Year: 2004

Tabbed Editors for OS X?

Ashley Bischoff28 Comments

Though I’m thoroughly enjoying my PowerBook, I’m not yet as productive on it as on my Windows box. It’s just a few niggling apps for which I haven’t yet found equivalents. And, at the top of the list is an editor.

I don’t need much in an editor — one with a tabbed interface along with syntax highlighting for HTML/CSS would be fine. Multiple undo/redo would be even better. But, I can’t find such an editor for OS X. Sure, on Windows, there would be several from which to choose — TextPad is probably the benchmark editor in this category and Crimson Editor (what I use) is freeware but just as good.

I’ve used tabbed editors on Windows for years and I’ve found them very handy. I often have four or five documents open at once — a couple CSS files, perhaps a JavaScript file or two, and a few HTML documents — and having a separate window for each document just feels clumsy to me. They invariably overlap and the filenames in their titlebars end up underneath each other. With tabs, I can see each filename easily and switch between files quickly.

When I first started looking for software for my PowerBook (before it even arrived, even), I penciled-in SubEthaEdit (formerly Hydra) as an interim editor. SubEthaEdit is a freeware editor with syntax highlighting and (as a bonus) Rendezvous support. But, it still didn’t have tabs for multiple documents.

Since finding SubEthaEdit, I’ve searched for other suitable editors, but I couldn’t find even one freeware editor with a tabbed interface. So, for a lack of other options, I figured that I may need to consider shareware/commercial editors as well. In that vein, I went to VersionTracker to peruse their HTML Tools section. I checked every app — shareware or otherwise — I couldn’t find even one with a tabbed interface :-/.

Some may claim that tabs are against Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, but even Safari supports tabs (however, Apple does frown upon MDI interfaces). So, are tabbed interfaces a new thing to the Mac world or is there some mystical tabbed-editor that’s just been eluding me?

Optimized Firefox Builds

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

As an open source project, anyone can create builds for Firefox (formerly known as Firebird). And, indeed many have. As Neil Turner writes about in his blog, Jesse Ruderman has a section of his site — “The Burning Edge” — where he chronicles bugs fixed in each day’s Firefox builds.

And, next to each day’s listing are links to processor-specific builds. In order to save some space, he makes use of some acronyms, but there’s a section which goes over all those. The key is to match up your processor’s special features (such as SSE) with the build that offers those.

If you’re not sure which features your processor has, Neil mentions that AIDA 32 will check your processor and figure that out for you. AIDA probably works fine, though I prefer WCPUID for that kind of thing — it’s a processor-focused utility and all the information you need is right on the first screen.

In the FAQ, Jesse also includes a quick-reference to match up which build is fastest for your processor:

So which optimized build should I get if my processor is X?

  • P2: G6 is fastest
  • P3: G6 SSE is fastest
  • P4: G7 SSE2 is fastest
  • Celeron: Depends on whether your Celeron is P2-based, P3-based, or P4-based.
  • Athlon XP: G7 may be faster than G7 SSE even though SSE is supported

Yeah, those acronyms may seem a bit obtuse for now, but it’s fairly straightforward once you’re looking at the list of builds for the day. And, apparently, the results can be quite dramatic:

Still with me? Good, because if you follow the above you may make yourself very, very happy. This optimized build is insanely fast — probably the fastest browser I’ve ever used. New tabs open instantly, menus appear as soon as you click on them, and page rendering is noticeably faster. If you’re willing to spend a few minutes trying to find a build that works best with your computer, then you’ll be thanking yourself in future.

If I had a halfway-decent processor, I’d try some of these optimized builds for sure ;). As it is, I have just an Athlon 700 in my box and about the only thing it supports are MMX and 3DNow, neither of which appear in specialized builds. To be fair, I may give a G6-optimized build a chance, as that one has rather lenient optimization that doesn’t completely require a modern processor.

PNG Alpha Transparency Support in IE 5.5+

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

A coworker was asking me about PNGs the other day, and I pointed him to the LibPNG page — one of the more comprehensive sites I’ve found on the PNG format. For those not aware, PNG is a lossless image format (like GIF) but it supports up to 24 bit color (like JPEG). It’s also supported by all the major browsers and many desktop applications.

Another advantage to PNG is that it supports alpha transparency. Unlike GIFs which have on-or-off transparency, PNGs support up to 256 levels of transparency. So, a properly designed PNG image with alpha transparency can look good against a background of any color.

Basic PNG functionality is supported by almost all browsers (Netscape, IE and so on), and support for PNG’s alpha transparency is also widespread. In fact, just about every browser — even the Sega Dreamcast browser — supports alpha transparency… except for IE on Windows (PNGs work there, just not the alpha transparency part).

And, as IE/Windows currently has the largest market share, it was thought that PNGs with alpha transparency essentially weren’t usable on the web. However, after re-reading the IE/Windows section, I see that there’s now a workaround to get PNG alpha transparency support in IE 5.5+!

As I understand it, IE can be induced — via some proprietary HTML — into using DirectX to render PNGs. And, as DirectX supports alpha transparency, you get alpha-channel support in IE. As all the other major browsers already have alpha channel support, it’s conceivable that PNGs with alpha channel transparency could be used throughout a site.

Tagatose — A New Sugar Substitute

Ashley Bischoff12 Comments

I was reading an issue of Wired’s dead tree edition that a friend had given me and they had a sidebar (not really a full article) on new sugar substitutes. The usual suspects such as aspartame and sucralose were there, but they also had high praise for one called tagatose which they described as “subtle & natural”. So, I checked online for more information and — go figure — found a Wired article on tagatose.

Like Splenda, tagatose is made from sugar, but tagatose is derived from milk sugars within whey. And, though Splenda already tastes very natural, apparently tagatose is virtually imperceptible from sugar. The only downside is that tagatose isn’t calorie-free — it has about 1/3 the calories of sugar. But, it doesn’t affect blood-sugar levels or cause cavities.

Levin whips out a set of keys, unlocks his desk, and rummages through a drawer. He pulls out a bag of tagatose-coated bran flakes and a chocolate bar, both creations of his Danish licensee. The bran is a little stale but sweet enough, and the chocolate tastes just like the real deal. He hands me a baggie of pure tagatose. I hold it up to the light, dab a little on my finger, and try it. A dead ringer for table sugar. […]

Though it’s not a calorie-free food, I’m still excited about another sugar substitute. With any luck, this will soon find its way into reduced-calorie chocolate bars and sodas (Spleda-based chocolate still doesn’t quite taste like the real thing). However, it appears that the tagatose folks don’t have quite the marketing arm of their Splenda counterparts; so, I have a hunch that it may be a while before tagatose becomes widespread.