Category: Mac

Yesterday, CleanMyDrive, a nifty little free utility aimed at decluttering your Mac’s hard drives, hit the App Store and instantly sore straight to the top of the “Top Free” app category. To celebrate this their developers, Macpaw, are offering a generous 30% discount on three of their other popular apps, Gemini, Ensoul and MacHider, on the App Store. This discount is only valid if you purchase the items off the App Store (i.e. not from the developers website) and is valid up till June 27th.

The apps in question are great. Gemini is a useful little tool designed at helping you find duplicate files on your Mac and features a cleaning interface similar to that of DaisyDisk with the beautiful, coloured wheel showing how much disk space is being used up by each duplicate file.

Ensoul is a great app if you’ve got an iPhone as it allows you to create bigger and better contact photos and custom wallpapers and has loads of built-in effects, meaning you can tweak your photos to make them look even better. You can edit photos from anywhere on your Mac (including iPhoto, Photo Booth and Aperture) and you can synchronise them all to your iPhone via iTunes.

MacHider is designed to boost your existing Mac security by locking down and password-protecting certain folders and files. You can choose which files to hide (say, for example, bank account information or sensitive personal documents) and the app integrates perfectly with Finder, meaning that you can select which files to hide directly without having to go into the app itself.

Each app is priced at $6.99 (instead of the regular $9.99 asking price) and are available off the App Store. We’ve included the links for you here:

• Gemini
• Ensoul
• MacHider

Happy downloading!

April 23, 2007. That was the day Panic initially released Coda. The idea of Coda was revolutionary: one app, one window for the entire web development workflow. And they did it right too. They won the 2007 Apple Design Award for Best User Experience. Before Coda there were tools like TextMate, BBEdit and MacRabbit’s Espresso and CSS Edit. Yes, there was even Dreamweaver if you like spending a lot of money on a tool largely considered inferior (it does have its place). But Coda was truly a revolutionary new web development experience.

Before Coda, developing websites required a number of different tools. You need a text editor for writing code. You need an FTP application for uploading and downloading files from your server. You need a web browser to preview your work. You often need a database utility to modify your database. And you would often need a terminal application to connect to your server over SSH and make changes. Coda rolled most of the tools needed for these things into a single interface and application.

And now Coda 2 builds upon that success.

Initial Impressions

Upon opening Coda 2 for the first time I was pleased to see that, though obviously different, there was something fairly familiar, if slicker looking. The sites that I currently had set up in Coda 1 were all right there, waiting for me and ready to go. One really nice touch though, and one I have personally wanted for years, was the ability to organize sites into groups. I immediately did a preliminary organization. It works very simply and is quite discoverable, especially if you have ever used an iOS device. Drag a site icon onto another site icon and a group is instantly created.

The slider at the bottom allows you to control the size of the site icons and folders. As an added bonus, if you slide the controller all the way over the left, you will get a list view, something that was not available in the original Coda. It’s another nice touch.

One thing though that pained me right away was seeing those horrible vertical window control buttons lifted straight from the initial release of iTunes 10.

I have complained about this before and I will do so now for Coda as well. I believe this to be a horrible breach of UI aesthetics and muscle memory. I think we can all legitimately complain about how horribly broken the functionality of OS X’s green zoom button is and how it never behaves in the way you expect it to, and we can bemoan the way minimizing works in OS X. But at least for most apps we know where those buttons are located.

As with the initial release of iTunes 10, so it is now for Coda. Muscle memory is broken. When I want to minimize or zoom the Coda window it takes me a little extra time to find the buttons. It’s nit-picky but annoying. I use those buttons often enough that it bugged me quite a bit. And it’s not a matter of re-training my muscle memory because Coda 2 is the only app with the buttons like this. I’m lobbying for them to go back where they belong. Window controls belong on the top left horizontal plane of a window in OS X. I do not believe any exceptions are called for.

You would think I didn’t have anything to write about the way I’m carrying on about this minor annoyance, so it’s time I moved on because there’s a lot to cover.

File Management

Users of Panic’s Transmit will feel right at home upon opening a site in Coda 2. Though Coda does not completely displace Transmit if you need advanced FTP functions, it is certainly a workable solution and I think I will find myself using Transmit far less than I did before.

The initial view is a split view of local files on the left and remote files on the right. You will feel right at home if your work flow is to edit locally and then publish to server.

As an ExpressionEngine web developer, I am almost always working on templates in the directory structure of the FTP server and not on local files so I switched off the split view and went straight to remote view. Aside from the fact that files have their own tab instead of a dedicated sidebar, this works as before. Double clicking a file either locally, or on the remote server will open the file up in a tab ready to be edited.

I actually like files having their own dedicated tab far better. I prefer it to the sidebar approach because there’s now more horizontal room for my code.

Fear not though, ease of file access is not gone. Coda 2 includes what they call an active path bar. What this means is while you are editing, the path to the file you are working on is displayed in the path bar. Clicking any segment on the path bar will pop up a list of files for you to open, or even move around or manipulate in other ways. It’s actually quite brilliant in my opinion. I’m fairly confident I will wonder how I ever got along without it.

