Application Development Tools in Studio
This section gives a brief description of the major development tools.
Tools
You can try these features on the Tools menu to get a sense of what Studio has to offer as an IDE:
- Tag Chooser -- A repository of HTML, CFML, HDML, VTML, and Custom tags. The embedded help window provides syntax and usage information for the selected tag.
- Expression Builder -- Insert CFML expression elements (functions, constants, operators, variables) directly or double-click to build complex expressions in the expressions pane.
- SQL Builder -- View database schema and construct and test SQL operations for insertion in templates.
- Spell Check -- Use the integrated spell checker or optionally use the Microsoft Word spell checker if it is installed.
- Code Validator -- Check the syntax of the current tag or an entire document. Open the Options > Settings dialog (F8) and click the Validation tab to enable validation and to specify CFML and HTML versions.
- Document Weight -- Presents a list of the current document's dependencies (links to Web resources) calculates approximate download times for common modem types.
- Verify Links -- Tests the links in the current document and returns the Web server error message for unsuccessful links.
Debugger
The Debugger lets you map ColdFusion servers and debug CFML code using an extensive tool set on the Debug menu and toolbar. See the Keyboard Shortcuts section below for a list of Debug shortcuts.
For more information, see the Debugging and Troubleshooting chapter.
Search
The Search menu provides some powerful features for editing files:
- Extended Find and Replace -- Works across open documents or can recursively search folders. Support for regular expressions enables sophisticated search criteria.
- Replace Special Characters -- Change ASCII extended characters to equivalent HTML and back. To set auto-conversion of extended characters, open the Options > Settings > Files tab.
- Replace Double-Spacing with Single-Spacing -- Quickly re-format pages.
Browsers
You can preview your code in a number of ways:
- If Internet Explorer is detected during the Studio installation, you are prompted to use it as the internal browser. Open the Options > Settings > Browse tab to add it later and to set Web server mappings for processing pages.
- The Studio installation also auto-detects a number of common browsers if they are installed on your system. Click Options > Configure Internal Browsers to review and edit the list.
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