Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity

Panic Inc.'s Coda, the one-window web development wonder for Mac OS X, has just been updated to version 1.5. Coda is a great program, designed to put, source editing, FTP, CSS and command line access all in one application. it's a great, great application for developers and is definitely one of my most-used applications.

With version 1.5, Coda adds Subversion to its tool-belt, which is sure to make many, many users extremely happy. Git might be the new hotness, but seeing as graphical SVN clients are just now starting to trickle onto OS X, this is great news to any Mac developer.

In typical Coda-style, Subversion access is clean and easy to manage. Source-control is set-up on a per-site basis, if your existing site already has a SVN directory, Coda detects it automatically. You can also enter in a repositories URL and login details to checkout a copy of a repository if no local copy exists.

In addition to Subversion support, Coda 1.5 also boasts a much-improved find and replace system. The find and replace command can now span all open files, files in a directory or files in the local root site. In the past, this was one of my only problems with Coda -- I had to search through each file to find a specific line of code, instead of being able to search across a group of files. This is great for updating an image directory or changing a file name across a bunch of PHP or CSS files.

The "Books" menu has also received a big update: support for custom books. Coda's Books feature works by connecting the user to a web page housing a book's complete text. Out of the box, Coda comes with access to a CSS, HTML, PHP and Javascript manual. When writing anything in those languages or formats, you can also refer to the reference books to look up commands or syntax rules. This can vbe very handy. Now, with the custom book feature, you can add other online books. For instance, I added the Django Book to my bookshelf so that I can have easy access to it anytime I'm working on a site that uses that framework.

Coda's Clips feature has also been improved, with support for groupings, importing and exporting. There are lots of other improvements (check out the release notes) that make an already great program even better.

Coda 1.5 is a free update for all existing Coda users. You can download a 15-day trial from Panic's site. Pricing is $99 for new users, $85 for existing Transmit 3 customers. Coda requires OS X 10.4+.

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Filed under: Windows, Productivity, Freeware

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Filed under: Utilities, Browsers

You've probably heard of Dead Pixel Buddy, a free app that helps you locate dead or stuck pixels on your LCD monitor. One of our devoted readers has sent us an interesting alternative that runs in your browser.

Willy Ci has coded it as part of his portfolio, and it's elegantly simple. Pick a color with the palette tool, click go full screen, and your monitor is instantly awash in glorious pixel-hunting color.

Since it's browser-based, it'll run on any platform (as long as Adobe Flash is supported).

Both machines I used for testing had a slight issue escaping from full screen - the chooser didn't reappear, and my mouse pointer vanished. Simply mousing up to the tab bar and right-click reloading the tab solved the problem.

Once you've pinpointed the trouble spots, head over to killdeadpixel.com and see if you can't revive them with their trippy animated gif. Switching to one of the fullscreen modes makes stuck pixels easy to spot by giving you a black background to work with. No guarantees it'll wake them up, but it's worth a shot since most manufacturers won't warranty a screen with less than three problematic pixels.

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Filed under: Utilities

As a teacher, I know teachers are always looking for a good deal. But even as a free download, Lightes is not worth it.

Many classrooms have a red/yellow/green system for behavior monitoring. Kind of like a stop light, red means stop, green means go. Pretty basic. The folks over at frontbridge computers made it a little too basic though.

Lightes has three options. Red, yellow, green and off. Press the button labeled red and the rectangle turns red. Press the yellow button and it turns yellow. Same with green. The off button clears the rectangle to gray. That's all it does. There is a timer button but no matter what number I enter, as soon as I press timer I get a window that pops up and says done.

Cnet TV ranked lightes as the number one worst downloads of the summer of 2008. On the frontbridge home page Lightes is called the "star program of all time." Yikes.

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Filed under: Internet, Search

Continue reading TypoBuddy Finds Misspelled eBay, Craigslist (?) Deals

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Filed under: Design, Features, Web services, web 2.0

I rarely get as excited by a Web 2.0 app or service as I am by ProofHQ, which is an innovative and platform-independent way to manage the whole review and approval process for creative documents. At least for me, the most tedious part of the design process is getting feedback and approval. First you have to make sure the file is in a format that a client or collaborator can read (so that you don't accidentally send out a Word 2007 document to someone who is using Office 2003 and doesn't have the Office 2007 viewer software), then if you are sending something by e-mail, that the e-mail size isn't too large for their mail server. That process has to be repeated for every change or for every new element.

ProofHQ was designed to streamline the entire creative review process, making much of the above process unnecessary.This is how it works: You upload your proof, document or design concept to ProofHQ and enter in who you want to send the proof to. ProofHQ then creates a web-optimized, Flash-based proof that your reviewers or collaborators can view. They just click on a link in their e-mail and have access to the proof or document.

