new development set up

well its taken me a little bit of time but i think i’ve finally found myself a nice little free rival to the old way i used to work on the pc.

i used to use dreamweaver to do all of my editing with the auto save to server feature enabled which i loved as it just made developing a site a simple and fluid process, especially as i like to check what every little change i make looks like. now i’ve moved over to the mac however i decided to see if there was a free alternative to this.

what i’ve settled on is the following:

Smultron for editing

Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs – like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on.

Cyberduck to upload on save

Cyberduck is an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser for the Mac. It features an easy to use interface that allows to toggle between bookmarks and the browser outline view. For editing files, it provides a seamless integration with several external editors. Many OS X core system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, QuickLook and the Keychain are supported.

I tried out a few of the other options, for example bbedit and coda however for simplicities sake and to stop my wallet from getting angry I think this solution will be more than adequate. admittedly this set up is lacking in regards to features such as SVN however as i generally work on projects alone currently i feel i can look past this.

i’m sure there’s plenty of other people out there using the same set up, i’d be interested in hearing of any issues that you’ve had working in this manner or some helpful hints to expand the power and features of this work flow.

i’m a mac

whilst not completely true, the phrase i’m a mac is something that i hope to be able to say with a bit more sincerity in the future. a couple of days ago i broke the habit of a life time and took a plunge into the aesthetically pleasing world of the macbook.

for years i avoided buying an ipod only to kick myself when i did, so i’m sure this will be the same. whilst there was nothing wrong with how i worked with xp, mac laptops have always lured me in with their sultry designs and promise of improved work flow. i can’t say i’ve used this long enough to decide if work flow will definitely be improved but perhaps even the idea of that occurring will no doubt make me seek out the ways in which do this.

this morning i stumbled across Quicksilver, whilst i’m admittedly slightly confused with this application launcher, i haven’t heard a bad word about it so i feel like its my duty to ensure i take a bit of time to get my head around it. hopefully its this kind of mac only application that will make the pc to mac switch extremely beneficial.