Trying Software

I’ve been trying or re-trying a few apps in the last couple of weeks. First off I went back to using BBEdit, I had been using SKEdit but a couple of bugs got me in trouble on a couple of projects, messing up code and keeping me working on them longer than I should have, so back to the classic it is. I’m especially enjoying the HTML Tidy feature. Save Word document as web page, hit “clean up HTML”, “convert to XHTML”, “translate” accents, curly quotes, apostrophes e all, save and there you go; cleaned up text file ready for website use.

Second, NetNewsWire was updated and it kicks butt. Much quicker and a couple of little tweaks that make it more fun to use. For the first couple of days I was using it’s built in browser (based on the webkit Apple coded for Safari) but with a 12” screen and the subscriptions sidebar there just wasn’t enough room so I’m back to poping the links in new tabs in the browser behind the reader.

Which brings me to the next one, Shiira. It’s a webkit based browser but with a different interface, Aqua styled to be more precise and it also lets you re-order the tabs which, to someone who keeps quite a few open like I do, is very useful. I tried it months back but it didn’t play well with the “beneath the reader” thing I mentioned so I ditched it but that’s been fixed so I’m giving it another try starting tonight.

For BBEdit, NetNewsWire and Shiira I’m also being a bit of an Hicksfreak and using his icons for all three. Nice eye candy that fits well with the rest of my desktop.

My best “discovery” though has been Proteus. Ok, I didn’t really “discover” it, m-c pointed me straight to it. It’s a messaging client that can play with all networks, gorgeous interface, fun to use, no bugs so far. All the others I had tried I would use only when I realllllly needed to talk to someone on MSN and then go back to iChat. With this one I can just leave it open.

Finally, I installed the Tomato Bittorrent client and I’m currently downloading a couple of things, we’ll see how patient I am with that stuff.

2 Comments

miriam September 30, 2004

I just installed Hyperedit : http://www.tumultco.com/HyperEdit/

haven’t really tried it yet. but my friend who has given me good leads reccomended it

also there is Xpad: http://maniacalrage.net/xpad which isn’t free but i really use my trial version to death and should probably give them some money.

Patrick September 30, 2004

Thanks for the suggestions :)

I’m hoping this one is as good as advertised, looking forward to trying it out.

Comments closed