From there, they can add notes, draw in markup and immediately reject or approve a design. You can even embed a "Miniproof" in a blog or wiki, and any comments made either at that site or via the ProofHQ dashboard appear alongside one another. This makes it really, really easy to get feedback and collaboration from lots of different people. As the document creator, you can see who has reviewed or commented on a proof and instantly eyeball if something is approved or if you need to bug someone to give you an answer.

Continue reading Easy web-based proofing with ProofHQ

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Filed under: Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Search

Microsoft built a lot of new functionality into Windows Vista's search feature, but what about those of us that are still sticking with our trusty old XP installs? Our default search is a decrepit old fart of a program, and one that still resembles the version from a decade ago.

Well, it's time for a change. Two great freeware programs do the job much better, so why keep dealing with a slow, lackluster search?

Portable application buffs should check out Locate32. When you launch the app for the first time, you'll need to tell it to build a database file. After that, it'll take a seat in your system tray and run updates on your specified schedule. You can further tweak by specifying a maximum CPU usage before starting the job to ensure indexing doesn't bog down your system during busy periods.

Indexing took just a minute and a half on my notebook's 120GB hard drive, and subsequent searches displayed results in a flash. Searches you want to execute frequently can be added to the presets button.

Continue reading Windows Search Bites - Locate and Agent Ransack Don't

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Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Browsers

Tabs changed the way we browse the web. No longer do you have to open new browser windows to view additional content. You can just create a new tab and enter a URL or search term. Most browsers even let you right-click on any link you find on a web page and open it in a new tab.

But when you open a new tab the old fashioned way by clicking the "new tab" or Ctrl+T keys, you're presented with a blank screen that honestly doesn't do you much good. So the folks at Mozilla are thinking about ways to make new tabs instantly useful. One idea, which you can see detailed above is to throw a search box onto every blank tab, since there's a good chance you're opening a fresh tab to search for something.

It doesn't stop there though. The conceptual search box would be linked to the Firefox 3 Awesome Bar, which means it has access to your web browsing history and can offer recommendations for sites you've recently visited as you search. And if you highlighted and copied some text on another web site before opening your fresh tab, this concept design would try to detect what kind of text you copied and offer even more useful suggestions. For example, if you copied a date, you might see a box with the option of adding the date to a calendar. If you copy an address, you might be able to map it with the click of a button.

After the jump, check out another concept from another Firefox developer. Either one of these ideas could find their way into future versions of the web browser.

Continue reading Mozilla explores ways to make new Firefox tabs more useful

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Filed under: Productivity, Social Software

Muse Wedding is basically one of those big, thick wedding planning binders on the web. You can enter whatever you need to get done into your task list and check it off as it gets done. You can create a budget and add what you have spent. You can even see it in a pie chart!

You can visit the Idea Book to see what other users have posted or post your own ideas for others to see. You can create a profile so like-minded users can find you for brainstorming sessions or idea swapping.

I used Muse Wedding for some of my own wedding planning before the redesign and community features were available. What I liked the most is that I made my own task list and wasn't tied to the traditional ideas of what needed to be done 6 months before the wedding, 5 months before the wedding and on and on.

Muse still offers that flexibility, now with a nice looking site design, and plenty of planning and community features. And even if the person planning the wedding isn't quite as web savvy as you, our DLS readers, each page has clear explanations of what you can do with each command.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, AOL, Beta, web 2.0

Once upon a time, it looked like MapQuest was on the same path that TiVo, Kleenex, and Xerox had taken before it. If you were looking up directions using any web site, there was a good chance you said you were "mapquesting it." But now the pioneer in online directions faces stiff competition from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and others. But it looks like AOL (the company that owns both MapQuest and this blog) is trying to play catchup by rolling out many of the same features you'll find at those other sites, and a few new ones to boot.

The first thing you'll notice in the new MapQuest beta is that the company has finally added a map to the front page. You no longer have to enter your data and click to a secondary screen. The map will automatically show information based on your preferences or your physical location.

You can do all the things you'd expect with the map, like search for addresses or business, zoom in and out, or view arial images. You can also click on a weather link to overlay weather information, or click a gas link to pull up gas price information for various locations. There's also a traffic button that shows live traffic conditions for more than 85 cities.

Some of these features have been available for months. For example, MapQuest introduced live traffic information back in March. But AOL is really pushing the redesign now, by providing a link to the beta at the top of the main MapQuest page. The plan is to promote the beta for a few months before flipping the switch and killing the older version of the site.

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