David Ruppert

Several times over the years I’ve decided I need to move on from Homesite. Homesite had become an afterthought long before it was acquired by Acromedia . . or Macrodobe . . or whatever it is these days.

Every time I try to find something new, I’ll download one . . play around with the trial version and find something that’s a total deal-breaker for me. I tried Notepad++, but didn’t download the Explorer plug-in initially . . and subsequently spent an HOUR looking the safety blanket of my file browser docked to the left side of the window.

I also tried e Text Editor, meehh . . . not that impressed. It didn’t auto-complete tags. Again, deal-breaker for me. It just wasn’t as user-friendly as I’d hoped. I’d assumed that it was just a matter of me using Homesite exclusively over the past 10 years . . and really not wanting to learn anything new.

Another faaaaairly significant downside to e Text Editor was the fact that it crashed 4 times in the first 8 hours of use. I’ve got enough crap on my machine that crashes . . I don’t need to add the most commonly used application to that list.

One feature that was a must was being able to reassign keyboard shortcuts. Lets face it, that goes a long way in helping me with the transition. Five years ago I set up Ctrl+P as the shortcut for <p> [by the way, who's printing out code anyway?]. I need that back. If every time I hit Ctrl+P it brings up the print dialog box . . I’m frustrated.

Next, and seemingly obvious, I need a file explorer docked somewhere on my window. What I ended up finding . . and loving . . was HTMLPad 2008. HTMLPad 2008 not only has a built in file explorer . . but just about everything else . . and somehow it’s all easy to find.

HTMLPad 2008 must have been influenced by Homesite, because right off the bat, I don’t feel lost. In fact, it feels like Homesite, but with more helpful tools.

For example, there’s an Inspector [much like Visual Studio]. Not completely sold that I’ll use that much . . but I’m interested in its capabilities.

Next, much like Homesite’s Snippets, HTMLPadd 2008 has a Library. Short code snippets with the ability to edit or delete existing ones and create new ones.

Next, a multiple item clipboard. I remember the introduction of this feature in Office, but this one seems more usable. Can’t quite explain that one yet, but that’s the case.

One thing that Homesite never had . . and I ALWAYS wanted was block selection. In fact in certain scenarios I’d be willing to open up the resource hog known as Visual Studio just to be able to block select something.

Built in HTML Validator . . SVN integration . . built in preview in IE or Firefox. I could really go on. I’m really embarrassed that I’m sooo happy to find a capable, feature-rich, inexpensive text editor.

I’m able to change to an updated text editor without spending an inordinate amount of time relearning the way I’ve been writing code for the better part of the past decade.

I’ve only had this gem for a couple of days, so I’m apprehensive that the shine might wear off, but as of right now, I’m ecstatic to pay $35 for a top notch html editor.

At least visit the site. There’s plenty of information about features and what’s new, including more than enough screenshots to get the idea.

*Nerd alert: this post concerns only the slightest percentage of dorks out there. If your eyes start to glaze over at terms like charset, move along. There’s nothing for you to see here.  Heavy nerdery is about to ensue.

I was having the toughest time simply copy and pasting international characters from an existing live site to my new locally run site. No matter what I did, the characters would not display correctly . . in my text editor, or browser.

My charset for the page was already set to utf-8:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

Finally, I came across a site that will convert those tricky characters in to their numerical values, solving my problem.

View original post on Pinyin.info

I’m saving it here for future use.

The University of Texas has decided to close the Accessibility Institute started by Dr. John Slatin. The Institute has played a big part in highlighting web accessibility issues and it would be a shame for UT to discontinue its progress.

By visiting the the URL below, you can send the following note to Dr. Stephen A. Monti, the Executive Vice Provost at UT:

—

I am writing to urge the University of Texas to reconsider its decision to close the Accessibility Institute, founded and led with distinction by the late Dr. John Slatin. While Dr. Slatin’s inspirational leadership was critically important to get the Institute started, there are others able and prepared to carry the torch of knowledge forward.

