Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

For months now, I've found that when I tried to use the help feature in Dreamweaver (8 or MX 2004), it would crash, with an "unhandled Win32 exception". If this has happened to you, there is a quick and easy solution.

The problem turns out to be IE7. That explains why, for me, it was such a mystery. I don't use DW help much at all and have had both DW 8 and 2004 installed for over a year, so when trying to use help suddenly failed in recent months, I couldn't for the life of me connect the dots to resolve the problem. I searched the web and the Adobe site in particular, all to no avail.

Solution in an Adobe Technote

Finally, I posted the question on a DW forum and David Alcala of Adobe DW Quality Engineering responded pointing out this technote. (Thanks again, David!)

Update: As is often the case in a blog entry written years ago, the link above no longer works. In the vein of "teaching a man to fish", please note that when that happens, you ought to go to archive.org, and on the front page enter the URL in question. Often it will find old copies of the page. In the case of the URL above, a version of the technote from 2009 can be found here.

It explains an incompatibility between a certain DW DLL and IE 7. As it explains, the latter came out after the former, so it's forgivable. It goes on to say that affects more those using Windows 2003 Server and 64-bit XP, but I was having the problem on 32-bit XP. And while it refers just to Dreamweaver 8, I tested the fix on Dreamweaver MX 2004 and it works for that as well. Good news!

But I have Firefox as my primary browser

And if anyone's wondering, it doesn't seem to matter if you have Firefox set as your primary browser, either in Windows or even in the Preview in Browser feature of DW. In both cases, I have FF set as primary and yet I suffered this problem. If anyone knows another way to control DW using IE for help, perhaps that would explain why only some get this problem.

Anyway, hope that helps someone else.

PS I happen to have MS Visual Studio 2005 installed, which intercepts the error and offers to run the JIT debugger. So it's possible that the error I get ("unhandled Win32 exception") is different from what one gets if they DON'T have it installed. But as the Adobe technote says, it does cause DW to crash, and that's what matters most. Since the technote doesn't offer the specific error message I was getting (or any other), I hope this blog entry may be found by others searching as I did. And I'm removing Visual Studio to see what error one gets when it's not installed. If the message is different, I'll come back and update this blog entry.

Update: ok, if the JIT debugger is not setup to handle errors, then instead one gets the "good ol'" windows prompt to "send error report". The top line of the window (in case someone searches to find this) is "Dreamweaver MX 2004 has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." If you use the "click here" to see details, the error is in appname:dreamweaver.exe modname:hhctrl.ocx

Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Folks, just want to let you know that the next generation of Acrobat Connect is up on the Adobe Labs site.

It's a hosted service, not something you download, and it allows you to have up to 3 meeting participants.

Be sure to see the "Product Details" tab of the labs page, which offers more info about the new release, including some modest release notes. Most significant is the question most likely to be asked by those using Connect now:

"How is Brio different from Adobe Acrobat Connect?"

• Richer expression in the Chat Pod with sizes, colors, and emoticons.
• Text layout controls in the Note Pod including bullets, size, and color.
• Save as .doc file option for meeting Chat and Notes.
• Upload files to distribute to your meeting participants.
• Voice over IP option as an alternative to teleconferencing.
• Right click menus.
• Access to key meeting features while screen sharing with new palette.
• Whiteboard Pod with option to save your work as a .png file.
• Annotate over screen sharing using whiteboarding tools with option to save as your work as a .png file.
• Personalized display images in the meeting attendee list.
• Additional options (accept all and automatic room entry) for accepting attendees to a meeting.
• New Role names (host, participant and audience) for attendees and more capabilities for participants making it easy to collaborate during meetings. Participants can now share their screen, enter notes, whiteboard automatically without being promoted to a presenter.

Note as well there that free audioconferencing by phone (in addition to the traditional embedded mic and camera feature) is available in the beta. No need to make a reservation. Just click on the phone icon upper right corner of your meeting room and select Adobe Conference Number. You'll see a text box with the call-in numbers as well as the meeting ID number. There's no charge for the service, however, long distance phone charges may apply.

This preview of Brio is currently only available in English.

Finally, to find out more, check out the lab forums for Brio.

I'll have more to say after I review it myself.

Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Here's a neat hidden gem for CF8 that will delight some: CFMAIL now uses the mail server name you specify in CFMAIL SERVER attribute or the CF Admin mail setup page, in creating the message-id header that's generated when your mail is sent.

Some have lamented that in CFMX 6 and 7, it instead used the name of your server where CF is installed, which might be something like "server1" or "bingo", as in:

This might cause a recipient mail server to flag the mail as spam, if the mail server was a different domain name (like "yourcompany.com"). The bummer was that many found no way to fix this. Sure, in CF5 you could set it in a CFMAILPARAM to set a mail header, but CF 6 and above ignores that.

So the good news is that CF8 now does use that CF Admin or CFMAIL SERVER value to create the message-id. If I use CFMAIL SERVER="mail.carehart.org"..., for instance, I might get something like:

What about CF 6 or 7?

But what if you're on 6 or 7? Well, there's a solution for you, too, by way of a tweak in the CF startup script (jvm.config) or (less preferably) in code. Since the change for CF 6 or 7 deserves some explanation to do it justice, I'll take that up in a part 2 message next. I'll also lay out the whole problem with the auto-generated message-id and why it's a concern for some.

For now, I just wanted to get this word out to those who understand the problem already that CF8 solves it. Woo hoo.

Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Interested in learning more about FusionReactor and FusionDebug? I'm teaching inexpensive half-day classes (of my own design) every few weeks for Intergral, the makers of the tools. They organize the dates, take the registration and payment, and provide the GotoMeeting account that we use to present the training (over the web and phone). You can learn more about the training at their site.

Many know I'm also a big fan of the CF8 monitoring and debugging tools, but I've been talking about FD and FR for over a year. I've also written previously (since the release of CF8) on why there's still a place for all these kinds of tools. Perhaps the biggest point is that not everyone is ready to move right away to CF8, as good as it is. More important for some is that to monitor your production servers in CF8, you need CF8 Enterprise.

FD and FR work on all editions of ColdFusion 6, 7, and 8, and even offer some features not found in the built-in tools (though the reverse is true as well).

Here are the courses, which are 3 hours each for the full classes, and 1 hour for the free webinar.

FusionReactor FastTrack I - Introduction

The "FusionReactor FastTrack I - Introduction" class is more than just an introduction to the tool. It shares lots of tips and techniques for using the monitor to help solve real problems. More important, it shows many features that you might otherwise easily miss. Even experienced FusionReactor users would likely learn a lot.

FusionReactor FastTrack II - Advanced Techniques

The "FusionReactor FastTrack II - Advanced Techniques" class moves beyond learning how the tool works to how to use it to solve common ColdFusion performance and reliability challenges, including how to configure and leverage FusionReactor features to increase your server's performance, reliability and availability. It also covers how to access FusionReactor and its logs during and after critical periods, as well as common troubleshooting analysis approaches.

FusionDebug FastTrack I - Introduction

The "FusionDebug FastTrack I - Introduction" class introduces the tool, shows how easy it is to use, and demonstrates its advantages over traditional debugging techniques as well as tips and traps in using the tool. It includes debugging CFML code called from client-side applications like Flex and Ajax. In fact, someone interested in learning about the CF8 debugger could get a lot from the class (since they're so similar), though it's just focused on FusionDebug.

Free FusionDebug Webinar

The Free FusionDebug Webinar in an online seminar where you can learn about how to debug CFML with FusionDebug.