HTML Editor Reviews » Tools of the Trade

Fusion Ads Holiday Bundle

Eric — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 01:25:39 +0000

There have been a lot of software bundles this year, but one just came out and it’s geared to (mostly Mac) web developers: Fusion Ads Holiday Bundle. I use many of the apps listed and heartily recommend them. They include:

ExpressionEngine (Freelance License)
Versions
Fontcase
Billings
DrawIt
ExpanDrive
TextExpander
Postmark
Kaleidoscope
Gedy’s Social Icons
Pictos Icons
Mijingo training for ExpressionEngine 2
Keynote Wireframe Toolkit

The bundle is $79 and you could be entered to win a MacBook Air or an iPad. 10% of the profits will go to charity.

Echofon

Eric — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:23:52 +0000

While at times it can be a distraction, Twitter has become a valuable resource in my development process over the last couple of years, allowing me to take part in a great community of web and ExpressionEngine developers spread across the globe. I’ve never really used the Twitter website to keep track of conversations, though, preferring from the start to use a desktop client. While I’ve experimented with many, the one that’s stuck is Echofon for Mac.

I’ve stayed with Echofon for a number of reasons, most notably for its ability to sync between desktop and iPad clients. As a result, I can view my timeline from Echofon for iPad and when I return to my Mac, I’ll see exactly where I left off reading (and vice versa). Echofon also has a great conversation view — you just click on the little speech bubble and Echofon brings up the entire list of related tweets. Another handy feature is Echofon’s ability to autofill usernames. Start typing the name of someone you follow then press the Tab key — voila!

The only thing I miss from Echofon is filtering — I’d love to be able to remove tweets from my timeline containing certain words, for example. Overall, though, Echofon is a great app and I highly recommend it for Mac and iPad owners.

Mountee

Eric — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:28:50 +0000

Mountee is a new Mac app for those who use ExpressionEngine 2 (EE). Essentially, Mountee let’s you mount your EE templates as files so that you can edit them via your favourite editor instead of from within the EE control panel.

Prior to release, I didn’t see how Mountee was different from ExpanDrive or Transmit’s “Mount as Disk” feature, other than Mountee would also allow you to change template preferences without going into EE’s control panel. Now, however, I can see why Mountee is such a big deal: It doesn’t save templates as files at all. Not only is this better for performance (sites with a lot of traffic can perform more slowly when templates are saved as files), but it still allows you to use EE’s native template versioning.

I’ve only tested Mountee a little on my local machine, so I don’t know if there are any bugs or performance issues, but I can definitely see it making my transition from EE1 to EE2 much easier.

MacUpdate Promo Spring Bundle

Eric — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:22:23 +0000

Another week, another Mac software bundle. This time, it’s the MacUpdate Promo Spring 2010 Bundle — 11 apps for $50. There’s not a lot here for the web worker, other than Parallels Desktop 5, which is normally $80, and WebSnapper ($15), which I’ve previously written about.

While I’m a VMWare Fusion user myself, MacTech recently compared the performance of VMWare Fusion 3 and Parallels Desktop 5, with the latter performing better in most areas. So it might be worth considering the MacUpdate bundle simply for the $30 discount on Parallels.

Camtasia for Mac

Eric — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:18:34 +0000

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