LBnuke

I was browsing Macworld online this morning and watched Jason Snell’s video about DragThing, a utility that replaces the mac OS X dock. It can also be used in addition to the standard dock.

Half way through watching the video, I could barely wait to try it. I downloaded it before the video was over and installed it right away. It took me a little while to get it all configured, but so far it totally rocks.

I like the mac dock but I have so many things on it that they are hard to find. I run my cursor back and forth all the time trying to remember what I was looking for. Drag thing organizes dock items in several ways. There are options to create multiple docks, each with the option of tabbed sections. Many themes are included and the docks can be moved around.

I chose the blueprint theme and created one dock with 6 tabs (main, docs, folders, URLs, dev, and misc). I am also using the ‘process dock’, a dock showing all open applications. I chose to show these as drawers that need to be clicked to open (hover over is another option). One cool thing I noticed is that even with the drawers set to open on click instead of hover, I can still drag a file to a tab and the dock will open so I can drop the file onto the program I want to open it with.

Docks with drawers closed:

DragThing is shareware. It is free to download and try and $29 for a single user license. I will try it for a while before I pay for it, but even after just one day I can see how this could easily become a ‘must have’ app.

A long time ago, Karen promised that she would never throw me a surprise party. She also promised that she would never lie to me. Today, after a surprise party last night which followed about a month of deceit, I find myself surprisingly (and pleasantly) not angry at all.

I was surprised to say the least! Me and Karen and TC were hanging out in the living room when the doorbell rang. I answered it and looked outside to see about 10 or 12 people who I know and like standing there holding balloons and smiling at me. I honestly did not know what to make of it. I think I figured it out about a minute later when they all quietly yelled “Surprise!”, but my brain was still trying to make some sense of it as they started coming inside the house.
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Some of my favorite mac freeware *

• Adium - multi-protocol instant messaging client
• Butler - application launcher with many other handy features
• Camino - mac-like gecko browser. not as many features as firefox, but faster.
• ClamAV - Antivirus program, because you just never know…
• Colloquy - GUI IRC client
• ColorTagGen - Use the eyedropper to get fast hex color codes. This little app rocks!
• Dashboard KickStart - brings up the dashboard for a second at startup so that you don’t have to wait for it to load the first time you use it.
• Firefox - I Firefox
• MAMP - Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP server environment in an easy to install, easy to use package. Includes Apache v2.0.x, phpMyAdmin, MySQL v5.0.x, PHP v4.4.x and v5.1.x, and more.
• NeoOffice - Mac version of OpenOffice (OO also works on a mac). No need for X11 with Neo. Prettier than OO.
• Onyx - tweaking, maintenance, etc.
• Quicksilver - similar to Butler, only geekier. I use it on my powerbook. I find Butler’s interface a little more intuitive.
• Smell-O-Mints - Periodic table with some nice features
• TextWrangler - I actually use BBedit, but TextWrangler is an excellent free text editor that does much of what BBedit does so I have to mention it here.
• Transmission - BitTorrent Client

Widgets:

• Image Shackle - fast easy way to resize images. Just drag the image to the widget, set a size, and click ’shackle’ for a copy of your image at the specified size. I love this widget!
• Panda Cam - live feed from the San Diego Zoo’s Panda Cam
• PHP function reference (PHPfr) - comprehensive PHP reference
• iStat Pro - system monitoring widget

There is a great list which includes many of the programs mentioned above (and many that aren’t) at xfreeware.com.

Anyone else have any favorite mac freeware? Please share…

* I am using the word freeware because payment is not required to use these apps with all features enabled and without a time limit. Many of the programmers accept donations to compensate them for their time and effort. If you can afford it and use the program regularly, please consider donating

I have read the mixed reviews. I have looked at the insanely redundant (yet CSS based) code. I have pointed and clicked my way to a pretty cool website! It is definitely worth the $79 price tag, especially considering that the price includes the entire iLife ‘06 suite! (iLife also includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and Garage Band)

This is not a professional web design/development application, and anyone who is looking for that will not be happy with it. Design options are limited in many ways. Programming options are limited to what is built in. Generated source code is mostly lots of divs with tons of repetitive inline styling and NO semantic markup. If you need a pro wysiwyg web app, Dreamweaver 8 is the way to go.
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It is only the first day, and I am already having a great time at macworld. The expo doesn’t even start until tomorrow. The keynote is tomorrow at 9.

Day 1 of the dreamweaver power tools conference was great; even better than I was expecting. Dave McFarland (the guy that wrote the ‘missing manuals’ for the last few versions of dreamweaver) was running the presentation. He is a good speaker; very knowledgeable, interesting, entertaining, and flexible.

This conference is geared towards intermediate dw users, and I was afraid the level of the first day sessions would be too basic, but for the most part, I was wrong. I even enjoyed hearing about things that I am very familiar with, like CSS.

The way Mr. McFarland explained CSS to the people who were new to it, made me excited all over again about css. It’s great! I am a web geek, and would happily praise css to anyone who will listen, but in my usual life, most people I come across do not know or care about css.

I ended up learning much more than I thought I would. I still think it may be faster and easier to hand code basic page styles than to click through the dw menus and dialog boxes, but once the stylesheet starts getting longer and more complicated, I can see where using the new CSS tools in DW8 can save gigantic amounts of time, and make things much less confusing than trying to muddle through a giant css file looking for the cause of a style over-ride problem, or even just all the CSS that is relevant to a particular element or selection.

I was going to write more, but it is already the 2nd day and I must write about the keynote now.