Jeff Coughlin's ColdFusion Blog

FarCry 5.1 Official Release

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:43:00 -0400

This news is actually a month old, but I haven't seen anyone else talk about it yet.

Daemon has once again outdone themselves with the release of FarCry Core 5.1. This new version comes with a very large assortment of new features and bug fixes when compared to the previous release of FarCry 5.0 from last June.

With over 200 documented bug fixes and new features, FarCry 5.1 is definitely an upgrade not to be missed. Below are a few I felt deserved mentioning:

Faster Startup Time: FarCry starts up much faster now (as well as application scope updates) for people using JVM 1.5 or better (if you have CF8, you should be all set). Because CF's createUUID() method is so slow, Rob Rohan replaced it with a third-party java class that creates UUIDs in a fraction of the time.
Friendly URL Engine Rebuilt: Friendly URLs no longer require a prefix of "/go/" and they are easier to manage. (see the docs for more details on the new Friendly URLs in FarCry 5.1).
New Admin Toolbar: When logged in and browsing the site, the admin toolbar now sits out of the way at the bottom of the screen. It has better information regarding the primary content on the screen and it even lets you edit content in a modal window while never leaving the page (New!). Consuming very little space it sits in an iframe rather than using javascript to modify the contents of the page. This was important because the previous admin toolbar (which floated on the left of the screen) sometimes made working on a website difficult - not only could you not validate your (x)HTML, but if you had javascript errors on the page you sometimes didn't know if it was because of your code or possibly a conflict with the the admin menu (logging out of FarCry was the only way to get by this issue).
New Developer API. A new developer API allows developers to access a single object with a library of common methods often used by developers. No longer does a developer have to dig around to find out how to do a custom getDescendants() method or find the default image path or file path. This is still a work in progress and is being updated with new methods, but is a great starting point for developers to look for common actions often needed.
New Ajax Features in Formtools: When using formtools on the frontend of your website, you can now do things like ajax form submission. Personally I don't like using formtools on the frontend (I like to pick and choose which js libraries to use and customize my own code), but I think a lot of people will find these features useful - just write a couple lines of code and FarCry will build out all of your forms and ajax for you.
New Pagination Functionality: Okay, this probably shouldn't really be on a list of big features. But I find myself using it more and more on projects because it allows me to conform easily to standards-compliant lists fairly easily with very little code.
Better Railo and OpenBD Support: Although FarCry's primary concern is to make sure it works on Adobe ColdFusion, support for Railo and OpenBD is an ongoing process. Daemon works with both companies to help make sure that both third-party engines can run as smoothly as possible with new features of FarCry as they come out. Every now and then something will break with a new feature or bug fix, but luckily the community is there to assist in pointing out the error and helping to bug fix.
New Blog Engine (Plugin): Although it hasn't been officially released as of yet, the current beta of the FarCry Blog plugin is pretty stable and currently is designed for FarCry 5.1+. It technically hasn't changed much since it's first beta release several months ago (with cool features like switching skins in a single click and easy content management), but it's something I strongly suggest checking out if you're in need for a blog engine. You can grab the version built for FarCry 5.1 on the FarCry builds download page (look for the file named nearcry-community-5-1-0.zip).

Daemon is already hard at work on the next release of FarCry Core 5.1.1 which promises to take care of a list of items that were pushed aside temporarily so that version 5.1 could get out the door. Already there have been many updates put into SVN and it looks like we may see a lot more jQuery functionality in the next release (I'm a huge fan of jQuery, so this only makes me happier). I can't wait to see what Daemon has in store for us next.

FarCry 5.1 Public Beta Released

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:23:00 -0400

Daemon has announced the first public beta release of FarCry 5.1. Along with a plethora of bug fixes, FarCry 5.1 introduces a new Friendly URL sub-system (no more need for /go/) as well as a faster engine under the hood. i18n has been brought back on the scene after a hiatus of a year or so and the new webskin caching system and list views things even easier than before.

One of the most notable features is better OpenBD and Railo support. Although I don't personally use either (except for testing), I've been hearing great things about them. Deamon is asking for more community testing with FarCry 5.1 beta on OpenBD and Railo. So if you have a moment to give it a test run, let them know how it goes.