Tabs and Split Views

Tabs are another big improvement. In Coda 1, somehow tabs never looked right to me. I sometimes had a hard time seeing which tab was active, or which file belonged to which tab. Coda 2 introduces thumbnail tabs. I find this much more visually appealing and have had no trouble determining which tab is active at any given time. And it’s easier to identify which file belongs to which tab.

There are actually 3 modes for tabs: large icons, small icons, and text only (more like tabs in the previous version).

(Note that in text only tab view the window control buttons are oriented the proper way! I’ll have to think about running Coda 2 in this mode.)

On the tab bar you will also find a “plus” button from which you can do four things. You can start a new blank document, open a new SSH session, open a reference book, or start a MySQL session.

Split Views

One thing that has always been unique to Coda is the ability to split a tab view in half vertically or horizontally. I prefer to split my windows vertically, though Coda will split horizontally if that’s your thing. Spliting the window has received a bit of a makeover. When you click the split button, you are given a menu of options. It’s pretty much the same things you could do before (minus the CSS panel, which I’ll get to shortly).

Three Cheers for Code Folding

People talk. Sometimes they talk about Coda. When they do, they are often inclined to talk about its shortcomings. Among those shortcomings, someone would inevitably say, “yeah, I can tell you really like Coda by the way you wax eloquent about it, but can it do code folding?” That was the point at which you would turn red, mumble to yourself and try to steer the conversation in another direction.

Well no more, because Coda 2 includes code folding. And it seems to me to be much smarter and better than most other applications I have used. This is extremely valuable because it is easy (for me anyway) to get lost in nested divs and so on (usually when I’m trying to drill down into someone else’s code, which I seem to need to do way more than is healthy for my sanity). Code folding makes it much easier to figure out what is nested inside what.

Make no mistake, this is a huge feature.

The Sidebar Moved

Oh, and it got a complete remodel. They basically threw the old sidebar out and put a new one in it’s place. I’m still getting used to it being on the right instead of the left, but it’s not really a big deal. The dog has definitely learned some new tricks.

First off, on the home panel you can drag favorites up to the top in the same manner as you would drag items down to the toolbar in the iPhone music app. Here you will find clips, files and navigator among other things.

• Clips
  Clips are still here and better than ever. In terms of inserting clips they pretty much work as before. For instance, I have “p” assigned to start a new paragraph tag pair. So I type “p + tab” and I get a paragraph tag pair with my cursor at the insertion point ready to type. In addition to the standard placeholder, you can also now have clips insert cutom text.
• Files
  Yes, the file view is still available in the sidebar. While I will as I said earlier likely use the dedicated file tab, there are times when I want to see the document list in the sidebar, and Coda 2 provides.
• Find In
  Allows you to search your files for content and optionally find and replace. Very handy
• Hints
  As you type, this sidebar area will give you hints about the code it thinks you are typing. I didn’t find this that useful.
• Navigator
  I never found the navigator to be all that useful in Coda 1, and Coda 2 appears to be no different for HTML. I can’t figure out what elements it decides to show and not show. So I’ll likely ignore it as I did before. For CSS however, it appears to replace the function of Coda 1’s CSS editor navigation so I will likely use it there. (More on that in a moment)
• Places
  Sort of like the Finder sidebar. Double clicking an item here will open it in the dedicated file browser tab.
• Publish
  If you are editing files locally, this will allow you to publish changes to the server.
• SCM
  Source Code Management. I don’t use Source Code management so I can’t really speak to this feature
• Shared
  Coda lets you share documents and collaborate over the local network. I’ve never used this since I usually do all my own code work but I hear it’s good.
• Validate
  This is a wonderful feature that will let you know if you have invalid code in your markup. This is much better than going through the W3C validator all the time.

CSS — Uh Oh

One of the big features that attracted me to Coda in the beginning was the CSS editing. The split view CSS editing was fantastic. It fit me well because I don’t have every CSS function memorized, but I could see the things I wanted to do in Coda’s CSS editor, add it, type in the value or whatever, and then if I needed to, I could edit the code in the code editor. And of course Coda wrote really clean CSS. So I was a little nervous when I heard that Panic was completely revamping the way CSS works.

And to tell you the truth, I’m very disappointed. This feels like the first real let down, maybe even the only real let down in this upgrade. The new way of working with CSS is called CSS Pops. What happens is that as you type code, pop-ups present themselves and you can choose what you want. For instance within a CSS bracket you can start typing the word margin, and all the margin rules will pop up. Select one and type enter and you are immediately kicked over to enter the value where you can again choose from a pop-up or just type the value. If the rule is a color rule, you will get a color chooser pop-up. If the rule has border or thickness options of some kind, you will get a pop-up with those options.

I type in my CSS a fair bit of the time. So I consider the CSS Pops a great feature to have added to the CSS editor. But there’s a fair number of times when I want the CSS editor from Coda 1. I want to just click in a value box and enter the margin value. Or whatever. I don’t see what possible reason they could have had for removing the revolutionary CSS editor.

In fact, I would say that the Coda CSS editor is how I really started to pick up CSS and learn it well. Because I would not know exactly how to do something, but I would see the different things I could try in the CSS editor and so I would start doing things in the CSS editor and seeing what code it spit out. It was very helpful. And that to me was the beauty of Coda 1’s CSS editor. It was great for beginners, but you could still get down into the code and do stuff. It seems to me that the pop-ups would have been a great enhancement, but they are no replacement for the CSS editor.

