OK, so it took me a bit longer than Sheri German to get everything set up right, but I finally have JRun and ColdFusion running on my OS X Panther install! I have been wanting to do this for about a year. But all the stories I read online seemed to make it sound like either rocket science or torture -- and there is currently room for neither in my schedule. My schedule stays very full.

Many thanks to Tom Pletcher for writing an awesome article, ColdFusion on OSX, that took me through every step of the process. Very clearly. I had one little problem at the end and that was in getting the shell script to run on start up. I kept getting a terminal error on login. I could, however, use the same command in the terminal and start the server right up. It was very puzzling. Many, many thanks to Paul Newman, who receive's Stephanie's "Today's Most Awesome Human" award! Paul hung with me (LATE) till he figured the problem out.

It seems that sometimes, when you use BBEdit to create the script (and yes, I'm still using version 6.5), it uses Macintosh line breaks instead of the Unix variety. So the fix was -- Open the file > Edit > Save As > click Options > choose Unix line breaks. It works!

I can't WAIT till tomorrow (when my eyes can open again) when I can try hooking DW up to my CF server... Maybe my CF class at MAX, and the myriad of CF tutorials here at CMX, will actually get put to use -- on my little old Mac. I never thought I'd see the day. Thanks Tom, for making me brave enough to try this! And Paul, I'm sending your gotoand play shirt out tomorrow... I swear! ;)

Yesterday afternoon I was talking to Stephanie Sullivan about various and sundry things, and at one point she mentioned that I should learn ColdFusion. She insisted that I would love it. She pointed to its simplicity and logic. I have dabbled in PHP, and the idea of an easy and intuitive way to do dynamic sites certainly appealed to me.

What then, lo and behold, appeared on CMX today but an article on how to install JRun and ColdFusion on the Mac. I skimmed through the directions, and they looked clear to me, so I decided to go for it. Sure enough, a hour or two later, I had a successful installation on my 10.3.6 version of Mac OS X. I am more than thrilled.

If you too want to take the plunge, Tom Pletcher's methodology is as good as it gets. The only advice I would add to his wonderful directions is to make sure you take it slow and double-check each of your Terminal commands. Be patient when hitting the enter key, and allow the commands time to execute. Sometimes it may appear like nothing is happening for a few seconds. Work carefully in Terminal, and you will have no problems at all. Tom's directions work.

All that will be left for you to do is dig into the rich repository of CF tutorials and articles at CMX. And, of course, never forget the forum support. You'll be a ColdFusion guru in no time.

It was with great trepidation that I finally installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on Friday. I know the darn thing's been available since August, but I didn't have time for it until now.

Fortunately, I Googled SP2 for issues before installing it from the CD-ROM I ordered. According to some newsgroup posts, only Norton AntiVirus 2004 and 2005 are compatible with SP2. However, after following the instructions on Neville Hobson's blog, SP2 recognized my copy of NAV 2002. I should add that installing the WMI component via Live Update required two reboots of Windows XP. I updated NAV before installing SP2, but the blog implies NAV can also be updated after SP2 is installed.

I wish I could say the same about Flash MX Professional 2004. The first time I launched it after installing SP2, my CPU spiked to 100% and I had to end the flash.exe process. The second time I launched Flash 2004, I got as far as the Start Page, and then Flash locked up again. Not even the Flash MX 2004 Hotfix made a difference. I was prepared to uninstall/reinstall Flash 2004, or worse, use System Restore to return XP Pro to its pre-SP2 state. In the end, the solution was double-clicking an FLA file in Windows Explorer. Once it opened, I disabled the Start Page in Flash's Preferences. After launching and quitting Flash 2004 a couple times, I was able to enable the Start Page again. I still have no idea what caused this issue, and why this workaround was necessary.

I'm happy to report that Dreamweaver MX 2004 and ColdFusion MX 6.1 appear to be functioning normally. So far, I haven't experienced the overall system slowdown that some SP2 users are reporting, although deleting files in Windows Explorer seems to take forever now.

Macromedia has created an XP Service Pack 2 Support Center to explain issues that arise with Flash Player, Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, and other MM applications. You can also find out more about SP2 on Microsoft's web site.

Just making a note for myself and others that may run into it...

getCodeViewDropCode() in /Configuration/Components/Common/CFCs/CFCs.js runs when the drag is started and not when the dragged item is dropped. Not so much a big deal really, but if you wanted to pop up a dialog after the user had selected the drop point, you're pretty much outta luck. Well, at least I was when I tried using this function to show a dialog to allow the user to make a selection or two related to the CFC being dragged, and then generate the code to drop. ;-).

If anyone knows if there is a way to access the drop event from the Components panel, please leave a comment. Thanks.