ColdFusion Editors

ColdFusion can make creating website applications very easy, but your life will be made so much easier if you pick the right editor for editing your code.

Adobe Dreamweaver is your best bet for a ColdFusion editor. It is made from the same company that provides ColdFusion, and Dreamweaver comes bundled with ColdFusion Studio (which is the old ColdFusion editor from when ColdFusion use to belong to Allaire).

Dreamweaver provides a number of benefits over other editors including:

• Shortcuts to commonly tags and functions
• Color coding of HTML, CFML, ASP etc
• Wizards are provided for common tasks
• "Drag and drop" editing
• You can toggle between design view, code view, and split view
• Version control support
• Edit dialog for most HTML and CFML tags
• Pop-up help for all HTML and CFML tags
• Automatic tag completion
• SQL query builder
• Expression builder

Free ColdFusion Editors

Dreamweaver is fine if you're happy to pay money. If you don't want to pay that much for an editor you could try a basic HTML editor. Some HTML editors include ColdFusion support too.

If you don't want to pay for an editor, you could try one of the following:

• CFEclipse - this is a plugin for the Eclipse platform.
• First Page - HTML editor with ColdFusion support.
• ColdFusionPad - Like a simple text editor, but with menus for ColdFusion tags & functions. Includes code examples.
• You could download HTML Kit (HTML editor), then download and install one of the ColdFusion plugins such as dfCFMX.

If you don't feel like downloading anything, don't despair! You can always use a text editor such as Notepad (for Windows) or SimpleText (Macs).

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