CFML IDE Survey Summary

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I finally found a bit of time to sit down and pull out some results from the CFML IDE survey:

393 Results (4/9 - 4/28)

1. Which of these describes your role best as a CFML user?
- Application Developer (172)
- Web Developer (129)
- Application Architect (60)
- Other included “superdude” and “all around scrub”

2. Which IDE(s) do you currently use for CFML development?
- CFEclipse (319)
- Dreamweaver (133)
- Eclipse (118)
- Homesite/CFStudio (91)
- Flexbuilder (82)
- Other - Aptana, Notepad++

3. What is your platform of choice for development?
- Windows (320)
- Mac (101)
- Linux (57)

4. Which features in your IDE do you most commonly/frequently use during development?
- Syntax highlighting of code (351)
- File Explorer (237)
- Help for CFTags/Functions (220)
- HTML editing (217)
- Source code control (205)
- CSS editing (160)
- Javascript editing (94)

5. How important are the following features for you in a CFML IDE?
Must Have:
- Syntax high-lighting of code (288)
- HTML editing (237)
- CSS editing (210)
- Javascript editing (199)
- Help for CFTags/Functions (193)
- Source code control (185)

Very Important:
- Integrated debugger (124)
- Framework Support (121)
- Intelisense on CFCs (114)

Useful:
- Integrated CFC explorer (161)
- Integrated log viewer (146)
- Integrated CRUD wizard (126)

Nice To Have:
- Integrated RDS data explorer (104)
- Customizable code coloring (83)
- Simplified Flex/Air development (71)

Unnecessary:
- Integrated CRUD wizard (71)
- Integrated RDS data explorer (50)
- Simplified Flex/Air development (31)

6. What in your opinion would be the right price range for CFML IDE?
- Under $100 (138)
- $100-500 (124)
- Free (109)

7. What features would you like to see added as one click install to an CFML IDE?
- Source control (294)
- XML tools (240)
- Documentation generation tools (220)
- Diff / compare tools (216)
- Unit testing tools (203)
- Other: “The ability to harness the magical powers of the internet.”

Still disappointed in the low number of results.  According to this recent article in Infoworld

Adobe officials cited analyst estimates of 400,000 developers using ColdFusion

So 400 results seems a tad low.  So either people just ignored the survey, or there is a huge number of ColdFusion developers that don’t know about my blog :)  I’d love to know what kind of results Adobe got on their IDE survey.


The Savvy CMS - CFEclipse.org Makeover - Part II

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When we last left our Savvy saga we were facing installation.  Again the great documentation made installation a breeze and sums up the steps required nicely:

Savvy CM installation is very easy. There are no installation programs to be run on the server, instead you copy your files to the web server, modify the includes.cfm file with the correct information for your installation, register the database in ColdFusion, then upload your templates.

There are a few things you need to consider. Savvy includes an application.cfm file so if you are installing Savvy into an existing application (which is possible) you need to take some additional steps in order to allow the use of the Savvy application.cfm. Again these are outlined in details in the online docs.

Next you modify a file, includes.cfm, in which you define you datasource, some path information, site name and description and some other general settings.  Next you run a diagnostic utility which will check your configuration, verify your datasources and warn you if you need to fix anything. If all looks well you can then use the same diagnostic page to create your database.

The few glitches I encountered during installation and configuration were all covered in the documentation.

Once you have Savvy installed and configured the next step is to create a template!