Participant

Question

I am very disappointed in CFBuilder 2

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
June 1, 2011
5 replies
3387 views

I have been using CFBuilder since it first came out. I went through some of the early beta annoyances and even some of the situations where a new beta version came out and stopped the current one from working, effectively halting my production until it was fixed. That being said, I love CFBuilder and it has been a mostly positive experience. It has all of the good things about CFEclipse, with a lot of helpful enhancements.

When CFBuilder 2 came out, I was very excited to get my hands on it. I am sure I don't need to go into detail about how important a functional and feature rich IDE is to a developers day, so I am always looking forward to the latest and greatest. CFBuilder 2 falls short in so many ways and after talking many other developers, I realize that I am not the only one with that opinion. I am surprised that Adobe has produced such a bug ridden product.

Being a developer myself, I understand all to well the need to get a product released and making money, but this product is unusable and is making Adobe look bad. I talked to a number of developers at cf.Objective about this and I wasn't surprised that many of them shared my negative experience.

Because I have had issues upgrading from one version to the next in the past, it is my practice to install a fresh version, so there are less issues. I am running Windows 7, but I have talked to friends that are working on Macs and have experienced these problems as well. Here are just a few of my gripes:

- In early versions of Builder and CFEclipse as well, syntax highlighting would occasionally break and would leave your code looking like it was in notepad. Sometimes it would repair itself after time, or you just needed to type something, or highlight code and it would correct itself. In later versions this got much better and all but disappeared. In CFBuilder 2 the problem is back and worse than it ever was. The only way I could fix it much of the time was to just close the file and reopen it.

- In addition to the syntax highlighting breaking, it seems to hang much of the time. It actually crashed my editor a couple of times. Even when I set the setting to make it only refresh when you save, it still seemed to try to update anyway.

- When going to a new line, for some reason it is inserting an extra tab. I see that there is some new code formatting functionality, and I tried to change this behavior, but I couldn't find a way. This is changed behavior from how it worked before and it is frustrating having to search for options just to have it work the way it was originally. I am not really sure who would want the extra tab anyway. It is a tab that doesn't follow the flow of your regular indentation.

- The auto closing of tags doesn't seem to work properly anymore. I tried toggling the settings to see if that would help, but I wasn't able to get it working.

- The previous version gave us some really cool hotkeys. CTRL+SHIFT+A to insert an abort, CTRL+SHIFT+D to insert a cfdump, C and CTRL+SHIFT+M to wrap code in a comment. In CFB2, all of those keys have been remapped by default... I understand that the functions are still there, but it doesn't make sense to me that they were moved.

Honestly, after fighting these issues for only a very short period of time, I got frustrated, uninstalled the app and went back to CFBuilder 1. It seems like this was a complete rewrite and wasn't very well tested. I realize that I could have been a little more detailed on the explanation of some of these issues, but I really don't have anymore time to waste on this unfinished product...

I am very disappointed that this was pushed out in such a non-functional state and I won't feel comfortable giving it another chance until I start hearing that things are vastly improved.

I realize that the tone of this is somewhat negative, but it comes from hours of frustration and wasted time. I only decided to post this after I spoke with a number of my peers that are equally disappointed. I hope this can serve as a nudge to improve the quality of future releases.

Jeff

Builder

This topic has been closed for replies.

Big Mad Kev

Participating Frequently

To the guys having issues, lets get back to basics and see what could be causing you any issues.

What plugins do you have installed ontop of the standard install, if any of course not going to point the finger at this as the cause but we have to start somwhere.

Also did you reuse your projects? Or did you delete and create new ones in CFB2? Again just trying to rule this out.

Something you could try to see if it helps your issue

create a batch file on your desktop with the following in:

"c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe ColdFusion Builder 2\CFBuilder.exe" -initialize

(You may need to change the path for your install)

Run this batch file, you won't see CFB2 start, it may flash up and go again, if you check your task manager while you run this you'll see it come and then go again.

Once it's closed again, reopen CFB2 with your normal link, 1) You should see it start a lot faster 2) lets hope it sorts your issues

To note this also works with CFB1 and also any Eclipse

I took the advise from: http://www.dopefly.com/techblog/entry.cfm?entry=290

"Initializes the configuration being run. All runtime related data structures and caches are refreshed. Handy with shared installs: running Eclipse once with this option from an account with write privileges will improve startup performance."

If you still have issues in this session of using CFB2 try to run this from Start > Run

"c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe ColdFusion Builder 2\CFBuilder.exe" -clean

(Or create a batch file)

I have both of these ready, and I run them at least once a week to keep to my install tip top.

If none of the above helps, if you could just let us know what extra plugins you have, plus if you recreated your workspaces / projects at least that we help us help you.

H

henkemike

Known Participant

Thanks for the tip about -initialize

R

Ryan_Stille

Participating Frequently

I too am having many issues. The synax highlighting problem is one of the more annoying ones. Also have problems where CFB gets too slow to use when editing large files. I have switched back to CFEclipse for now and am anxiously awaiting a 2.1 release.

12Robots

Participating Frequently

Like I said, I hope you guys are reporting these issues with reproduction cases.

I do not deny that CFB2 may have issues. But it would likely make it eaiser to fix them if the bugs are reported in the proper places.

https://bugbase.adobe.com/

H

henkemike

Known Participant

I feel your pain. I think my problem has to do with the cfml code not being able to be parsed correctly. The new Advanced CFSearch has a great Tag search option but with my code it is unusable. I search and it hangs up while maxes out the cpu.

12Robots

Participating Frequently

I am experiencing none of the problems you are having. CFB2 has been working great for me.

I have used it as both a plugin and standalone.

I do have the occasional problem with auto-closing tags not working right, but it can usually be traced back to my own code (like not properly closing a prior tag).

Many of the hot keys were remapped. I recall a lot of discussion about this. The explination was that they wanted to have a consistent way of getting to all of the CFB shortcuts by default (Ctrl + T + <some key>). You can easily remap them back to what you were used to, and many people have done that. I have found that getting used to the new key commands has not been that bad.

I have found CFB2 to be a treat to work with.

Can you post some sample code that reproduces any of these problems?

Also, keep in mind that CFB rides on top of Eclipse. Eclipse can be a bit tricky on its own and it would be impossible to test CFb with every possible combination of plugins and Eclipse settings and on every JVM. It is possible that your issues are a result of any number of things. Plugin conflicts, JVM issues, Eclipse version, 32-bit vs 64-bit, etc could all be factors.

I hope that if you know a way to consistently reproduce the problems you are having that you will report bugs to the development team along with explainations and sample code. It is not right to say that you want something improved but then not let the right people know what needs to be improved.

https://bugbase.adobe.com/

A

Anonymous

i see other posts from developers experiencing the same probs as i am. its not just me.

since yours is working, can you just zip up your install and send it over? much appreciated.

12Robots

Participating Frequently

Where did I say it was "just you"?

A

Anonymous

--^ everything this guy says.

installed standalone; installed as a plugin.

searched high and low for a fix to the code coloring giving up half way through a file.

the tag auto-close makes cf builder 2 loose its mind for 5-10 seconds (an eternity when developing).

ive turned off all the features to get some ground but it still fails miserably.

im reverting to cf builder 1 until version 2 is fixed.

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