ColdFusion Builder is an incredibly powerful tool, and the ability to extend the IDE with custom-written extensions enhances the power of the application.
The Requirement
Whilst working on some site content earlier, a few pages were still waiting for new copy to be written. As a typical fallback plan, I added in some dummy text to fill the void – I normally visit the official www.lipsum.com site to generate the required dummy text for me, then copy and paste it into my editor.
As a ColdFusion Builder user, I wondered if there was an extension available to work with Lipsum data, to help alleviate the repetitive task of cut/copy and paste (or simply hammering the keyboard to generate random nonsense).
After having a quick search on riaforge.org (the first place every developer should check before starting development on a plugin or component package from scratch), I noticed there wasn’t a ColdFusion Builder extension available to automatically generate the dummy text.
The Solution
There was, however, a CFC called CFLipsum developed by Tim Blair that interacted with the lipsum.com XML feed to generate the dummy text. Tim’s CFC did a fantastic job as a self-contained component package.
Using Tim’s CFC as a starting point (you have to love the CF community and sharing code), I developed a quick but fully functioning CF Builder extension that will insert the generated dummy text directly into the code editor window at the current position of the cursor.
Once installed, the extension is accessible by right-clicking anywhere within the editor window and selecting the ‘Lipsum Generator’ menu option:
At this point, the user will be shown an option screen to choose how they want the dummy text returned:
The first option, a simple boolean ‘yes’/'no’ selection, lets the user decide if they would like the returned text to start with the traditional ‘Lorem Ipsum…’. Purely cosmetic, but for those who cannot bear to be without those two words, this option is for you. 
The second option lets you choose in which format you would like the returned text;
- words
- paragraphs
- bytes
Option three then lets you choose either how many words or paragraphs to return, or if ‘bytes’ was selected in the previous option, how many bytes of text to be returned.
Finishing the selection and clicking ‘ok’, the extension will then insert the text directly into the editor window, complete with <p> tags:
A simple extension, but one that I hope will help others along the way. It’s effective, saves time, and built in ColdFusion, so it must be good. Right? Right!
Where can I get it from?
The Lipsum Generator extension is available to download now from RIA Forge:
4 Comments on "Lorem Ipsum ColdFusion Builder Extension"
I have not tried it yet (will do later) but it looks great! Nice idea!
Thanks Dan! I had fun building it.
Hey Matt,
Nice work, it’s always great to see a new builder extension, it’s by far the nicest feature in the ColdFusion Builder plugin, makes life oh so very easy.
I’m going to play devils advocate. When we are building out interfaces here at a wireframe / design stage we avoid using Lorem Ipsum at all costs. We place the extra time in writing real content for the interface.
We do this because we don’t want to abstract ourselves out of the proper user experience, we want to live the experience in the same way that a real user would.
For instance, if you are working on testing out a form process, you could just whack in a load of garbage like ‘sjfhdjshd’ and ‘oreiuyret’ as it’s very quick and allows you to jump through tests quickly, but that doesn’t allow you to empathise properly with the user. Try putting real information into the form, as if the real user would, if the process seems long and drawn out then perhaps that indicates a fundamental flaw in your form design? too many fields? needs braking into a multi-step form?
And when we’re talking about using Lorem Ipsum in replacement for paragraph text in design work, you really need to think about design ‘states’, if you base your designs around blocks of Lorem Ipsum text then what happens when you replace it with real text which is much shorter or longer than the Lorem Ipsum you used for your design, things may start to fall apart really quickly.
You also have to consider that every page has a narrative, where the users begins to read things, a middle and where they end reading and click a button, with Lorem Ipsum you have no way of testing that narrative and user flow.
We like to get stuck into using real text as early as possible in the UX design process, proper copy is very easy to write, it doesn’t have to be good copy, just relevant enough to help you establish a narrative for the user.
Rob
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