I decided to upgrade to version 3.3 of Eclipse today. I went for a clean install, and then add the plugins I use. So after installing CFEclipse first (of course), I went on over to the Aptana website to get the Aptana plugin (which I mainly use for CSS), and there on the front page they announce that Aptana now supports AIR.

I've not checked it out my self yet. Actually I took the time to write this post even before downloading the Aptana plugin. So go check it out your self at: http://www.aptana.org/air/.

I'm not a very advanced user of SVN, and up until now I've used TortoiseSVN as the client of my choice. However being that I now have a mac at home I needed to find a SVN client for OSX. However I could not find anything that looked as easy to use as Tortoise.

I've been using (CF)Eclipse for quite a while, but for some reason I always thought that Subclipse is a advanced/difficult SVN client. However, realizing that I should probably learn it I decided to go ahead and (try to) use that on the mac.

To make it short: It's awesome. It's every bit as easy to use as Tortoise, and the fact that you create a new Eclipse project as part of setting up your local working copy is one of those things that really makes it worth while.

I've just scratched the surface of Subclipse yet, but it is the SVN client of choice for me from now on - yes, even on Windows machines.

Some of you might be thinking something along the lines of "Instead of just going on about how easy and great it is - why can't he tell us how to use it?". Well my friends, I see no reason to, because there is already a VERY GOOD explanation available, and which is the one I used to get started. It's written by Aaron West and can be found at his blog.

So Aaron, if you ever read this, Thanx a lot mate!

I continue my journey to get the new pc in work installed with all necessities, and at the same time trying not to put to much into it.

However, as this is a Windows pc (sigh), I need to put some anti virus software in there. There are several free ones out there, but my definitive favorite, and one that seems to go under the radar very often is Active Virus Shield.

It seems to work well, not to slow down my computer (at least not noticeable) and has a nice UI (which is more than you can say about AVG).

So if you're looking for free anti virus software - give it a try.

With a new computer in work I have decided to keep it as clean as possible, but sometimes there is software that you just need to have. Kinda like with Firefox extensions.

So today I put my mouse pointer over the quick launch bar just to find that one of those essential little tools were missing. It's a color picker that I've been using for years, namely Pixie from Nattyworks.

So if you need a color picker, you might want to check out this one.

I just got a new pc in work (a Dell Precision M65 taking over for the older M50 - would have prefered a MacBook, but...). So after opening up Firefox there were clearly stuff missing there, I almost felt handicaped. So I installed all the extensions that I "need", in order to feel whole again.

Without further ado, here they are:

- All-in-One Gestures - Firebug - ShowIP - Tab Mix Pluss - Web Developer

I just had to make a blog post from our new home computer, a wonderful 24inch iMac. I have just hardly started to use it, and this is my first ever mac, but I really love how smooth everything is. Installing new programs, setting up wireless network, etc.. it's all so.. well smooth (to repeat myself).

Also, I wanted to make a small update to the code of my blog, and needed a FTP client. I Googled around, and came upon Cyberduck. And this is a really smooth (there I used that word again - I suspect I will be using it a lot on this machine) FTP client. I really liked it. And it's open sourse and shareware. And also it supports SFTP (which we use in work).

I've not yet done any development on this machine, so I'll get back to what I think about mac as a development platform.

Apparently this tool, written by Nathan Dintenfass has been around since 2003, but I only found out about it now (saw it here).

This is a great tool. On the servers we use in work (and the ones I use privately as well) the CFCExplorer is not accessible. With CFCRemoteDocumenter (phew - it cold use a shorter name) you cfinclude a cfm file into your component, and then open it in your browser with the following querystring at the end: ?method=getDocumentation

I like the idea of having one base class for all objects, since you then can have at least one common property for all objects: objectID (I learned this from working with FarCry). By including the CFCRemoteDocumenter in the base class it should/could be available for all classes. I did not try this yet though, but it would be cool if it worked.

