R8_UK, I hear your concerns, and they're rather common. I hope I can address
(and resolve) some of them here for you.
First, I use the FTP feature all the time and it never makes the IDE
"sleep". You may want to turn on the progress view (window>show
view>other>general>progress). It will tell you what's happening as FTP
processes are running. It will also tell you other processes going on in the
editor. You may be surprised to find something else causing the "sleeps" you
sense.
As for you saying that "it shows me the top level root and I have to drill
down each time for the destination where I want to upload", again I don't
have that problem. Are sure you didn't just make a mistake in setting up the
FTP connection? Admittedly, changing them is tough. You have to go to the
File view, and there you'll see what FTP (or FTPS or SFTP) connections
you've made.
Or do you mean that you ARE using the File view, and it's when you open that
that it makes you drill down? Well, you don't need to do that. You can
instead connect your project to an FTP connection (either in the project
properties and its synchronization section, or by just right-clicking
anywhere in the project and choose Synchronize>Create New Synchronize
Connection).
If you do that, then it also solves a common complaint I hear from some,
that it's complicated to do an FTP upload in CFBuilder. Well, I just right
click on the file (or on the editor workspace to upload the file I'm working
on, such as after changing and testing it locally), then choose
Synchronize>Upload. Bang, done.
There is also a more evolved "synchronize" feature that lets you do more
(including comparing the contents of a file locally to remote, which comes
in really handy). There's an even still more evolved interface in
Window>Show View>Other>HTML Standard Views>Sync Explorer. The latter two
come closer to the kind of two-paned interface for managing local/remote
files that some expected in DW.
Of course, different people have different desires for FTP access. You have
said you do NOT want to edit the file directly on the remote server. I hope
what I share above helps you. But those who DO like editing on the remote
server (indeed, at their peril) will groan that they wish they didn't have
to do even that simple manual effort to upload: they wish that on save it
would upload. I don't know if we can ever expect that from within a local
project in Eclipse. It just goes against the grain of better development
practices, and it's one area where perhaps it's a good thing if the IDE
pushes one to reconsider that.
Until then, though, they can indeed use the File view, which does provide
direct access to a remote server and its files. With that, you do open the
remote file in the IDE and when you save it, it's pushed immediately to the
server.
Hope some of this helps you (and others) with your consternation with CFB
and FTP. Come on in, the water's fine. (But I'll grant that's a relative
statement. If you're still not sold, keep pointing out your concerns.)
/charlie
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