown away with how configurable it actually is and thought too much to learn right now. However the only thing that I did not like about it so far, is that I could not find how I could select a resource in the project, and search only in there. Considering the amount of options so far, this is either an oversight or I am not seeing how to do it.

Under normal circumstances I might always revert to the standard search, but I can see the benefits of the CFB search, it wasn't that long ago I wished I could. And now it looks like I would be able too, in this release.

Apart from being over whelming to look at and use, this is really another good addition.

Extension Enhancements

This is not something that I have ever used to date, and I haven't gone into all the new features of this. But the one thing that I do finally like is the fact that the extensions can now run in a view, which is going to open up to some really very nice enhancements to 3rd party extensions for ColdFusion Builder.

Task Tags

Finally!! Yes this is something that I am used to doing with CFEclipse, and it was good to see it eventually working in CFB. The only problem I have with this, would be to add a feature to read/scan directories to update the list. Having to manually open each file before seeing it added to the task list, is a big pain. I looked and didn't see anything, so that would have been a nice addition.

Conclusion

Now on a personal level and even though there is some very nice features here, there is nothing really here that I would consider to be a major release. Is there more things to come, that we might not know about?

But for everyone else these features are actually adding a lot more productivity to the IDE, that can only ever be a good thing.