A new blog engine is planned to be released with FarCry 5.1 when it comes out (you can download the first release candidate of NearCry on Daemon's builds download page).

I am personally running the current beta of FarCry 5.1 in production on a few websites and intranets and it's running quite well. If you get a chance, download the latest bundle (currently titled "farcry-community-5-1-0-BetaB.zip") from the download builds page and let Daemon know what you think.

Upgrade Hard Drive in a MacBook Pro

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:07:00 -0400

Last week I was running out of space again in my MacBook Pro. I've gone through this again and again (always running out of space - deleting files or moving them to a separate storage device to get a little more space). I finally decided it was time to upgrade. Speed has also been an issue. For the last 3 laptops (since 2004) I have always purchased them with 7200 RPM drives. When I purchased this MBP last summer the largest 7200RPM drive they offered was a 160GB drive (with 8MB cache). It's actually a pretty decent Seagate drive. At the time of this blog post, the largest 7200RPM drive for laptops is 320GB with 16MB cache (or 500GB for 5400RPM). Over the past 5 years I've had a lot of bad luck with 3.5" Western Digital drives (almost all of them have died - poor ventilation in my NAS I guess). But after doing some research I decided to get one of the Western Digital 320GB hard drives (the WD Scorpio Black 320GB drive without free-fall sensor (WD3200BEKT). I made sure not to get the one with the free-fall sensor (built-in shock protection) because there have been multiple reports of people having kernel panics when physically moving the laptop (a conflict between the HD's shock detection and the MBP's head parking technology). Although I could not find any official data (from WD or Apple) to back up this claim, it was enough to make me be more cautious and avoid the possible issue. The whole process took about 3.5 hours (3 hours to clone the data from my 160GB drive to the 320GB drive, and a half hour to swap the drives). When I was a PC repair tech and network engineer in the 90's I repaired quite a few laptops. I have to say, they were much more complicated back then than the ones I've taken apart over the past few years (IMO). Apple's was even easier. But I wasn't without help. I found this great walkthrough which saved me a lot of time. If you're considering doing this, let me give you a helpful tip I learned from a tech who trained me back in 1994. Before taking out screws from a laptop, grab an empty egg carton (qty of 12). As you move through each set of screws, use a new compartment in the egg carton (makes things so much easier :) ). Also, make sure you have the correct tools (I was lucky enough to already have precision screw drivers on my workbench - saved me an extra trip to the hardware store). I also saved a lot of time by purchasing an external hard drive enclosure (I purchased that particular one for other reasons - I have a couple other SATA 2.5 and 3.5 drives I've been meaning to retrieve data from and this will make things much easier. Also, I found that device to be much cheaper on Best Buy, but I've had so much bad experience with Best Buy over the years and great experience with NewEgg that I'll keep going with the better service. I do, however, wish the device had Firewire 800 :) ). I was originally planning to use one of my existing USB external HDDs to clone the data (make an image), and then use the same drive to restore the image back to the new HDD, but I skipped the middle-man by using the enclosure and just moved the data over in one step.

So here's a breakdown of how I replaced the drive (3.5 hours):

Researched some hard drives and chose the Western Digital WD3200BEKT drive for it's overall balance of speed and power consumption (speed being the more important factor for me). Suggest: Newegg.com or Amazon.com.
Shutdown all programs on my Mac and disconnected from the web (don't want some auto-update running by mistake)
Mounted the new drive to the Mac (now in the enclosure unit) and formated it (use "Applications >> Utilities >> Disk Utility". Select the new drive (which shouldn't be formatted yet if new) and choose "Erase" with the default setting of "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)).
Used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the data and make the new drive bootable (took 3 hours)
Shut down Mac and installed new HDD
Booted up Mac with new HDD (it was a slow bootup the first time - see next step)
This next part I couldn't find documented anyhere on the web. I just happened to catch some guy talking about it in a forum after having slow bootups from my recent restore.
- Go into "System Preferences >> Startup Disk", select the new drive, and restart (your bootup will be much faster now).