Thankfully, we do have the code navigator to at least let us navigate in a similar way that the former CSS editor did. Consider this my plea to Panic to bring back the beautiful, elegant, and powerful CSS editor to work alongside the CSS Pops.

I have a feeling I’ll be going back to Coda 1 here and there to use the CSS editor.

What Else?

Theres a lot more than I can cover here. Panic says there’s over 100 new features. Some of them I’m not qualified to address. I’m really horrible with databases for instance so I’ll leave the new MySQL feature to someone else to talk about.

• The new reference books are awesome and I’m sure I’ll be making use of them.
• Quicklook right in coda is great, select a file, press the spacebar. It’s awesome.
• Autocomplete improvements are all welcome in my short time with Coda 2 thus far.
• There’s something a bit more pleasing about the syntax coloring.

Diet Coda

Just for a second, stop and revel in just how awesome that name is. Done? Okay. It really is such a great name.

Diet Coda is an iPad companion app. You can edit on the go with your iPad in this slimmed down app or you can use it with Coda’s new AirPreview feature, dedicating your iPad to previewing your work as you code. I don’t have an iPad, but this truly does seem awesome.

Upgrade Pricing

I wrote about upgrade pricing and the Mac App Store earlier this month, and I think that the way Panic is approaching the problem, while good and I applaud them for it, highlights the very problems I was talking about.

What they are doing to work around Apple’s lack of paid upgrades for apps, and still try to keep as much parity between buying straight from them, and buying from the Mac App Store, is making “upgrade pricing” available to everyone for a limited time. This really isn’t upgrade pricing, it’s discount pricing, but it’s really the only option available to them with the Mac App Store being the way it is.

So, here’s the way it all goes down. On launch day, Thursday, May 24, Coda 2 will be available at a 50% discount of $49.00 to everyone. After that first 24 hour period, Coda 2 will be available for $75.00 for a limited time (this is what they are calling “upgrade pricing for everyone”). And finally, Coda’s price will return to $99.00 after that.

If you purchased Coda 1 directly from Panic (not through the Mac App Store) after April 10, you are eligible to receive a free upgrade to Coda 2.

Worth It?

I think so. As I said, I’m sure I’ll be making trips to Coda 1 for the CSS editor, but hopefully that won’t be that often, and that‘s really the only major complaint I have. I love everything else that’s new in Coda. I plan to buy it right away.

The folks at Panic are a class act and make fine software.

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on May 24th, 2011.

Macs are becoming much more popular with college students nowadays, owing to Apple’s generous student discount (around 15%) upon purchase. But once you’ve bought your shiny new computer, you’ll be wanting to know which are the best Mac apps aimed at college students and which ones to download or buy.

Up until a few years ago, Mac users had very little choice of software as they were seen mostly as a niche platform and therefore only ran specialist software.

As I was in exactly the same position when I bought my Mac, I’ve now created – for all the students out there – a list of 25 superb applications recommended for you. I’ve tried to keep this list relevant to any major and, in order to save on costs, I have tried to include free software wherever I can.

All applications featured in the list run on PowerPC and Intel architectures unless otherwise stated.

LyX

LyX is one of a few word processors that uses the idea of WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean), as opposed to WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) employed by word processors such as Microsoft Work and Apple’s Pages.

It allows you to type documents without worrying about the layout as the program does this for you – processing is done using the TeX system via the click of a button. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, TeX is a typesetting system that is used widely in academia as it produces standard, professional looking documents.

LyX is also especially useful for anyone who uses a significant amount of maths in their degree as it renders mathematical equations very well and features an advanced equation editor – a definite advantage for anyone using a Mac seeing as it doesn’t feature an in-built equation editor (unlike Windows).

I use LyX mostly for university work such as writing essays as it means I can type without worrying how it will look on the page. The program is slightly more complicated to use than other word processors but it will save you time in the long run – it allows you to just write freely.

There are several templates available and the website features lots of useful help videos for anyone starting to use it. For anyone who is looking for an alternative to their word processor, LyX is definitely worth considering.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 and above and a TeX system for document processing (MacTeX is the best one available for Mac, available here)

iWork

iWork is, in my opinion, one of the best word processors available for Mac and although I use LyX for most things, having a proper word processor which can read Word documents is a necessity. iWork features three programs, Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheets) and Keynote (presentations).

All offer full Office support, meaning you can open and save documents in Office format so there are no compatibility issues. The clean, uncluttered interface is very easy to use and the in-built templates are well-designed and useful for all situations.

iWork is also priced very favorably against Microsoft Office 2011 for students ($59.97 if purchased off the App Store vs $149.99) so it is more within a student’s budget. Although there are free office suites out there, they just don’t cut it when it comes to functionality and looks, and although it is a slight price to pay, iWork is certainly worth it in the long run.

Price: $19.99 per application (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) if purchased off the App Store.
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4.11/10.5.6 or later

Postbox

Postbox has already been reviewed separately all the way back in 2009, but it’s worth mentioning once again here. As a student, I want all my e-mails in one place and Postbox is one of the most functional and best-looking mail clients out there for Mac at the moment.

