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.
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.
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.
Run IE8/IE7/IE6, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera from the Web
If you’re looking for a way to run IE 6/7/8 concurrently on Windows, Xenocode’s Browser Sandbox will let you do just that. You can also run Firefox (3 and 2), Safari, Chrome, and Opera. From the site:
The Xenocode Browser Sandbox allows all popular Windows browsers to be run simultaneously, directly from the web. Web designers, system administrators, and other users can now evaluate Internet Explorer 8, 7, and 6, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, and Google Chrome directly from the web in a risk-free manner. Unlike traditional software applications, Xenocode WebAppsdo not require any software to be installed andallow multiple application versions to run side-by-side on any version of Windows.
The downloads are free; Xenocode’s WebApp technology is in beta.
Update: As noted by PM below, you now have to install the Spoon plug-in to get the browsers to run. You don’t have to register, though. Just download and install the plug-in and return to the Xenocode browser page to run the browser of your choice.
Tools of the Trade: Stardock Fences
I just discovered a sweet, free, Windows-only beta product from Stardock called Fences. Fences is a program that “helps you organize your desktop, and can hide your icons when they’re not in use.”
Basically, Fences creates separate areas on your desktop dedicated to specific types of icons (Programs, Folders, Recently Used, Games, etc.), letting you better organize the icon clutter from all your programs, files, and folders:
Three or four years ago I actually modified a desktop background to have groups like this, but it definitely wasn’t a great solution. Fences, on the other hand, seems to work really well and I can spot the file or program I need at a glance instead of getting lost in the typical mess of icons on my desktop.
Foxmarks Now Supports IE and Safari
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
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.