CFDan.com - Daniel Mackey on ColdFusion Development

VMWare - Run ColdFusion Linux On Windows XP

Haven't posted in a while due to a number of reasons so its time for an update...

There are 2 main thins right now:

Running ColdFusion Linux on Windows XP

We are primarily a Windows based development house so Linux is not in our skill set yet.

For ages we have been meaning to delve into the possibilities of duel platform development and in the past even went so far as setting up DCLinux, a Red Hat based Development Server running CFMX6.1.

The problem with this is that most of my R&D, product development etc happens when I am "in the zone" and this is usually at home or in places other than the office.
I needed a Linux installation running on my Windows XP laptop.

This weekend, I decided it was time to finally do something about it and thought the only reliable way was to duel-boot my laptop.

WRONG.

Welcome VMWare.... the most amazing application I have come across in some time.

Get this.... it only took 1 hour to get it running flawlessly!!

I now have Fedora 5 Linux with CFMX6.1 running in a window on my desktop and can connect to it via my Windows browser using http://192.168.64.128:8300/

What makes things even better is that I can connect to my existing MySQL database on the Windows machine through Linux so don’t have to worry about installing and configuring MySQL on Linux!!

Also, the Linux Virtual Machine can view my localhost in Windows so I can test front-end stuff in Linux Firefox too!

This truly is the dogs bollox! I can finally get all my CF Apps and tags Linux compatible!
Windows Application for Printing

The other main application I am working on at the moment is a Windows Desktop Application that can pull data from our server in Dublin and generate graphical certificates and also address labels.

Then with one click of a button both the Certificate and Label are printed on 2 different printers. The cert goes to a colour inkjet printer onto special certificate type paper and the label gets printed directly to a Dymo LabelWriter 320 printer.

The app runs in the Windows task tray and is readily available. Some nice programming went into this one and I am damn proud of it.

The core of the application is a WebBrowser Control hosted in a VB6 application.

Some nifty printing and graphic techniques ensure the labels come out scaled to the size of the label.