Postbox combines all the messages from your different accounts into one mailbox and you can organize your messages into different folders (for those of you who like to keep your studies and social life separate). It supports all major mail protocols and integrates well with your Address Book and even Facebook (if you want your contacts’ pictures showing up in messages). The features are too great to go into detail here but you certainly don’t mind paying $30 for such a feature-rich application. A necessity for all students.

Price: $29.95
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 above. Intel only.

Adium

As a student, I like to keep in touch with all my mates, mostly via Facebook Chat. Unfortunately, the stock Chat application is utter garbage and crashes, freezes or just doesn’t send messages (come on Facebook, sort it out!).

Adium is a free instant messaging program exclusively for Mac which supports several chat protocols, including AIM, Facebook Chat, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo Messenger.

The user interface is clean and really ties in well with the overall Mac user interface. The app integrates with your Address Book and there are plenty of extras to be had including custom emoticons, sound sets and message styles (all of them free of course).

Finally, the icon is a sheer pleasure to look at and when you get a message, the little green (or whatever colour you choose him to be) duck flaps his little wings up and down! Cute and practical – a must have.

Price: Free
Requires: Adium 1.4 or later requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or newer. Older versions of the program support Mac OS X 10.4 and downwards.

iStudiez Pro

Is anyone like me and forgets certain “important” deadlines like handing in essays and exams? Well, iStudiez Pro is a program designed specifically for students to prevent just this. It was already reviewed separately but I thought I’d just mention it here because it is so relevant.

iStudiez Pro keeps track of your homework, class schedules and your grades and can even sync with your iPhone/iPad, a definite necessity for students. You can color-code different things according to pretty much anything you like, and the interface is drop-dead handsome. It beats iCal hands down for practicality and is well worth the small price tag.

Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later. Intel only.

Evernote

If you haven’t yet heard about Evernote, then you must be living in the Dark Ages, as it is probably one of the most useful apps of all time, not just for students. Evernote is a cloud-based note-making application which syncs across all platforms. The application is also available for Windows, Android, iOS, Blackberry, Palm and Windows Mobile.

As well as text notes, you can also clip web pages and make voice and iSight notes. Evernote avoids the need for having loads of little scraps of paper with bits of info scrawled all over them lying around and makes organization a lot easier. I like to have everything in one place and seeing as all your notes are hosted on the cloud, it makes accessing them from different places a lot easier – an absolute must at university.

Evernote is free, however there are some restrictions: the application is ad-supported (however these are quite non-instrusive) and you can only upload 60 MB of data a month (this equates to about 30,000 notes and 400 web pages), which is usually more than enough.

Price: Free (restricted, ad-supported)
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5.8 onwards.

OmniGraphSketcher

There’s going to be a time whilst you’re at university that you need to draw a graph or two. Unfortunately, drawing graphs on Word or a drawing program can be a nightmare and a particularly fiddly task – not something you want when it’s 2 AM and you’re finishing off the graphs in that essay due in in 7 hours. OmniGraphSketcher is one of the only programs that is designed to draw graphs on Mac OS X.

You can import data in from Excel or even draw your own and the application allows you to customize everything, including the axes, shading and points. The app will allow you to export your graphs in PDF, PNG, JPG and EPS format and it is very simple to use. The results are professional-looking graphs which look good in any situation, whether it’d be a presentation, essay or dissertation. The developers offer an academic license for students so go ahead and grab it whilst it’s hot.

Price: $29.95
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 onwards.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a discreet little program that runs in your Menu bar which stops your Mac automatically dimming or starting the screen saver whilst you’re working on it (one of my pet hates!). Although it won’t do wonders for your battery life, it will certainly stop you throwing your computer out of the window every time the screen goes black whilst you’re slaving away on that essay…

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 onwards (a version for Mac OS X 10.4 is available here)

iStumbler

iStumbler is a useful little utility which allows you to view all Wi-Fi networks in the local vicinity – very useful if you’ve got your Mac with you on campus or in the library and there is a load of different Wi-Fi networks knocking about.

The app can even detect any Bluetooth devices in the vicinity as well and any Bonjour-enabled devices if you are wanting to share anything over the local network. iStumbler is a useful little accessory that saves you hunting around and makes WiFi connectivity that little bit easier.

Price: Free
Requires: iStumbler 99 requires Mac OS X 10.6 and above. Other versions of Mac OS X are supported via previous releases (see their website)

MindNode

Brainstorming is vital for any student, whether it’s for a research project, an essay or your final year thesis. MindNode is a great brainstorming program which allows you create professional-looking mindmaps – without any fuss – that suit any situation.

You can create them in a few seconds and export/print them as you wish. Mindmaps really help you get organised and help you focus on the task in hand, and MindNode makes it easy to create them with minimum fuss. A highly-recommended app.

Price: $19.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 and above.

Twitterrific

Whether you use it to keep the world up to date with your happenings or simply to keep up to date with the world, Twitter has seen an explosion in recent years, with celebrities, companies and even university lecturers jumping onto the Twitter bandwagon.

There are a wealth of Twitter clients out there for the Mac but I find Twitterrific the most useable and feature rich.

