newschuyl - Tools

CF No Debug 1.3

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:50:00-0400

The CF No Debug Firefox extension has been updated to work with Firefox 3.6. You can get the latest from RIAForge.

AMF Explorer 0.6

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:34:00-0400

This evening I released AMF Explorer 0.6. This version adds a custom binary cache that should fix issues some users were seeing with AMF response deserialization. I'm still waiting for AMO public approval, so if you are using AMF Explorer you will need to manually update the add-on from the AMO site. Please be sure to report any issues to the AMF Explorer bug tracker at RIAForge. Thanks.

AMF Explorer 0.5

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:52:00-0400

I've released a few updates to AMF Explorer over the last week or so. Improvements include support for small messages, better formatting, and better error messages. You can get the latest from the AMO site. Unfortunately automatic updates are not enabled because AMF Explorer has yet to go public. If you are using AMF Explorer please consider taking the time to register and review the add-on on the AMO site as this will help with the AMO review process. Once the add-on is public it will be easier to find and install as it will not be marked as experimental and automatic updates will be enabled. Thanks!

Announcing AMF Explorer

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:30:00-0400

Back in late 2008 the nsITraceableChannel interface was added to the Mozilla browser allowing extension developers to intercept incoming HTTP responses. At that time I pondered the possibility of adding AMF support to Firebug, however life got in the way and I never really had time to fully explore what it would take to do this. That is until now. Today I'm happy to announce that I'm finally releasing AMF Explorer. [More]

New ColdFire 1.5 Beta

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:42:00-0400

I've posted a new ColdFire beta to RIAForge which works with recently released Firefox 3.6 and Firebug 1.5. I'm labeling this a beta because I discovered a ColdFusion 9 compatibility issue in my testing for this release. It appears ColdFusion's built in AJAX libraries have been updated slightly so the "Enable CFAJAX Debugging" feature does not currently work with CF 9. I'll work on updating this feature in the next couple of weeks. (Unfortunately the AJAX libraries shipped with CF are minimized and obfuscated so working with them is not as easy as it could be.) Because of the beta status of this release I've included both the ColdFire 1.4 and ColdFire 1.5 releases in the current RIAForge download. As always, if you have any issues please report them on the RIAForge project site.

CFBuilder DocShare Support

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:40:00-0400

A few weeks ago Terry Ryan released his Instant Code Review ColdFusion Builder Extension. I realize that the point of the extension was to get people to think of creative uses of CF Builder extensions, but I couldn't help but think that there are much better ways of collaborating using the Eclipse platform, specifically the Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) DocShare plug-in. Unfortunately ColdFusion Builder's CFML Editor doesn't support the plug-in out of the box. Fortunately the DocShare plug-in developers did the Eclipse thing and made it easy to extend the plug-in to support other editors. So I put together an Eclipse plug-in that adds DocShare support to the CFBuilder CFML editor. You can check out the CFBuilder DocShare Support plug-in at RIAForge. A few notes about the plug-in. First, you will need to install ECF, including the DocShare plugin. For update URLs for your version of Eclipse see the ECF site. Second, my plug-in just enables the "Share This Editor With..." context menu item in the CF Builder CFML editor, the actual editor sharing is implemented via the ECF DocShare plug-in. For more info on the DocShare plug-in and its use see the DocShare Plugin site. Finally, I've had I've had hit and miss luck with the DocShare plugin, so be sure you have a backup of the file you plan to work on in shared editor. Enjoy!

IP Ranger

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:45:00-0400

Today I released a new ColdFusion administrator extension, IP Ranger, which allows IP ranges to be added to the debugging IP address list. IPv4 IP address ranges may be added using wildcards (192.*.*.*), octect ranges (192.168.1-10.1-120), or a combination of both (192.168.*.1-120). IP Ranger also allows you to verify, delete, and refresh IP address ranges.

[More]

ColdFire Nominated for Community Achievement Award

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:26:00-0400

Today I was pretty stoked to find out that ColdFire was nominated for a Community Achievement Award in the Best Open Source Project category. I'm not sure who nominated ColdFire, but thank you. It is a honor just to be mentioned with other projects such as ColdBox, BlogCFC, Mango Blog, Mura CMS, ColdSpring, Transer and Model Glue. Of course ColdFire wouldn't even exist were it not for the vision and work of Ray Camden and Adam Podolnick. Thanks guys for letting me work on your project! Be sure to vote for your favorite Open Source Project, and lot of other topics here.

CF Debug Copy Updated for Firefox 3.5

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:53:00-0400

Another day, another extension update. If you use the CF Debug Copy extension for Firefox you may be happy to know that I've just posted an update to RIAForge which works with Firefox 3.5. Enjoy!

