TopStyle Acquired by New Developer
Nick Bradbury has posted to his blog, letting people know that TopStyle has been acquired by a new developer:
I have some good news for TopStyle customers: we’ve reached an agreement with long-time Windows developer Stefan van As to acquire TopStyle, ensuring the future of the product.
The most interesting bit is that TopStyle 4.0 is already underway and that it will include some long-wanted features, such as Unicode support, ‘live’ FTP editing, and extensible tool buttons.
TopStyle 4.0 is expected in Q1 2008. You can find more details in the FAQ on Stefan’s site.
Tools of the Trade: DebugBar
It’s been a long time since I featured a Windows program here, but this one is definitely worth looking at. DebugBar is similar to the Firebug extension for Firefox, except that it works with Internet Explorer.
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My Best and Worst Software Purchases from the Past Year
Ok, it’s maybe a bit early to start this kind of list — 2009 is still a month and a half away, after all. However, this has been nagging at me for some time, and being the software junkie that I am, I thought I should share my favourite (and least favourite) app purchases since switching to the Mac just over a year ago.
Updated (November 17, 2008): Added to my honourable mentions.
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Komodo IDE 5.0 Released
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.
Tools of the Trade: ScreenSteps
More and more clients these days are requesting content management systems (CMS) so that they can update and manage their websites on their own. Really, this is a blessing for both the client and the developer, since clients can make changes quickly and easily without having to send all their updates back to the company who built their site.
However, any time you introduce new technology into the mix, you will inevitably spend a lot of time training clients how to use it. This is where ScreenSteps, a Mac and Windows app, comes to the rescue.
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NewsGator Releases NetNewsWire and FeedDemon as Freeware
From the press release:
NewsGator also announced that all of its client RSS reader products are now available free of charge and include free synchronization along with other services.
I was a long-time FeedDemon user on Windows, and it’s the reader I use to measure all others. On the Mac, I’ve been using Vienna, but now that NNW is also free, I’ll give it a try. Sweet news!
Tools of the Trade: FilenameToFTP
Clients often send me PDFs and images whose file names aren’t set up correctly for the web. The files will have spaces, commas, apostrophes, or other special characters in their names which need to be changed before the files can be uploaded. To manually make these changes is a pain, so when I was using Windows full-time, I found FilenameToFTP, a tiny freeware app that makes file names web friendly. FilenameToFTP renames files and folders, using all lowercase letters and replacing invalid characters with an underscore. A nifty little time saver.
On the Mac, you can use Automator to do the same thing. The Automator action Make Names Web Friendly would probably do the trick.
Sitemap Diagrams Using OmniGraffle, Applescript, and a Google Sitemap
Note: The AppleScript only works with OmniGraffle 4 as far as I can tell.
Typically, when a potential clients contacts me about redesigning their website, I like to examine their current site to check out the design and to see how large the site is — in order to get a sense of taste and potential project scope.
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Software Updates: Aptana and TopStyle
Well, two editors have just been updated. Most recently, Aptana is now out of beta. Aptana Studio 1.0 comes in two flavours: Professional and Community. Professional’s intro price is $99 USD; Community is free. I downloaded the Community version for Mac last night but haven’t checked it out yet. Aptana Studio is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Also, TopStyle 3.5 has been released. 3.5 is a free upgrade for those who already own TopStyle 3. TopStyle is Windows only.
Tools of the Trade: Synergy
Of all the tools I use, Synergy is arguably the most unsung but valuable of the bunch. It sits in the background on both my PC laptop and Mac Mini and allows me to share one keyboard and mouse between them. “So what?” some might say. “A KVM switch can do the same thing.”
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