The free, ad-supported version only supports one account (how many Twitter accounts do you have?) but supports the standard Twitter toolbox, like link shortening, image/video uploading and retweeting. To preserve your sanity (and your Mac), just make sure you turn off the notification sound if you follow lots of people, as that twittering bird notification every 2 seconds a new tweet comes in does tend to grate slightly…

Price: $9.95
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 and onwards. Intel only.

Skype

Instead of shelling out your precious money to the greedy mobile phone companies, get a cheap contract, encourage all your mates to sign up to Skype and talk to them there. Skype allows you to make unlimited calls to any other Skype user (whether voice or video) for absolutely nothing, no matter where they are in the world.

You can even buy Skype credit to call landlines and mobiles from around 2 cents per minute, far cheaper than any deal you’ll get with your mobile. The Mac version is good for everything (including video calling) however it is a little awkward to navigate around though (especially if you were used to the Windows version). Skype is the future of telephone calls can save you a surprising amount on your phone bill, both locally and internationally.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or newer and a Skype account (free – sign up for one here)

Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud-based storage solution which allows you to upload files onto an online drive, thereby allowing access from anywhere. The service is web-based, however you can download clients for Mac, Windows and all the major smartphones (Android, iOS and Blackberry).

Your Dropbox folder integrates seamlessly with the Finder, meaning it shows up and you can save things onto it easily without having to upload each individual file.

You can even share your folders with other Dropbox users with just a few clicks.

I find this application very useful for transferring things from home to university, meaning I don’t have to e-mail documents back and forth. It’s a real timesaver and if you refer some mates, both of you get extra storage space – always a plus!

Price: Free (for 2 GB storage. Extra storage is available from $9.99 per month for 50 GB or via referrals).
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 and above.

Alfred

If there’s any app that’s going to save you time, it’s Alfred. The developers of the little known company – Running with Crayons Ltd – based near Cambridge, UK have designed an app that almost every Mac user has been waiting for. Simply hit a hotkey (mine’s Command and Space) and a little box comes up, which you type in the first few letters of your application and hit Enter – hey presto! Your application starts running.

Alfred is far quicker than Spotlight as it caches your applications and picks out your most used ones depending on past searches. It also saves you hunting around for applications as when you install a new one, Alfred automatically recognises it and adds it to the list.

You can even use it as a file browser and as a controller for iTunes. If you’re going to download and install just one application from this list, make it this one!

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 and above and an Intel processor. A PowerPC version is available here (though no longer updated/supported)

Time Out Free

Picture the scene: you’re on your Mac, it’s 2 AM, you’ve drunk enough energy drink to actually be sweating the stuff, and you still have 2,000 words left of that essay to write. Your eyes start to droop but you keep on working, despite the fact you desperately want to take a break.

Well, Time Out Free has that covered. Whilst you’re working on your Mac, it’ll grey out the screen at regular intervals and remind you to take a quick break.

You can set two kinds of break: a ‘normal’ break which is typically 10 minutes long every 50 minutes and a ‘micro’ break, which is usually 10 seconds long every 10 minutes. Not only does it help you preserve your sanity, it also helps you concentrate for longer so as not to let your mind wander……where was I? Oh yes: it’s a must for all students.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Grisbi

Although it won’t win any awards for looks, Grisbi is a very feature-rich free personal finance application available for Mac (it’s been ported across from Linux). I know how important managing your finances is for college students, and I like to know exactly how much I’ve got before I go out and buy something. Grisbi lets you do this without having to log on to your internet banking website every time.

Grisbi allows you to set up multiple accounts as well as schedule any bill payments (such as utility or credit card bills) so you don’t forget them. There is also a useful credit simulator, which calculates the interest and repayments due on any credit borrowed and the total cost due. The program is extremely easy to use and is highly recommended for anyone trying to budget prudently.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 above (separate versions for Intel and PowerPC)

Parallels Desktop

I thought I’d seen the last of Windows when I bought my Mac, but there are times that you really do need to use it (particularly for specialist software). Macs now do offer the option of Boot Camp, meaning you can install Windows on a separate disk partition and boot your Mac into either Mac OS X or Windows but personally I do find it rather annoying having to reboot my Mac every time I have to use Windows for one application.

Parallels Desktop means you can use Mac and Windows side-by-side without having to reboot your computer. It creates a virtual machine onto which you can install any operating system you want (not necessarily Windows – you can also other compatible operating systems such as Linux).

Unlike other virtualization applications, Parallels Desktop features a useful Coherence mode, which allows you to get rid of the Windows background and run all your Windows programs natively under Mac OS X (Parallels Desktop needs to be running though) instead of in a separate window.

You can even copy your files from Mac to Windows and vice-versa by simply dragging and dropping, and all your folders on Mac are shared and viewable in Windows.

You’ll need a fast host to run Parallels Desktop (at least 2 GB of RAM is recommended) otherwise the program won’t run very well. It also does slow down your computer quite a lot due to the amount of resources it uses so it’s not recommended for long-term use (use Boot Camp instead).

For anyone who needs to run Windows applications on their Mac, Parallels is highly recommended and the developers do offer an academic license, meaning that it is more affordable for students.

Price: $39.99 (academic license)
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5.8/10.6.3 or later and a full copy of Windows (or the operating system you are going to run). Intel only.