I'm not sure if this upgrade would void my warranty with Apple (I have Apple Care), but if I have to send my MBP in for repair again in the future, I figure I'll just have to swap out my new HDD with the original before sending the laptop out. It's possible I could have paid Apple a large sum of money to upgrade the drive (note: They don't sell anything larger than 200GB 7200RPM) just to protect my warranty, but after having a bad first experience with an Apple Genius, I'd prefer to just do it the right way myself.

Adventures of a Dead Mac - All Fixed Now

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:07:00 -0400

A little over a week ago I blogged about my Mac dieing. I'm happy to say that as of last Friday I am functioning in tip-top-shape. Because of the holiday weekend I had to wait until Tuesday before receiving Apple's shipping box (the shipping box was really nice and well organized - with good instructions). But I was able to ship it back the same day and I received the repaired MBP three days later on Friday morning. Apple replaced the logic board and reinstalled the OS. Now don't be alarmed about the OS reinstall. Once you know a little more you'll understand that that was actually really nice of them. You see, I consider all of my client data on my development machine (my MBP) to be confidential (whether it is, or isn't). So, before I sent the Mac in for repair I mounted the drive on another Mac and formatted the drive 10 times (each time doing a zero out of all the free space). Am I being paranoid? I don't think so. I'm just being mindful of my client's information. Except for maybe some family photos or documents, I don't have anything to hide on my computers (no pr0n, pirated software, etc). However, my development laptop is my office, and everything on it is more important to me than all the physical items in my office workspace. This is why I back up everything daily (I use several secure backup solutions just to be safe... downtime == bad). So I got the MBP on Friday with a new OS installed (very nice of Apple... especially since it was the latest 10.5, and according to their records I purchased this laptop with 10.4 - I own 10.5, but how would they know). I used one of my latest backups off of a secure image on a usb drive. I booted from the drive and restored the data. One hour later it was as if nothing ever happened (other than the laptop being turned off for a week). My backup software was yelling "No backups for over 7 days!" and I had to download a week's worth of email from IMAP, but this was all expected and took maybe 10 minutes to get back in order. As it turns out I got hit with the flu last week during all the downtime, and except for a couple small fires (10 minutes of code), I wasn't able to get on my PC anyway to code. All-in-all I am happy to be up and running. Except for the bad experience with the Apple "Genius" (see my last post), I had a great experience and turnaround with Apple Care and their service people I dealt with.

Adventures of a Dead Mac (nVidia GPU)

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:20:00 -0400

The other day my primary computer died (my Macbook Pro). I should warn anyone before reading this that this blog post is mostly me venting about my experience during the ordeal, so don't expect to get anything useful out of reading everything here (oh, and my first experience with an Apple "Genius" leads me to believe that they are just plain rude and to be avoided if possible). For a couple months now I'd randomly get artifacts on the screen and things would get weird. Eventually it got so bad that I would get kernel panics, random particles, vertical lines, and more artifacts. I called Apple about it and was told to just reboot. The first couple of times this seemed to fix it. However this past Thursday when it happened again the screen froze and the internal fans were running at full speed (the machine was really hot). I forced a shutdown, waited for the computer to cool, and then turned it back on. I could hear the Apple chime, the fans power up, and the HDD doing it's normal boot process, but there was no image on the screen (same result if I added an external monitor). I tried all of the regular steps (cleared PRAM and SMC, attempted to boot from the install DVD, etc) but no video appeared. I then called Apple tech support who had me repeat the same steps. I was told that the GPU was likely fried (apparently a known defect in all MBPs that have the g84 and g86 chipsets *See link references below) and that the logic board needed to be replaced. Unfortunately this is happening to a lot of MBP and Mac Pro owners who have the nVidia chipsets. For those interested, my laptop specs are:

Macbook Pro 3,1 2.4 Ghz Intel chipset
Purchased June 2007
2GB RAM original (I later purchased 4GB RAM)
160GB 7200 RPM HDD
...and before someone asks, I do play games every now and then which make the laptop (most likely the GPU) run really hot).