New ColdFire Beta

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:06:00-0400

With Firefox 3.5 in release candidate and Firebug 1.4 in its third beta release (after 31 alpha releases) I decided it was time to get my act together and update ColdFire to work with the latest and greatest. If you download ColdFire from the RIAForge site you will notice the zip now contains two releases: 1.3.207.211 and 1.4.207.218. The 1.3 release is the current "production" release which runs on Firefox 3.0 and Firebug 1.3. The 1.4 release should be considered beta since it requires Firebug 1.4, which will run on either Firefox 3.0 or 3.5. There are no new features in the 1.4 release, just support for these awesome new Firefox/Firebug releases. (The ColdFusion and Railo debugging templates are the same from 1.3 to 1.4, so if you want to run Firefox 3.0/Firebug 1.3 and Firefox 3.5/Firebug 1.4 side by side you don't have to change any of the server side ColdFire bits.) I have to give a shout out to Jan "Honza" Odvarko for the great work he is doing on with Firebug's network monitoring. In earlier versions of ColdFire we actually rolled our own network monitoring and it was a huge pain. For ColdFire 1.2 we wised-up and used some crazy closure hacks to leverage Firebug's network monitor. It worked, allowing us to introduce features like the response queue, but boy was it ugly and brittle. Firebug 1.3 introduced a API for its NetworkMonitor module which allowed extension developers to register listeners and receive data from the network panel, which we in turn leveraged in ColdFire 1.3. Now Firebug 1.4 expands on that API, and best of all Honza has done a great job of documenting this expanded API on his blog. (Anyone interested in working with Firebug should definitely read Honza's blog, Software is Hard. I wish many of those articles had been written when I was digging through the Firebug code trying to figure things out.) ColdFire 1.4 has been updated to use this new API, which was the only significant change to ColdFire code for this release. That's all for now. As always please report any issues on the RIAForge bug tracker.

ColdFire 1.3.207.199, Now With Railo Support

Fri, 29 May 2009 18:05:00-0400

In honor of Mark Drew's visit to the Philly CFUG last night, and Sean Corfield's announcement about the new Railo beta today, I've just posted a new version of ColdFire with a debugging template for Railo. This is a beta release. For more info on installation and what's supported in this release see my blog post on the RIAForge site.

New ColdFire Release

Wed, 27 May 2009 21:29:00-0400

Just a quick post to let folks know I've just uploaded a extension only update for ColdFire which fixes a stored procedure related issue with the DB Queries tab. Check out the RIAForge site for more info.

ColdFusion Bug: CFTRACE and _CF_NODEBUG=true

Wed, 20 May 2009 22:17:00-0400

Here is a interesting bug I ran into today while using CF No Debug. If you use the <cftrace> tag with the _cf_nodebug parameter set to true, the tag will throw the following error:

Variable DEBUGGER is undefined.

In ColdFusion, the <cftrace> tag is implemented in CFML via the pre-complied WEB-INF/cftags/trace.cfm template. Now, this is simply a guess, but I bet that trace.cfm uses the IsDebugMode() function to determine if it should attempt to write trace info to the debugging query. Possibly something like the following:

As I previously noted there is a bug with IsDebugMode() where it returns true when using _cf_nodebug = true, even though the debugging service is disabled. If something like the above code is used in trace.cfm, IsDebugMode() would return a false positive when _cf_nodebug is true and the ColdFusion ServiceFactory would return null for the debugger variable. When a null value is assigned to a ColdFusion variable it can lead to the undefined error we see in this case. I've logged a bug with Adobe for this, but it is something to look out for if you use CF No Debug and start seeing "Variable DEBUGGER is undefined" errors.

New ColdFire Release

Mon, 11 May 2009 13:08:00-0400

I just uploaded a new version of ColdFire to RIAForge. This release is an extension only update so there is no need to update the server bits. Here is a quick rundown of what is new/fixed:

Total execution time is now shown on general tab.
Users can choose to have the execution times tab show the totals at the top, using the new "Exec Time Totals on Top" option.
Fixed issue where components with no methods would break variables output.
Fixed user preferences (selected options) so that they are now persisted.

Also, one thing I noticed while working on this release is that the variables tab does not correctly display child components. If you have a component that extends another component, you will only see the methods defined on the child component and the display will not indicate that the component extends another component. I'll have to look into what can be done to fix this, but in the meantime it is something to be aware of if you depend on ColdFire to give you the API for a component. As always, keep the bug reports and feature requests coming.

CF No Debug Gets A Little Smarter

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:52:00-0400

Last week I updated my CF No Debug extension so that it will remember what state it was last in when you open Firefox. Before, when you closed and re-opened Firefox the extension was always disabled, allowing ColdFusion request debugging to execute. Now if you have the extension enabled when you close Firefox, it will remain enabled when you open Firefox again. This is an extension only update, so there is no need to update the servlet filter.