Isolator

Isolator helps you concentrate more by cutting out distractions. When you are working on your Mac, Isolator will blur out all the background windows, leaving the one you are working with in the foreground.

You can even set Isolator to hide the dock, giving you a distraction-free screen, or instead of blurring out the background, Isolator can hide it altogether, allowing you to focus on one window completely. It’s a very useful application and teamed along with a few other apps featured here (e.g. Time Out Free), it can really help you keep your concentration up.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 and above.

MathType

One of the complaints I had when I migrated from Windows is that Macs do not have an in-built equation editor (unless you splash out on Microsoft Office). This is a slight inconvenience if you use a lot of math in your degree and you’re having to type out a lot of equations. MathType renders this a thing of the past. It’s a fully-featured, easy to use equation editor for Mac allowing you to write and edit equations quickly and easily.

One of the most useful things about MathType is the ability to simply copy and paste your formulas into different programs. The website has a list of all the programs supported (including iWork ’09) and a list of all the features, which are too detailed to list them all here! Although it is quite pricy, the developers do offer an academic license and for such a feature-rich program, the price is worth it.

Price: $57 (academic license)
Requires: Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above

Preview

You’re probably wondering why Preview is in here. It’s a simple little application, available to all users of Mac OS X but don’t underestimate its features. Unlike most other PDF viewers, Preview allows you to annotate PDFs by highlighting, drawing arrows and crossing bits out, all in lots of different colours.

I find this feature especially useful for highlighting journals and papers, meaning I do not have to print them out and when you save your PDF, your highlights and annotations are saved along with it. You can also delete and add pages to PDFs – useful if you are trying to compile a document together or get rid of unnecessary pages. For a built-in PDF viewer, Preview has a wide range of features and should not be overlooked.

Price: Free
Requires: Included with Mac OS X

Circus Ponies Notebook

One complaint I had about Microsoft’s port of Office to the Mac was that they left out OneNote, a very useful note-taking program. They have to tried to rekindle this with a version for iOS, but as of yet, no version for Mac has been written.

Circus Ponies have, however, written a full note-taking application for Mac with a wealth of features. With Notebook, you can clip text, entire documents, images and movies and you can add diagrams to your notes to make them more understandable.

A useful feature for students is the wide range of built-in notebook templates, including one for writing a research paper. This allows you to pull together all your findings into one place, avoiding the need for bits of paper all over your desk. If you take your Mac into college to make notes, or if you just want to get more organised, then Notebook is a really useful program.

Price: $49.95 (academic license)
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later

Yep

Yep pools your hard drive for any PDFs, iWork and Office documents and categorizes them in one place, avoiding the need to search around for a particular file. You can add tags and search for documents using the tags you created.

Yep also integrates with your scanner (if you have one), allowing you to scan in all your little bits of paper and categorises them as well, making hunting around in endless folders a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the developers do not (yet) offer an academic license, meaning students have to pay the full price of $39 for the application, but it does help you keep organised and saves a bit of time. The other applications by the developer, Ironic Software, are worth a look as well.

Price: $19.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later

Anxiety

Anxiety is a lightweight, To-Do list that syncs with iCal and Mail. The program sits quietly and unobtrusively on your desktop and helps you keep track of what you’ve still got to do, great for students who’ve got tonnes of deadlines looming on the horizon. It’s very small, but very effective.

Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 and above

Fluid App

Fluid is a small utility that allows you to create standalone “applications” from websites, meaning you can simply launch them from Finder instead of having to open your browser all the time.

This is especially useful for websites that you visit a lot as it saves you from having to use your browser all the time. The paid version ($4.99) adds a few more features, such as the ability to pin your created applications to the Dock, but when you’ve got Alfred, who really needs this?

Price: Free/$4.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 and above. Intel only.

Timeline 3D

There will almost certainly be times during your studies when you need to use a timeline to display information either for a presentation, or just to help you keep on top of all your deadlines. Timeline 3D helps you create professional looking timelines in a variety of designs.

The app integrates with iCal, meaning you can import your own deadlines, or you can create them using the program itself. Most importantly, Timeline 3D can export your timelines in a variety of formats, including via email, the web, YouTube and, most importantly, Keynote.

The timeline is saved as a QuickTime movie and can be played from within your presentation, which looks extremely cool and slick and can really spice it up. Timeline 3D avoids the need for spending time drawing timelines and with the developers offering an academic license ($39 instead of $65), it makes it that little bit more affordable for such a useful program.

Price: $65
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 onwards.

Conclusion

I hope this list will help any students out there with their studies. I certainly found that the applications in this list will really complement your Mac and your university degree, making life just that little bit easier as well as ensuring you get the full functionality out of your computer.

I would appreciate any comments, including suggestions for other programs that you find useful, as I am always on the lookout for new applications that may be really useful. Now I better get back to my own revision….

In the meantime, best of luck with your studies!

A few weeks ago we ran this post introducing you to some useful utilities baked right in to your Mac that you may not have known about. Well as I mentioned, the Utilities folder has so many useful apps that I simply could not cover them in a single post. Today I’m going to bring you seven more apps that live on your Mac.

This batch of apps is more likely to include apps that many of you won’t use, but as always, it’s nice to know they are there. And depending on what you do, it might turn out that your perfect utility was sitting right under your nose the whole time.

