Comments on: Can’t-Do-Without Blogging Tools

By: Anne

Anne — Tue, 30 May 2006 13:47:11 +0000

Brad, thanks for all the great suggestions. I keep reading about Quicksilver but didn’t know what it did. All those apps look very useful… I’m not thrilled with Cyberduck and need something else and emacs is not what I want to stick with for editing. I’m sure someday I’ll need to rename a bunch of files. If my Unix commands don’t come back to me, I’ll look at Rename4Mac.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 29 May 2006 20:52:17 +0000

Nice post!

Some OS X apps I wouldn’t leave home without are:

Quicksilver (link)
Quicksilver has made me literally 10X more effective. Type in the first few letters of any application/url/folder/ anything, and you’re there. Give it a try!

Textmate (link)
The best text editor I’ve used yet on Mac. The only one that can even come close to rivaling it is SKEDIT. http://www.skti.org/skEdit.php

Transmit (link)
Without a question, the best FTP program I’ve used for Mac. I used CyberDuck too when I first got my Mac. Best 29.99 I’ve spent for my Mac yet.

Rename4Mac (link)
If you need to rename a lot of files, this is THE app. Very easy to use, kick’s Mac OS X’s automator’s butt.

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 12 May 2006 18:48:37 +0000

Hmm, need to take a look at Notepad++. I have used HomeSite in the past, like Gordon, and liked it, but I want something new.

Scott-that Qumana experience sounds pretty bad! I hate it when I lose what I’ve already written.

By: Amy

Amy — Fri, 12 May 2006 16:32:51 +0000

Re HTML editor, I can’t be without Notepad++. Free, open source, coloured syntax, tabbing. A great tool.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Thu, 11 May 2006 23:53:41 +0000

iTunes - sets the mood!
Photoshop Elements for graphics
HomeSite for CSS/HTML stuff
Lazy Sheep bookmarklet for quick (one-click) adding of sites to del.icio.us

And Firefox… obviously!

By: Scott Mark

Scott Mark — Thu, 11 May 2006 21:51:02 +0000

For the record, my first experiment with Qumana was a total blowout. The editor was okay, but I quickly realized I couldn’t edit source through the tool (or I’m totally dense). Not good IMHO. Next my Technorati tags got hosed up - maybe I’m a wimp, but that’s one of the reasons I even wanted to consider a tool - to make that easier.

But the big blowout was that when I published I somehow lost most of my post! It somehow published an earlier revision, so I ended up doing the whole thing through the Blogger editor. Yikes! Don’t know if I’ll try Qumana again.

Thinking I just need to stick with a basic editor, and keep things simple…

By: fp

fp — Wed, 10 May 2006 10:02:01 +0000

# WINtel
# Wordpress/Godaddy
# Plugins… 2.0.2 has pretty good antispammage without a plugin… Ultimate Tag Warrior wil keep me busy for a while
# WS FTP Pro
# BlogJet
# Photoshop
# Textpad
# SnagIt
# Firefox for tabbed browsing… not to into the extended feature set beyond that
# ever more GMail with chat
# I’ve learned to stay away from MS Office for web stuff because of all the horrible mark-up it imposes.

By: Anne

Anne — Tue, 09 May 2006 08:44:52 +0000

pono - aloha! how’s maui? Heh, I didn’t even think I’d have to build stuff myself! Duh. I’m going to check out Inkscape.

Ryan - what a load of great info. Thanks. I’m especially interested in a diagramming tool–I kind of forgot how much I used to depend on Visio, when I was heavily into software and web design. Hmm, a note taking program… that could come in handy. I’m kind of behind on the wiki thing; will have to do some research to figure out what you’re talking about but it’s on my queue. I’m taking over as secretary of our school’s parent association and one thing they’re hoping for is better sharing of information. Maybe a bulletin board or email list is the right thing but I’m going to check into wiki software too.

By: ryan

ryan — Tue, 09 May 2006 06:41:37 +0000

Aquamacs is a Aqua Emacs version. You can do things like hit cmd-h or cmd-s and it will do what you expect. Also ^X^S works too (of course!). Highly recommended.

Tools I use and are either in my dock or I run fairly often:
- Mail.app - still a great Mac mail app.
- Adium - Best multi-protocol IM client.
- Entourage - I have to work within an Exchange world.
- Aperture - very cool, goes well with my 5D.
- Omnigraffle - great diagramming tool, and only on Mac - make windows users jealous!

Other power tools:
- BluePhoneElite - interfaces with my BT phone.
- XJournal - I post to LJ, this is sometimes how I do it.
- DEVONthink Pro - info note taker program.

I’m not a big blogger however - so the need to offline edit and later post is not important to me. I am also not a big writer muchly, so my use of devonthink is not very heavy.

Personally what I really want is a local non-PHP non-website non-MYSQL media-wiki markup tool. I want said tool to also be able to post to a media-wiki compatible/workable blogging tool. I think mediawiki has one of the best markups, and I want to be able to write that anywhere. Perhaps the tool should work like WP5.1 - with ‘reveal codes’ and real-time “preview”.

By: pono

pono — Mon, 08 May 2006 13:21:51 +0000

Vector graphics: I’ve tried building a number of gnu vector/svg tools within os x. I’ve ended up with Inkscape, in part because they offer a .dmg binary package in case I’m too lame to b.i.y.