From my understanding, when I send in my MBP in for repair I'll just receive a new logic board with the same defective chipset. My default one-year warranty recently ended and for once I'm feeling better about having purchased the $350 Apple Care (Apple's version of extended warranty) since Apple is only handling this on a case-by-case basis (HP and Dell officially recognized this a while back, but to-date Apple has no comment). The tech support guy was really nice and suggested that I take the laptop down to the local Apple Store for a faster turnaround in replacing the logic board. So I made an appointment for the earliest slot and then headed down to the local Apple store. I explained the situation to the Apple "Genius" who in turn was very rude to me and treated me like I was wasting his time (a whole 5 minutes). He tried resetting the PRAM and SMC and decalred that the machine would have to be sent in for repair. He explained to me that I should take the machine back home, call Apple tech support again, and have them send me a box (for shipping) to have the machine sent in for repair. He said it would be a faster turnaround than having him send the machine out from the Apple store (right...). So... I called tech support (again) while still in the Apple store (instead of waiting until I got home). I didn't have my case number on me (from the original call) and the tech support person couldn't find it attached to my information, so we had to create a new one -- which meant we had to start all over again (clearing PRAM, etc etc) until he was satisfied (in his defense though I felt he was just doing his job... the guy was actually really nice). We went through some second-tier support (who was also very nice and also confirmed that these nVidia chipsets are failing quite a lot) and got approval to have the machine sent in for repair. Apple tech support was supposed to send a DHL box to my home (to be received no later than Saturday morning) with instructions on how to return the laptop... Unfortunately it hasn't arrived yet (and it's late Saturday night). I now have a feeling I'll have to wait until Tuesday to send the laptop out for repair due to the holiday weekend (in the US we have a national holiday on Monday where most businesses (including Apple) are closed) so that I can wait an additional estimated 7-10 days to receive the repaired machine (thanks Apple "Genius" (the rude guy) who assured me this process was faster than having it sent out directly from the store on Friday). Here are some recent articles and discussions about the nVidia chipset problems

I've heard rumors that the possible September 9, 2008 Apple announcements may include a new MBP (doubtful, but you never know). I wonder then if Apple would be willing to replace defective machines (or logic boards) with something newer... or are we just stuck with these defective chipsets? Please note that other than this defective chipset problem, I really do like my video card. For the most part it's been really good to me and runs games really well (and I bet I could cook eggs on it with all the heat :) ). Sorry for the long vent. Here's to hoping that Apple won't send me the same defective chipset :).

New CF8 Exam Buster Released

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:56:00 -0400

Centrasoft recently released their new version of the CF8 Exam Buster to help those interested in studying for the Adobe ColdFusion 8 Certification. Personally I no desire to take the exam (see my previous post from a couple years ago or Ray Camden's recent comments on the test), but Brian (Centrasoft) always does such an excellent job with his CF Exam Buster that I'd like to compare his product with that of the actual exam (Maybe Adobe should hire him in the future to write their CF exams :) ). So I've got myself a copy of the CF8 Exam Buster and as soon as I have a chance, I'm going to run through it. Below is a copy of the press release Brian has posted. If you're looking to study for the CF8 exam, definitely consider his product (note: only runs on Windows. I installed it in VMWare Win2k3-64 and it runs great).

CF8 Exam Buster from CentraSoft (http://centrasoft.com) CF8 Exam Buster is the ultimate testing tool specifically designed to help ColdFusion developers earn their Adobe ColdFusion 8 Certification through the Adobe Certified Professional Program. CF8 Exam Buster has 384 questions designed to help you prepare for all aspects of the actual ColdFusion 8 certification exam. CF8 Exam Buster allows you to take six different tests, 11 topic tests for your weak areas, and the ability to create random tests. All 384 questions have explanations and reference URLs to further aid your studies and build your ColdFusion knowledge. During your test you can save your test in progress, submit comments, bookmark questions, pause your test, and much more. You can control the look and feel of the CF8 Exam Buster application, by setting the fonts, colors, and appearance of many controls, to create a studying environment with which you are comfortable. After your test is scored, you will be shown a comprehensive breakdown of your test results. There is a DEMO version on the Centrasoft website (http://www.centrasoft.com), which allows you to check out all the features of the program, plus one whole test. Read what people are saying about the Exam Buster product on our testimonials page (some early CF8 comments are already on there): http://centrasoft.com/cfbtestimonials.cfm Check out CF8 Exam Buster today! Thanks, Brian Simmons bsimmons@centrasoft.com The ultimate Adobe ColdFusion 8 Certification testing tool: Check out CF8 Exam Buster at: http://centrasoft.com ColdFusion, and Adobe are registered trademarks of Adobe Corporation. Adobe Corporation in no way endorses or is affiliated with Centrasoft Corporation.