Disk Utility

I’ll kick off the list with this gem, since I could’ve included it in round one. Disk Utility is a one stop shop for all things hard disk. Whether you want to know how much free space you have, the number of files on your drive, or how your drive is formatted, Disk Utility is where to go.

There are also a number of maintenance tasks that can be performed in Disk Utility. Use it to verify and repair disk permissions, manage virtual and external drives as well as mounted .dmg files, and to create images of your drive for back up purposes.

Boot Camp Assistant

When Apple switched over from PowerPC to Intel processors, Macs became capable of dual booting a Windows build along side OS X. Traditionally, installing a second operating system has not exactly been a straight forward process, so OS X began shipping with Boot Camp Assistant to help users of both systems. Boot Camp Assistant will also help you create archive copies of Windows install disks, should you only have that data in digital form.

Grapher

Grapher is a utility that has been on Mac computers for ages. It’s a simple yet powerful utility that basically functions as a graphic calculator. Except that unlike your TI-83, Grapher can also graph complex 3D functions, like the one below.

Grapher is capable of plotting multiple functions simultaneously, and has a lot of in-depth customization of graph appearance. Make sure to select some pre-built graphs from the Examples drop down menu for some really cool demonstrations of Grapher’s capabilities. Thanks to our reader Conor for the suggestion!

Audio MIDI Setup

Audio MIDI Setup is a relatively simple application for those users who use their Mac for audio production. Use MIDI Setup to configure your various input and output devices and ensure that the formats, sampling rates, and clock speeds match up between each of the devices in your signal chain.

AppleScript Editor

This is probably the most daunting app in this roundup. If you have the programming chops to use AppleScript Editor, it can be one of the most powerful tools you can wield in commanding your Mac to bend to your will. I will admit that my knowledge of its capabilities are limited (and, as you can see in my project below, my knowledge of AppleScript itself is even more pitiful), but the adept AppleScript-er can write a sort of mini-application on the fly that will acutely customize his Mac’s behavior and workflow.

If you’re looking to get started with automation, check out our Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To AppleScript.

DigitalColor Meter

DigitalColor Meter is a very simple app that essentially functions as a global eyedropper tool. It will display the RGB values (in a few various formats, including Generic RGB and Adobe RGB) of the pixel directly under the mouse cursor Use it check colors across your desktop, an app’s UI, or a page in a web browser.

The aperture size can be changed via the slider, and the magnification for the display window can be changed in the drop down menus.

Podcast Publisher

This one requires a bit of explanation. For quite some time now, OS X has shipped with two separate applications dedicated to producing podcasts for distribution via iTunes: Podcast Capture and Podcast Producer. The problem is that Podcast Producer resided on OS X Server, and Podcast Capture was the client-side utility for interacting with it. A comparatively small percentage of Mac users could reasonably expect to use these tools, so they largely fell into the ‘professional’ category of applications.

With OS X Lion, however, Apple created a new application: Podcast Publisher. Podcast Publisher is the consumer version of Producer, in much the same way that GarageBand is to Logic, or iMovie to FinalCut. Publisher is a production tool with a low barrier of entry that allows any Lion user to produce video, audio, or even screen-recorded podcasts and export them to their desktop, email or iTunes.

There You Have It

There are few other various odds and ends in the Utilities folder, particularly depending on how much software has installed additional utilities into it. However, the apps covered in these two posts should have gotten you intimately acquainted with your Mac and its built-in software.

There is typically high anticipation when applications that could potentially compete with the powerful Adobe CS product line-up get released. Designers everywhere are very reliant on those products in a lot of situations and while they do get the job done (and typically better than any other available option) there seems to be this burning desire for something different.

Even though applications like Photoshop and Illustrator are so widely used, you’ll often see complaints about different aspects of these tools. One common gripe is that the applications have begun to feel bloated after so many years of feature additions. If you’ve ever spent time with either Photoshop or Illustrator you are nodding your head right now. That’s probably why when a prospective, more simple, competitor pops up we’re all staring right at it hoping it can be just what we want. We hope that all of the great features we love in our CS applications make it over and all the fluff dies off.

The buzz about the release of Sketch 2 started a while back and being a designer myself I followed along closely. All things pointed to this thing being pretty darn cool so I decided to take it for a spin.

Intro

An application like this can lend itself to a lot of different specific graphic based jobs. The limit is really based more on the creativity of the user than the actual tools built into the application. Look at how we’ve turned Photoshop, actually built for professional photographers, into a web design tool.

Because of this craftiness I’ll be taking a look at this from more of an interface, mobile and web designer aspect as I think that there is some serious potential for the folks in that area. We’re not going to get too crazy here, but my examples will be in that vein. And I should note that Sketch 2 is aiming to be more of an Illustrator competitor as it is a vector graphics app by definition. That said, there appears to be some features that can be of direct benefit to the interface designers among us.

Interface

Coming from the Photoshop/Illustrator world, opening up Sketch 2 for the first time feels like a breath of fresh air. Oddly, the feeling I do get on some level is that this thing can’t possible do what I want it too. There just isn’t enough “stuff.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s just my conditioning from using the more bloated products I’m used to. As we get along we’ll actually see what the application is capable of. Maybe this feeling will be proved wrong. Maybe not.