A post on Raymond Camdens blog talked about a tool by Mike Schierbert called varScoper.

The varScoper is a tool to identify variables created within a cfc's cffunction that don't have the corresponding "<cfset var..." statement.

I checed the online demo and must say that this looks like a very good tool indeed. This one goes into my toolbox.

Yesterday I attended an online meeting with Doug Hughes presenting his Alagad Image Component and Alagad Captcha.

I must say that the presented functionality of the Image Component blew me (and pretty much everyone else attending as well) away. I've worked with several cfx tags for manipulating images, and none has been close to the ease of use, richness in functions or quality of result as Dougs cfc. Yes you read right. It's just a cfc. No dll file to install, no third party software to mess around with, just a plain cfc file. For just $75,- this is a steal for anyone in the need of working with images through their web site, intranet or other CF powered application.

The Captcha Component, which is a subset of the Image Component, was pretty darn nifty also.

At the end of the presentation Doug asked everybody to write in a number between 1 and 100, and the one coming closest to the number he had pre chosen would win licenses for both the components. I guessed 89 and the pre chosen number was 85, making me the winner of the license for these awesome products .

I don't remember quite when it was, maybe a year ago, I decided to check out CFEclipse. However, at the time I would compare it directly to Dreamweaver, and I found too many features missing from CFEclipse that I use daily in DW, and so did not bother to check it out further.

However certain circumstances recently made me install Eclipse and give it a new go:

• The xml workgroup I'm participating in have started working with DocBook, and I wanted to check out the Vex editor plug-in.
• There's been a lot of praise of CFEclipse in numerous blogs the last year.
• I have decided that I will start learning Java (I've told my self that for a long time), but now I'm really going to do it (now that I've said it in public I'm kind of obliged). And since Eclipse also is a Java development tool, it was a natural choice. Watch out for a series of "Java for Newbies" posts as I go along.

The framework

So, now that I've installed it and used it for a while,  What do I think of it? The answer is that I dig it. Any negative comments I might have, has to do with some of the plug-ins and not the Eclipse framework itself. The update feature, the project management, the incredible flexible layout functionality the ease of installing new plug-ins, in short everything with the Eclipse framework itself is just great.

The plug-ins

I started out with three plug-ins. The earlier mentioned Vex and CFEclipse (of course), and the XMLBuddy plug-in (after advice from my friend Jared).

I immediately found that the CFEclipse/XMLBuddy combination is KILLER when it comes to mach-ii development. XMLBuddy easily replaces XMLMarker  which I've been using for xml config files from before. And for coding cfc's (the model portion of a mach-ii application) I already feel more comfortable than in DW (and I've been a DW user and fan for a LONG time). If now the Vex plug-in was any good I would be able to code and write my mach-ii tutorials within the Eclipse environment. Sadly I have to say that while not bad, the Vex plug-in can't compete with the freestanding XML Editor from XMLmind for authoring DocBook documents.

I've later also installed the SQLExplorer plug-in and the Eclipse WTP (Web Tools Platform).  The SQLExplorer I've not been able to connect to my DB yet (due to my own stupidity maybe), so I can't say much about it yet (except that it is a bit hard to connect to your DB - if you are not smarter than me that is).

As for the WTP I found the CSS capabilities to be pretty good (not as good as in DW still), and combined with the browser view (I always have my local development projects mapped under localhost) I almost feel that it in time Eclipse can replace DW as web site/application layout/design tool. The other features of WTP I've not played around with yet.

As for the future I've already bookmarked about 30 plug-ins that I will test when time allows. The majority of these deal with XML, UML or DB interaction. One sure winners is the Poseidon UML  plug-in, and I am also excited to see if the Clay DB modelling plug-in can replace DBDesigner 4.

I'll blog back when I have more to tell. If you have suggestions for plug-ins or good advice on the use of Eclipse please leave a comment.