Adobe Connect Plugin for OS X Leopard Fix

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:12:00 -0400

If you were like me and upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 when it was released and used Adobe Acrobat Connect (either Pro or basic version) to give presentations then you were likely not too happy with the random crashes while screen sharing. I had called Adobe tech support multiple times and was told that they were working on it. Finally in May tech support told me they had a fix for it. Essentially you just need to manually remove the old plugin and it will automatically be upgraded to the new version the next time you attempt to connect to Connect (read the article for full details). This worries me a little... Should I randomly delete these going forward in order to check for a new plugin version? From that point on it has worked great for me. Unfortunately I had essentially paid for 6 months of an annually-priced product that wouldn't work. I recently renewed my annual license and was told I would not be refunded for the 6 months of the non-usable product. But at least I'm good going forward. I suppose I only have myself to blame. I should probably wait at least a half-year before upgrading to any new OS... what can I say? It's the geek in me :).

I'm Really Liking Shelfari.com

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:40:00 -0400

Sometime last year I discovered the website Shelfari. At first the site ran slow and didn't have too many features (the site was still fairly new). Then by the end of last year the site made some serious upgrades (to the UI and overall speed). Since then they've consistently added new functionality and the user experience is amazing to say the least. About a week or two ago I started telling some close friends about the site and I've seen a few of them blog good experiences about it. So I just wanted to give my two thumbs up as well :). If you read at all and want to look at a really good social networking site based on reading books (as well as somewhere to record all the books you've read), make sure to check it out. Also feel free to take a look at my bookshelf. I don't have all of my books on there (I can't remember every book I've read), but I've gotten quite a few of the ones I can remember (plus I also read about 1 book a week, so I'm always adding more :) ).

Will FarCry Change its Open Source License (CPL) to a Dual License Model with GPLv3?

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:28:00 -0400

There has been a lot of buzz this week when Daemon announced they were thinking of changing their open source license model from Common Public License 1.0 (CPL) to a dual license with the GNU GPL License v3 (GPL). I sat with Geoff Bowers, President and CEO of Daemon Internet Consultants, to ask him why they were thinking of changing to a dual license model. Check out the article on Fusion Authority and see what all the buzz is about.

Adobe Announces Open Screen Project

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:58:00 -0400

Adobe announced today the Open Screen Project.

The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. ... Specifically, this work will include:

Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications

Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player

Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services

Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

They have a decent list of technology leaders. I hope to see more companies added to the list soon (like Apple). You can find more about the project on their Open Screen Project and also a decent writeup at techcrunch.

New FarCry Plugin: jcFarcryFlvPlayer

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:16:00 -0400

The jcFarcryFlvPlayer plugin for FarCry gives you a flash-based video player for your website. The plugin takes advantage of the JW FLV Media Player (a flash-based audio/video player) to offer your website/web-application users playback of your video and audio content (FLV, MP3, H264, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF).

Examples

Listing Page (teasers)

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos

Video Player/Details Page

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos/the-birthplace I wrote the original version of this code about a year ago for another client. As more clients needed the feature (I'm now using it on 3 different FarCry websites) the need for converting it to a reusable plugin was evident. I finished the plugin for mass consumption by January, but never got around to releasing it (due to inadequate documentation :) ). There are two version of the plugin (v1.0.x for FarCry 4, and v1.1.x for FarCry 5). Both currently have the same functionality (they are just designed for different versions of FarCry). Find more information and detailed documentation on the docs/wiki page.

