Espresso 1.1 Released and TopStyle 4 Upgrade Sale
Espresso 1.1 (Mac)
MacRabbit’s HTML editor, Espresso (reviewed here), has been updated to version 1.1. The update includes a number of welcome additions and improvements:
- Image Preview: View images from within Espresso without having to open a separate program.
- Find in Project: Search through all the files in your project.
- Open With: You can now open files in a different editor from within Espresso.
- Project Organizer: View all your projects in a single window and select the one you want to work with (ala Coda).
- Improved snippets, featuring shell scripts, nested placeholders, and full TextMate syntax.
This is definitely a worthwhile upgrade.
TopStyle 4 (Windows) Christmas Upgrade Offer
For the month of December, TopStyle 4 is 34% ($10) off for existing TopStyle 3 customers. The regular upgrade price is $29.95; the full price for new customers is $79.95.
WeBuilder 2010 Released
The first editor I reviewed here, Blumentals’ WeBuilder, just got an update. Here’s what’s new in WeBuilder 2010:
- Improved text editor – updated text selection, undo and redo behavior
- Improved Code Explorer with filtering feature
- Improved Find and Find in Files
- New CSS definitions – IE 8, FireFox 3, Safari, iPhone – be up to date
- Greatly improved Project Publishing dialog
- One-click publish all changes to web
- Improved FTP and SFTP stability and compatibility
- Auto complete for brackets and quotes
- Improved Color Picker
- PHP 5 object oriented programming support
- Support for custom PHP libraries
- Powerful JavaScript support
- Internet Explorer 8 preview
- Works with Windows 7
- Improved performance and robustness
- Countless other improvements and fixes
WeBuilder 2010 Standard Licence is $69.85 USD; Personal (non-commercial) is $49.85; and the Standard upgrade is $39.85.
Camtasia for Mac
TechSmith, makers of the venerable Camtasia Studio, have just released Camtasia for Mac, their new Mac software for creating, editing, and sharing screencasts. Camtasia for Mac is $149 USD but can be purchased for $99 until Dec 31, 2009. Moreover, if you own Camtasia Studio 6 or later on Windows, you can apply for a further discount.
System Requirements
- Mac computer with an Intel processor
- Mac OS X v10.5.6 or later
- Quartz Extreme support
- 1GB of RAM
- Approximately 4GB of available disk space
- QuickTime 7.5.5 or later
- CD drive required for installation
Get ScreenSteps for 50% Off
ScreenSteps, my favourite app for creating documentation and user manuals, is on for half price today only. If you have a Twitter account, follow @screensteps and they’ll DM you a coupon code. If you’re already following them, DM them for the code. ScreenSteps works on both OS X and Windows and supports exporting to HTML, blogs, PDF, Word, and ScreenSteps Live. It’s amazing software with an incredible support team. Give it a try if you haven’t already.
TopStyle 4 Released
Great news for Windows users: TopStyle 4 has been released. There are a lot of new features, including:
- Unicode support
- Live FTP editing
- Script Insight (i.e., code completion) for ASP (both JavaScript and VBScript), PHP, and ColdFusion
- iWebKit, a simple and advanced development framework for iPhone (and iPod touch) webapp development.
TopStyle 4 is $79.95 USD for new users; $29.95 as an upgrade from 3.x.
MacUpdate Promo Spring Bundle
It’s that time of year again — time for another Mac software bundle: the MacUpdate Promo Spring Bundle. For the next two weeks, you can grab 11 apps for $49.99 USD. The most notable apps are TechTool Pro 5 ($98), Parallels Desktop 4 ($79.99) and RipIt (18.99), an awesome program for backing up your DVDs to your Mac. The complete bundle includes:
- TechTool Pro $98.00
- Parallels Desktop $79.99
- Circus Ponies Notebook 3 $49.95
- NetBarrier X5 $49.95
- DVDRemaster Pro $49.99
- Paperless $44.95
- Multiplex $35.00
- MoneyWell $49.99
- RipIt $18.99
- Posterino $24.95
- BetterZip $19.95
Panic 50% Off Sale
From 12:01 AM PST May 27th to 11:59 PM PST May 29th, Panic is offering their biggest apps for half-price. That means you can get Panic’s HTML editor Coda [review] for $49.50 USD and their ftp app Transmit for $14.50. I’ve never seen either of these apps reduced in price or part of any of the typical software bundles, so if you haven’t got them, now is a great time to pick them up.
Two New CSS Framework Tools
Boks is an Adobe Air application that provides a user interface for working with the Blueprint CSS framework. Boks handles the grid and baseline settings and then exports the CSS and HTML files.
For the 960.gs framework, which is what I’ve been trying out for the last little while, there’s a new jQuery plug-in called 960.gs grid overlay that does as the name implies — it overlays a semi-transparent 960 grid over your layout as you develop your site. According to the developer, there is also a bookmarklet in the works.
E Text Editor Goes Open Source
As of April 3, E Text Editor has gone open source as part of developer Alexander Stigsen’s transformation of his company into an Open Company. The source for E has been released on GitHub.
What does this mean for the future of the editor? The developer explained:
What the release means is that you can never risk ending up with a product that is totally abandoned, that many more eyes will be there to find and remove bugs, that companies and individuals can themselves add features only they need for inhouse use and that the community can help speed up the development of e and hopefully free me up to work on the more innovative features (of which there are many in the planning stages).
This move to open source also means that a Linux version of E will be possible once a Linux version of the ecore library is released. To give back to the community, Stigsen has said that the Linux version of E will be free.
For more information, check out the developer posts about releasing the source and becoming an Open Company.
Review: Espresso 1.0
Editor: Espresso
Version: 1.0.1
Developer: MacRabbit
Platform/OS: Mac
WYSIWYG: No
Price: 59.95 Euros
MacRabbit’s newly released Espresso has clearly been positioned as a rival to Panic’s Coda (review), with each striving for one-window web development supremacy on the Mac. What’s interesting about comparing these two apps, however, is their different approaches to what’s essentially the same basic functionality. Each program is defined by its heritage: Coda shares a lot of its DNA with Transmit, featuring powerful FTP and project management tools. The weakest part of Coda is the text editor. Espresso, on the other hand, is CSSEdit’s much more multi-faceted younger sibling and it has learned many of CSSEdit’s tricks, plus a slew of new ones. As a result, Espresso’s strongest feature is the text editor.
Continue reading Review: Espresso 1.0 »