The University of Texas established a reputation as leader on Universal Design issues. The research and practical application of findings pioneered by Dr. Slatin, Dr. Kay Lewis and the graduate students they worked with have helped to shape global understanding of the importance of technology access. Indeed, their work has helped to establish standards and best practice all over the world.

As technology rapidly changes, current accessibility standards continue to evolve. Research-based practices must be developed, implemented and evaluated. Accessibility leaders from all over the world look to UT as an exemplar. At a time when governments are trying to establish equitable standards and businesses are seeking to include all markets in their messaging and services, UT can not stand down from this important work.

Please dedicate the resources necessary to maintain and build on Universal Design theories and practices pioneered by John Slatin at the Accessibility Institute.

—

Please take a minute to do so . . you only have to enter your name and email address.

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/SavetheInstitute

Hmm, a very interesting mashup coming from Firefox called Ubiquity. A . . . sort of . . . massive tool type thingie connecting what looks like all local applications [or at least a few?] with a Quicksilvery/Launchy’y type interface.

Very cool. Also very much in its initial stages. There are clearly some bugs to be worked out and some standards that need to be adopted, but this could be an unbelievable time saver for several monotonous tasks while specifically browsing the web.

The first example shows the user creating a simple email. An invitation to a friend to meet for lunch at a local cafe. He’s very quickly able to . . . * without opening another tab in a browser * . . . find a map and drop it in his email. Then he does the same for reviews on this restaurant. The copy, images and formatting from his search results on the restaurant reviews are all placed in his email . . . cool.

The next example works for Craigslist only, but I’ve been wanting something like this for a while. He views lofts for rent in San Francisco. Then by highlighting the results, opening Ubiquity and typing ‘map-these’, a Google map appears with the location of all of these lofts pinpointed. SWEET. Again, only for Craigslist right now though.

They allow users to type normal language commands to find results. This could be unbelievably helpful, or amazingly difficult, depending on whether or not it and I share the same ‘normal spoken language’. I’m interested in trying this out and seeing if it’s as intuitive as it seems.

Anyway, watch the video. The first full minute is quite a beating . . its a very retro SWiSH-like splash page. Ugh, but fight through it and get to the good stuff.

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

Ok, simply using this as a code toolbox again, I don’t want to misplace some of these links.

I spent the better part of a day trying to get Thickbox to work with some existing [and fairly outdated] style switching code. In an attempt to avoid a typical, blow my top, crap on everyone outbursts, I decided to try something else.

While searching around the little interweb for Thickbox issues, I found a post on a forum about Greybox.

After taking a couple of minutes to drop in the code, it worked like a champ. So . . I’m keeping it.

No knock on Thickbox, just simply didn’t have time to troubleshoot anymore. Greybox seems to provide about the same result [and of course it validates], but instead of linking to a url with a querystring of variables and adding a class of “thickbox”, you simply link to the page with ‘ rel=”gb_page_center[520, 500]“‘ in your anchor tag. This is for linking to html documents . . it’s slightly different to create an image gallery like Lightbox JS has mastered.

Plus, it’s about 10kb less than Thickbox simply because of the absence of the jQuery library.

Lightbox 2

Thickbox 3.1

GreyBox v5.53

I just came across this dropdown alternative this morning. It’s just another pure CSS dropdown navigation, but it’s got a few new added features.

It’s based on Suckerfish but uses jQuery. One thing it has that was lacking with the original Suckerfish is the fact that it’s keyboard accessible . . a needed addition.

Its final weight is just over 20kb using jQuery’s production code. It’s fairly heavy compared to Suckerfish, unless of course you’re already using the jQuery base for something else in your site.

I don’t have a need for it right now, but might read a little more and give it a shot when I do.

Just dropping it here because I know it’ll be completely erased from my mind by lunch.

Superfish v1.4.1