I've been asked that question several times lately due to the immense popularity of CFSnippets.org and have been meaning to put together a good tutorial showing just how to do it. Then I remembered that it's already been done for me! Check out this tutorial up at the CFEclipse Wiki.

Snip-A-Thon 2007 is rolling right along and I'm thrilled to say the contest seems to be pretty successful so far. Through one week we've had 5 active participants who've submitted over 15 new snippets to the site. It's quite an awesome feeling to open your snippet explorer in CFEclipse and see tons of helpful snippets just waiting to make my coding easier!!

Here are the current standings:

In case you forgot, here is another look at the prizes up for grabs and another thank you to the sponsors!!

Prizes

• A 5 user license for Savvy Content Manager
• A copy of Fusion Reactor
• A copy of FusionDebug 2.0 Standard
• A one year subscription to Fusion Authority Quarterly Update
• Two participants will be chosen at random (one each month) and will receive a copy of the ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit.

This contest could not have happened without the support of the following sponsors:

Savvy Content Manager - ColdFusion CMS
Fusion Reactor
Fusion Authority Quarterly Update

I wanted to dedicate a specific post to the technology/framework that powers my new site CFSnippets.org. In case you haven't noticed just yet (and if you haven't noticed, shame on you, go create an account!), CFSnippets.org is powered by Model-Glue. This was my first full experience with the magic that is MG and I must say I'm hooked. It just all seemed to make sense - and it just 'worked'. I found myself thinking very little about 'what goes where' once I got comfortable with the framework and thinking more about the user experience and the overall flow and look and feel of the site. It's hard to fully explain just how cool it is to finally understand and be able to develop a full application within a framework. My learning curve was a bit steeper seeing as how I decided to also take the time to fully soak up OO design patterns and put them into practice with this site. The end result is something that I'm really proud of - and for once the site is not something that I dread going back into to make a minor change or add a bit of functionality. I know exactly where to go to change/fix something and that's a feeling that I like a whole lot! I'm not completely sold on what my next full blown MG project will be - but I know there will be another one. I still metally waiver on those 'smaller' projects and whether or not the end result will be 'worth' using MG. I know that sounds silly - and again - I can't really explain why I feel that way since it's so darned easy to work with.

So about that user experience that I spoke of earlier. Bits and pieces of the site make use of ColdFusion 8's Ajax features. For example, when you're logged in and viewing libraries you may notice a 'Subscribe' option underneath each library that you can use to subscribe and create your own custom feed. I thought it would be nice to allow you to do this without a page reload so when the link is clicked, an Ajax request is submitted to update your subscription and the link fades out and is replaced by the 'Unsub' link. Subtle, but still pretty cool if you ask me. I also am using <cfwindow> on the site to display the code view of each snippet that you see as you browse a given library. Another small touch that seems to work out nicely.

The initial reaction to the launch has seemed very positive and I'm hoping that the momentum keeps up. I really feel that this can become a valuable asset to the ColdFusion community. If you have any ideas for the site please feel free to let me know.

I'm proud to announce the launch of my latest project, cfsnippets.org. The site is the first public SnipEx repository open to all snippet types for CFEclipse. If you're not familiar with Snippets in Eclipse, they're basically simple chunks of code - typically repetitive type tasks - that you can quickly and easily insert into your code by point/click or keyboard shortcut combinations. Jared Rypka-Hauer has already started a library on the site - check it out to get a feeling for how the site works. If you have snippets to add just register, verify your account and start adding snippets to the existing library or create your own. To use the SnipEx repository, click on 'SnipEx Server(s)' and copy the URL shown on that page and paste it into CFEclipse. For more on how to set that up see this post from Mark Drew.

As the site grows you may find there are a handfull of libraries that you use more then others. No problem, you'll be given the option to subscribe to individual libraries and customize your feed. A second URL will be presented to you (of course only when you're logged in) that contains only the libararies that you've subscribed to.

Currently you must manually delete your SnipEx cache in Eclipse to see new snippets as they're updated. Be sure to check the FAQ for a link that explains how to do this.

Note: Thanks to Jim Priest for reminding me that Raymond Camden also has a public SnipEx server. The main difference being that Ray's server strictly serves up the UDF's hosted at CFLib while this server is open to any snippet.

Quite a title for a blog post! I know it's been posted elsewhere, but I finally took the time to upgrade to Eclipse 3.3 (Europa) and the latest version of CFEclipse. What makes this (somewhat) cool for Vista users is that Eclipse now gets some of the Vista UI look and feel (and supposedly performs better under Vista).

See Mark Drew's post - and make sure you also update your CFEclipse plug-in too.

So lets say you wanted to find a file in your CFEclipse local history but you no longer have access to the server on which the project resides? The good news is it's still possible - the bad news is you have to get 'creative' to find it. But sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.

It appears that all of your local history is stored in the following directory (your path may vary):

The bad news is that the subdirectories are not named in such an inuitive manner that you can easily find what you're looking for. A simple file system search on your operating system should help you here (assuming you remember something about the file that will allow you to search for it).

In my case it was a file that I very recently accessed so I sorted by date and quickly found the file I was looking for.

Here's one for you to ponder (and if you're reading this you are as ready for the weekend as I am). I started using CFEclipse a few months ago as my full time coding environment. So far I'm pretty much in love with it. It takes a little getting used to, but since Mark Drew and crew (The Drew Crew?) do such a fantastic job I'm finding it easier to get comfortable with. So one of the things that truly sets it apart from your average text editor is the integrated browser. How freaking cool is that? The only thing that would make it better would be integrated Firefox, but hey we can't have everything! ;) Speaking of that integrated browser, here's my pointless observation. 90% of the time when I'm checking out my wonderful work in the integrated browser I find myself mousing back down to the taskbar to switch back to my editor when I'm ready to make some more changes. I can't help it - it's just habit!! I'm sure I'll break it in time. It's almost as bad as mousing to the upper left of the browser in IE 7 to refresh the page - every single time. I can not stand that! I mean bravo, you integrated the 'Go' and 'Refresh' buttons into one button, but 10+ years of browsing has told me that the refresh button is in the top left corner! Before someone brings it up, yes I know F5 will refresh - its just one of the keyboard shortcuts I never got in the habit of using. OK I'm done now - but feel free to share your random Friday observations.