Caught this on Daring Fireball while I was on vacation, but there's a great video on Panic Software's Cabel Sasser delivering a presentation on the development of Coda, their web editor.



While I think some of Panic's software are a little overrated (Transmit and Unison), I do like Coda... a lot. It's one of the better web editors I've used, and I don't think its price tag is too expensive. As a hand coder, I find that it is a very well rounded tool that covers a lot of the functionality that I need when writing HTML/PHP.



An interesting surprise in the presentation was that Panic originally planned to have an image editor built-into the tool as well. Talk about kitchen sink! If you can get past the ass-kissing moderator, it's a real treat to hear one of the leading independent Mac developers talk about the product development process.

Now if only Panic could do selection indents (what is with Mac apps that you can't select multiple lines of text and hit tab or shift-tab to indent/outdent?), I'd be a very happy man.

Tags: panic, coda, cabel sasser

One of my favorite scripting tools in Windows is the freeware application Notepad++. It's a fantastic little application at a fantastic price. Some people might prefer SlickEdit, Textpad or EditPlus, but after using Notepad++ for a few days, I'm sure few people will miss the commercial alternatives.



One of the few things I don't like on the Mac is that the text editors are commercial, and highly overrated (um, BBEdit, anyone?). I managed to get TextMate via MacHeist, and it's a solid editor, but it's one of those areas where I just prefer the software on Windows. I do admit that I have been a sucker in terms of trying to find a decent text editing surrogate on the Mac, and yes, I did fork out the big bucks for Coda, but Coda's appeal is really in the integration of text editor, ftp, terminal and coding documentation. In Coda's case, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

Tags: freeware, text, editor, textmate, bbedit, coda, slickedit, textpad, editplus, windows

Well, hopefully this is the final platform change in the neverending effort that is the web site of Steven Ng. With a life that is as busy as it is, the blog format really isn't working.

I think the best way to approach such an infrequently updated web site is to keep it down to the basics and focus on a few key areas that are of interest to me:

• 
  
• Tips for Mac Switchers
  
• Handy Lifehacking Tips
  
• Music I'm Listening To
  
• My Movie Watchlist
  
• Recent Good Reads
  
• Handy Tech Cheatsheets
  
• Any Nifty Tools I've Written
  
• Game Reviews
  
• Media Serving in the Home
  

I've never really been able to truly recover from leaving Blogger several years ago, being the control freak that I am. I haven't found that any server-based solution has really worked for me since. I've tried GeekLog, WordPress and MediaWiki. While great tools, they just weren't what I needed or was looking for. In the end, most of my posts were done on my iMac, so why not go back to the fat client?

Since I had an unused license for RapidWeaver from MacHeist 1, I figured I'd finally give it a shot. Of course, I had to pay to upgrade to the latest version, but it was well worth it. (And who says that Heist users don't pay for upgrades, eh, Gruber?)

In all fairness, I don't think RapidWeaver will be the only tool I'll be using for this site - it will probably be a combination of RapidWeaver (content and publishing), Coda (template coding) and CSSEdit (stylesheets). CSSEdit was a fortuitous acquisition from MacHeist 2. Image editing will be done via Pixelmator and iStockPhoto.

If you haven't noticed a trend, I'm a big supporter of independent software for the Macintosh. The greatest thing about indie software for the Mac is that you get fully functioned, polished software at a very reasonable price.

The template is not set yet, but I hope you keep coming back and enjoy what you see.

Cheers!

Tags: rapidweaver, macheist, cssedit, coda, pixelmator, istockphoto