Silicon Chisel

Coda

Espresso

Mac Dev Tools Worth Having

For a lot of people, the Mac is seen as the PC for a “creative person”. Very “artsy.” Now, I’ve spent years (decades) developing code on Sun workstations, DEC equipment, and PC’s – the Mac, and the tools that are available on it beat all that stuff by a wide margin.

For starters, Mac OS X is itself a Linux environment. So no more shoe-horning a WAMP environment onto a PC. It’s not needed (although I do use MAMP for the Mac because Apple chose not to install some of the standard PHP extensions as standard, but for most developers this may not be needed).

But what IDE does one run? Sure, you can install the ever-present Eclipse platform. Which is capable of pretty much anything and everything if you locate/install/configure/incant the right stuff. For me, Eclipse was just too much work to get running, too slow, and too idiosynchratic to use on a daily basis.

Thus enters Coda, by Panic. Coda combines a solid code editor, a rock-solid FTP client, a terminal, a CSS editor, Subversion, and site management in one package. If you code in Rails or work with CMS-based sites, the inclusion of a SSH terminal which remembers passwords is a life saver. No more neededing to reach for Terminal or iTerm when you need to launch mongrel or change some folder protection – just open a tab, hit the button and you’re in.

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Desktop Applications, Development Tools, Macintosh ide, Macintosh, php, ruby on rails, subversion

The new Google Chrome browser is a really nice piece of technology. Google has an uncanny knack for building applications which are fast, light, and smart. The search/address field is a very well done. Type whatever you want in there and get a list of likely matches. If nothing fits, hit return and go search for it. When you start using it, you wonder why this wasn’t the way it was at first.

Being able to turn any tab into a launchable desktop application is also great. It means I can now retire Prism from my Windows machine as Chrome does a better job – especially on GMail, Google Docs, and so on – go figure.

The minimalist interface gets in the way in some cases – like trying to figure out how to manage bookmarks. And if you’re used to the features you can end up with in Firefox once you load up all your add-ons, Chrome may be a downer. Because it does what it does – it does it fast and reliably, but that’s all it does.

But that isn’t bad. Use Firefox when you need your add-ons for downloading video or inserting BB-codes into message boards. Use Chrome for your web applications where you want them launched fast and you don’t need anything else getting in the way.

The one huge, huge problem with Chrome … it’s Windows only. Of course, this makes sense given the market share of That Platform. But still. The ‘Net runs on Linux and most of the best design work is done on the Mac. The opinion-makers don’t like on Windows 24×7. I’m sure Google will correct this.

In summary, Chrome is the ideal browser for accessing web-based applications (version control, project management, email, billing systems, and so on). It’s worth a shot and, while it may not take market share away from Internet Explorer, every user who can be lured away from it can be considered a “win” for web designers.

Desktop Applications chrome, google, templates, wordpress

If you’re doing code development on a Mac, especially if you’re bouncing onto your web server a lot, there are a lot of little commands and passwords that you need to keep track of. SSH passwords, SVN passwords and accounts, commands for SVN, Rails, Apache, mysql, etc. This is on top of the snippets of text for running the Mac itself and all the various signatures, quotations, recipes, contact information and other endless pieces of data you not only need to store, but be able to quickly retrieve but paste quickly into a browser, email, or shell window.

Enter “ShoveBox“, a great little menubar utility which keeps all this stuff close at hand. There are a lot of clipboard managers, but ShoveBox’s “Organize” window makes the difference. It allows all the clipping to be organized and colorized any way you like. This makes it real easy to track down that Subversion command for creating a branch you only use once or twice in six months – and then just drag-paste it into your terminal window.
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Desktop Applications, Macintosh clipboard

Anyone who works in IT has a lot of information to keep track of. Passwords, account names, server addresses, license and serial numbers, snippets of useful (sometimes vital) PHP or mySQL code, to-do lists (usually 4 or 5 of these), and of course, links to various web sites. The mainstay PIM’s like Outlook are actually badly suited for this task. They are too big, not flexible enough, and the files are enormous – which is an issue when you need to sync once or twice a day, or want all your data on a USB drive to take with you.

Enter MyInfo 3, written by independant developer Milenix Software in Bulgaria.

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Desktop Applications notes, windows xp