Online Backup Solutions. Which One Should I Choose?

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:58:00 -0400

I've been researching new backup solutions for both online and offline backups of my development computers. I don't just want to backup a few files, I need disaster recovery (if my machine completely fails, I want to be able to replace the HDD (or computer) and be able to restore it back to the way it was in a few clicks). For years I've been backing up my PCs using Acronis True Image Home to my local NAS drives. This works great for local backups, but I moved to a Mac last year and haven't found a backup software I really like yet that does compression as well as Acronis (currently PC-only) and offers something close to a GFS backup solution. But this blog post is to discuss online backup solutions. While I continue to try different offline backup solutions to backup my data to my NAS drives, I really need an offline backup solution for redundancy. Here are a list of some solutions I've been researching. I'd be grateful to hear people's thoughts on the products or to hear what other people are using that they might suggest to consider. I need something that can backup my Macs (most important), but if there is a product that can backup my PCs as well, it would be preferred:

Jungle Disk: Offline storage powered by Amazon S3. Very affordable at only 15 cents per gigabyte per month (and you only pay for what you use).
CrashPlan: A really cool product that allows you to use either their online storage facilities, or backup to your own servers (online and offline). You can even do redundant backups (backup to multiple devices, both your own devices and their online backup facilities). I really like this option, except it doesn't (yet) have an option to just backup to offline HDDs (like my NAS) without involving another OS (I say "yet" because their site lists that they are working on that option and may be offering it soon). Check out their video for a pretty cool demonstration.
Mozy: An online-only backup solution. This one has been around for a while. It still doesn't appear to officially support Mac OS 10.5 yet (like CrashPlan), but I've had friends say they're using it without a problem. I believe it deletes your data after 30 days.
Carbonite: An offline backup solution. This is a very enticing solution... only $49.95 per year with no file storage capacity storage limitation. What's that you say? You heard me correct. The downside is that its Windows-only (and I need a solution for the Mac). Still, it was worthy to list here. I believe it deletes your data after 30 days.
iDrive: Looks like a pretty cool online backup solution, but their pricing os too high for the amount of data I need to backup and it's Windows-only.
Drobo and DroboShare: Okay, I know... this product doesn't belong on this list of online backup solutions, but it was too cool not to talk about anyway :). The two devices together act like a NAS (using new technology that may replace standard RAID as we know it (my personal opinion)), but limitations like USB2 between the devices, no redundant gigabit connections, etc. are holding me back. Its been out for a while, so hopefully they will have a new version out soon with many of the missing features people have been asking for.

If you Google "online backup solutions" you'll get a long list of products out there (only a few of which I've looked into). So, what do you use or suggest?

FarCry 5.0 Beta Released

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:35:00 -0400

Early this morning Daemon released a packaged beta of FarCry 5.0 (code-named Fortress). This is an early beta and has known bugs, however I've been running it and so far it is pretty stable (IMO). FarCry 5.0 has a very large feature set. The new installer is great (see image below) and the upgrader does an amazing job (currently only updates from FarCry 4.0).

New FarCry 5.0 Installer

Of the many new features in FarCry, the one I'm really digging is the new skeleton functionality. In essence when you create a skeleton you take a snapshot of your current project (configs, plugin connections,... even data) and you can redeploy it in other installations (this is all managed from an easy user interface). Another feature that a lot of people will be excited about is that FarCry can now run from the webroot (allowing you to deploy it on a shared hosting environment). You can find more about FarCry 5.0 in the online wiki. Here is a list of some of the many of the features being released in FarCry 5.0:

New Security Model (it's type-based now)
New Workflow Engine
New Formtool Enhancements
- Ability to Create Formtools without a Persistent Object (providing a construct for using formtools without the need for a content type in the background)
FarCry now Uses Application.cfc
ExtJs 2.0 Integration (a new tag library that concentrates on panels and accordions)
New Webskin Security Model
New Skeleton Functionality (for solution distributions)
New Skeleton Explorer (allowing you to export your existing project into a skeleton)
New Webskin Security (example: You can secure any view)
Type-Based Webskins (the ability to run a new webskin on a collection of objects of the same type)
New Inline Documentation Functionality in the Webtop
Categories are Now Content Types (No need to create custom category types anymore)
The Config has been Normalized (allowing plugins to have their own config)
New Installer
And Much More!...

