Andrew Schwabe's Blog - Eclipse

Flash Builder 4 (aka Flex 4 aka "Gumbo") is released!

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:27:00 -0400

Lots of aka's (i know). Flex 4 SDK (open source) has been out for a while, or at least as a public beta. Now that Flash Builder 4 (the new IDE that replaces Flex Builder 3 -- note the product naming difference), there is a lot to be excited about. A new skinning system that brings in the best of declarative graphics and fixes quirks with scale 9 and manual skinning of components. Supposedly everything is a lot more efficient and light weight. Flex 3 was pretty to look at, but a bit memory intensive. I don't have specifics on that yet, but all improvements are welcome to make it scalable for larger apps. It is also designed for backward compatibility, so hopefully all our Flex3 apps compile nicely. Looks like a great upgrade! If you are into ColdFusion/Railo as well, be sure to check out their bundle of Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder at a good price. Here are some details: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/overview/

CF United 09 Presentation Files - Google App Engine and Flex

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:42:00 -0400

Ok folks, here are my preso files for my CF United 2009 talk on Google App Engine and Flex. Is this the final version? Sure. Until I change it. I shall resist doing that... Here is the powerpoint presentation download: 294_Andrew_Schwabe_Google_App_Engine_Flex.ppt Here is the full download (warning, this is big!) Contains all 4 google app engine java projects, all 4 flex projects and the powerpoint file. The download is big because of all the jar files. I will try to have a USB key with me so if you want a super fun time instant copy instead of downloading it, I should be able to do that. Full download (94MB, zipped): CFun09_GAE_Files.zip For those of you web surfers interested -- demo 4 project includes a fix for allowing Flex app using AMF to retrieve Google Account information (using ajax and a custom auto servlet) so your Flex apps can determine if you are logged in, and get your user identifier if you are logged in.

CF United Update: Google App Engine + Flex

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:02:00 -0400

My talk at CFUnited has changed a bit... Since the topic was chosen a while back, Google has released a Java developer environment and eclipse plugin for Google App Engine (GAE). Since Java is a whole lot closer to CFML than python is, I've updated all my code and presentation to focus on the Java application architecture, and how to connect it to Flex. I've even got some tidbits on how to get CFML running on Google App Engine ! Be sure to come on out and learn about the exciting new "super scalable" web application system running on Google's free hosting infrastructure.

Subversion on Windows + Eclipse Howto: Part 2

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:20:00 -0400

Ok, here in part 2 we are going to detail the installation process for Subversion on windows. If you follow these directions, it should go pretty smooth, and when you are done, you will have a working subversion server connected to your eclipse for remote development. Step 1: Download the software you need:

Download Subversion binary installer I used Setup-Subversion-1.5.1.en-us.msi at the time of writing this. I recommend you get the newest STABLE release. Download Tortoise SVN installer I used version 1.5.3 at the time of writing this. I recommend you get the newest STABLE release. Optional: If you don't have eclipse yet, I highly recommend you get it here (if you don't know which version to get, get the java developers version), along with Aptana tools and either subclipse or subversive. Installation and config of eclipse won't be covered here, but there is plenty of documentation online that a google search will reveal.

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Subversion on Windows + Eclipse Howto: Part 1

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:23:00 -0400

There are a lot of Subversion/windows tutorials out there, but many of them are also outdated. Subversion is quite mature now, and there are several ways to use it for software development lifecycle. The two most common questions I get about subversion are:

Can I have subversion manage source on a remote server if I develop over FTP? and
Do I have to run subversion on my local machine if I want to develop locally.

The short answers to these questions are: Yes, you can have subversion manage code that lives remotely, you just have to know how to do it. And No, you do not need to install and run the subversion software on your local machine if you don't want to. The ideal setup is that your server runs Subversion to manage code on your remote server, and you simply use a client to connect to your repository for remote development. If you are connecting remotely and actually doing your development on a remote machine, thats where it gets a bit tricky. You will need access to the server and do critical commits, updates, etc. on the server. Other than that, you can remotely develop via FTP. In Part 2, I will detail the installation process on Windows 2003 (using modern versions of subversion and tortoise SVN), step by step, so that you can get a Subversion server up and running, and connect to it remotely using Eclipse. Subsequent parts to this will be examples of how to setup projects that are server-side development code versus client-side development code along with pros and cons of each. If you have specific configuration requests, please post comments so I know what you want to see.

Aptana Studio Released!

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:01:00 -0400

I am truly impressed with what this group has brought to the development community. Long ago I loved a code editor called "HomeSite+" which existed in several interesting flavors, ColdFusion Studio (i think?), and JRun Studio were two other flavors I remember.

Then came the Dreamweaver shift... I never really got on that bandwagon. I resisted for a LONG time, then I tried it out, and just never really was thrilled with it. I am a coder at heart.

Then came Eclipse. Great concept, just not for the masses. Then came Eclipse 3, and then CFEclipse... then came Flex Builder and the RDS plugins, all good still, but not thrilling.

HomeSite was great at letting you develop remotely. Thats a big no-no in the software world now, but for web developers it is a big deal. You don't always have _everything_ you need running on your laptop!

Anyway, I got off track. After all these tools, finally comes an attempt to bring it all together: Aptana Studio. In its development stage as Aptana IDE, I fell in love with it (well, with MOST of it anyway...). It all runs on Eclipse, and gives the basic developer everything he or she needs to code html, php, javascript, xml, css, etc. All the things that were either missing, or painfully buggy or incomplete in Eclipse. Not to mention an FTP (and secure FTP) system that actually works! And you can create new empty files on remote ftp servers too (a lot of us have been waiting for this feature for a while).

I can now safely say that I have found my HomeSite+ replacement :)

Download it, you know you want to: http://www.aptana.com/ (its free)

FYI, Aptana was founded by Paul Colton, formerly of Allair. If you can remember back that far, Allair was the company that originally built ColdFusion, before it was bought by Macromedia (and subsequently by Adobe).

Aptana plugin for Eclipse

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:36:00 -0400

Hopefully a lot of you ColdFusion developers are using Eclipse now with the CFEclipse plugin. Many developers dont know about the Aptana plugin however (http://www.aptana.com/). This free plugin gives you all the stuff that you miss from DreamWeaver or Homesite+ -- html and css editing, etc. In addition you get an XML editor, and a fantastic ftp interface, which is sorely needed in Eclipse. Aptana has a very nice ftp synchronization tool set which allows you to effectively develop locally and synchronize to an ftp site.

For those who are curious about how we have our Eclipse configured, here it is:

Eclipse 3.2.x
CF Eclipse 1.3.x
RDS Plugin (from Flex Builder 2)
Aptana plugins
Violet UML plugin