HTML Editor Reviews » Linux Software

Two New CSS Framework Tools

Eric — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:32:58 +0000

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

Eric — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:47:51 +0000

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.

Foxmarks Now Supports IE and Safari

Eric — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:30:39 +0000

Foxmarks, the bookmark and password synchronizer for Firefox, now also supports Internet Explorer 6 & 7 and Safari 3, letting you share bookmarks across multiple OSes and browsers. Last March, I wrote about using BookIt and Foxmarks to accomplish the same thing, but BookIt doesn’t support Firefox 3. Now, you can simply install Foxmarks. You can download Foxmarks from the Foxmarks website.

Tools of the Trade: Balsamic Mockups

Eric — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:16:52 +0000

Thanks to @masuga on Twitter yesterday, I discovered a product called Balsamic Mockups — an Adobe Air application for quickly and easily creating low fidelity user interface (UI) mockups and wireframes. Here’s a very quick sample of the top portion of my business website:

The interface and the drag-and-drop elements are all meant to have a handwritten/handdrawn esthetic, as if you were using pencil and paper to create the concept. This is so clients don’t confuse the wireframe with an actual design. Yet, despite the rudimentary look of the drawings, the mockups can be surprisingly detailed. For example, you can add scroll bars to windows, highlight table rows and tabs, add different icons, etc. Check out the sample mockups and the intro video to get an idea of what can be done.

Overall, Balsamic Mockups is very intuitive and easy to use. The elements are all drag-and-drop and most everything can be resized and repositioned as required. There is a version of the software for the desktop ($79 USD) as well as collaborative versions for Confluence, JIRA, and XWiki. Since the program is built on Adobe Air, it works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Komodo IDE 5.0 Released

Eric — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:02:43 +0000

ActiveState has just released Komodo IDE 5.0 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version now has support for Git, Mercurial (hg), and Bazaar distributed version control systems, compatibility with external code formatters such as PHP Beautifier, and is built on the Mozilla 1.9 codebase.

Komodo IDE 5.0 is $245 USD until December 23, after which time it will be $295. There is a 21-day trial if you want to check it out before shelling out.

See our review of Komodo IDE 4.0.