There are so many more features. Even small ones... like date fields for example (Thanks Mat). While editing in a form (in the webtop) and modifying a data field... sure you can use the date icon and click through the dates. But you can also just type into the date box in any format (and the date will automatically be converted to your locale). Example: You can type the string "+ 2 weeks" or "+2 months" and you will instantly see the resulting date. Daemon has put a lot of work into this release and deserve all the credit we can throw at them :). They are asking for people to beta test and report bugs in the public Bug Tracker and/or in the FarCry-Beta Mailing Lists.

Mac Bootup - Mapping/Mounting to Windows Shares Automatically

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:32:00 -0400

I'm currently using Mac OS x 10.5 and originally had these scripts while using 10.4 (thus I haven't tested them on any earlier versions). Normally when you want to map (mount) to a Windows shared network drive you have to click on the word "Go" in the finder menu, choose "Connect to Server..." (propeller-K), and use SMB to mount to a Windows shared server. Example: smb://workgroup;userName@192.168.1.10/shareName However, I have several shares I use on my network (a NAS that uses SMB) and I prefer to have my shares connect automatically on startup. So I use the following script to map to my drives (using Apple's Script Editor).

try
	set ping_result to (do shell script "ping -c 1 -t 2 -i 2 192.168.1.10")
	mount volume "smb://workgroup;userName@192.168.1.10/shareName"
end try

From there I can either add all the drive mappings I want to that one script, or save them as individual scripts (the way I usually do it). Then I save the script as an application (make sure to uncheck "Startup Screen", unless you want that extra step). Finally I add the applications to my startup (System Preferences --> Accounts --> Highlight the account --> Login Items (tab) --> Then I add the applications to the list. On some occasions (for some reason), when my machine starts up not all of the mappings will connect (giving an error that the destination was unreachable). I haven't figured out why yet, but it only happens occasionally, so I've been living with it (to fix it I just manually click the application again and I'm in). There are plenty of other methods to get this to work, but I haven't had much luck with others yet (I'm still a bit new to Mac and *nix). If someone else out there has a great idea (or a better one), feel free to let me know.

Printing Features From Office 2008 Mac Using Gutenprint Drivers

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:41:00 -0400

Yesterday I received my copy of Microsoft Office 2008 (Home Edition) from Amazon. So far I'm really liking it (the video tutorials on Lynda were very helpful to me in getting up to speed). The printer I use (Canon MP830) is not networkable, thus I needed to purchase a network print server that supported a Mac (I'm currently using the D-Link DPR-1260. Although it supports multi-function printers (including my printer) it only supports "printing" from Macs (unfortunately I didn't find that out until after installing the device... the box just said Mac OS X supported)). When I upgraded to OS X 10.5, Apple pre-installed the Gutenprint printer drivers, which allowed me to finally print to my printer without a problem. Although it doesn't support all of the features of the printer (actually, hardly any features... not even draft printing) it at least had a few important features like duplexing (or what Apple calls "Two-Sided" printing). So far, every program I've tested on my Mac has had great success... until I installed MS Office 2008. From Office I can only print (with little-to-no feature options). The solution? It was easier than I thought. When you're ready to print, choose "print" from the "file" menu. Then hit the "Preview" button (which loads up Preview). Now you'll be able to have all of your print features again.

As an aside: During my trials, I tried upgrading the Gutenprint printer drivers to the latest version (which claim they fix some bugs and add more printer support... at this time I upgraded from 5.1.3 (Leopard default) to 5.1.6). Although it didn't address my issues I thought people might like to know I am not having problems using the new versions. The only thing I should point out is that when the new version installed, it deleted my current printer from the "Print & Fax" settings in System Preferences. Although it only took me a moment to setup I was glad that I wrote down the settings before I started the upgrade :). Still, had I known that it wouldn't have addressed my issue, I wouldn't have bothered (if it's not broke, don't fix it).