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


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+"


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


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


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


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)

http://127.0.0.1/


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.


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


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


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


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]


Documents

Charlie Arehart, CTO charlie@newatlanta