Layers

There are four core areas of the application window that you’ll be working with for the majority of the time. The left-most panel will house the layers of the project. Each layer is essentially one element of the page. Each shape, hand drawn vector or text will live on its own layer.

Layers can be grouped into folders. When elements are combined, you’ll see one layer with an indicator noting that multiple elements make up that one layer. For example, if you combine shapes together to create one new shape you’ll be able to see the components that make up that new shape.

Toolbar

This is probably pretty obvious, but I’ll point it out anyway. The toolbar is located at the top of the application window and holds the tools that you’ll be using.

It has a very uncomplicated feel to it. There aren’t a ton of tools to worry about and they reside on this toolbar all the time. There’s plenty of white space holding large-ish tool icons. It feels roomy and it’s easy to quickly locate just what you’re looking for. There is some context interaction going on here as well that will make your life even easier. Different tools become functional and nonfunctional depending on what you are doing. If you only have one element selected, the union button won’t be active. It’s pretty obvious most of the time.

Inspector

The inspector resides on the right-hand side of the application window. This is where the all the fun stuff happens. This is the area that let’s you take action on the elements of your project. Adding drop shadows and gradients and such. We’ll get into this a bit more with a specific example.

Let’s Make Something

In the interest of keeping this post at a tolerable length, I’ll try to illustrate some cool aspects of Sketch 2 while I actually design a log in form. This is something that I’d use an application like this for and it seems like other reviews I’ve seen have focused more on the illustration side of things. We’re going to go at this from a little different angle and hopefully it’ll be useful for you to see another use case.

First off, here’s what we’re going to end up with. It’s a very basic login form. I envision this as a modular box that would drop down from a top navigation bar. It’s a fairly common element and something I’m sure you’ve all seen before.

The container box is a rounded corner rectangular form with a small triangle protruding from the upper border. This form is created by selecting the rounded tool from the shapes button on the toolbar. Then simply draw the shape. We can use the inspector to tune the radius width and exact dimensions. I then grabbed the triangle tool from the shapes again and drew a triangle on top of the box. With both items selected they became one by simply pressing the union tool from the toolbar.

You’ll also notice that I’ve added a fill color, a drop shadow and a border. Those features can simply be checked and then easily tweaked as needed. It is also possible to add multiple fill layers and toggle them on and off as needed.

Next we’ll add in the form fields. Again, I’ll grab the rounded tool and draw the shape. This time I’ll simply duplicate that box. Automatic layout features help me to line up the fields just where I want them. This time I’ll add a subtle inner shadow to give the field some depth.

A very cool feature of Sketch is the ability to link styles to multiple layers. If we click the link button on the top of the inspector we can add this style to the list. Then we select the second field and select that linked style. Now, every time we change that style on either element it’ll change on the other as well. That’s pretty awesome if you ask me.

The last thing to add is the button. You guessed it, we’ll draw another rounded rectangle just as we did above. Once the shape is in its place we can add some styles to it to make it look like a button.

This style was created by layer a couple different fill gradients. These are pretty straightforward to create. If you take a look at the screenshot above you’ll see a couple handles that can be dragged around to adjust the gradient angle. Their respective colors can also be changed. It’s a little different than what I’m used to, but after a few minutes of fooling around with gradients i caught right on.

You’ll also notice that I have been adding some text in the proper places as we’ve gone along. This is very simple and done using the obvious text tool. I added a couple basic styles to them to make the text pop just a bit as well.

And now we’re left with something like this.

Copy CSS Attributes

Here’s a feature that would make web designers flat out giddy. Sketch does have the capability to copy the CSS attributes of what you’ve created. You’re then free to paste them in your projects.

Here’s what we get using this feature.

The code isn’t amazing, but it’s pretty usable. It’s really well formatted and even commented based on your layer names. I will warn you that you will hit some limits in what can be copied to CSS attributes, but the cool thing is that you’ll see messages saying that certain elements weren’t brought over. I hit this when messing around with some background patterns. The message did read with a “this isn’t available yet” tone to it so that leads me to believe this functionality will be expanded with future releases.

Final Thoughts

I came into this with a basic working knowledge of applications like Photoshop and Illustrator, but otherwise no experience with Sketch. This is literally the first thing that I’ve made with this application and think it turned out pretty darn well. And I’ll be honest, it really didn’t take me all that long. A couple hours of fooling around and I had a fair amount of the application figured out. The application is much, much easier to get comfortable with when compared to Illustrator. It’s simple and at the same time pretty darn powerful.

For someone like me who is definitely a more novice Illustrator user, Sketch feels like a much better solution. I essentially never take advantage of Illustrator’s more advanced features and frankly the thought of trying to become an Illustrator expert seems really daunting and I’m not sure I’ll benefit much from the effort. At $49.99 Sketch is definitely at a much more appealing price point and for a lot of folks it will suitable to accomplish a good portion of your vector work. I know I’ve only scratched the surface here and I’m really looking forward to using Sketch more and more and giving it a more thorough run through on the interface development front. For me personally, it already has some exciting features and I’m very much looking forward to where things application heads.

As always every Wednesday, here are our weekly picks of the best (and free) deals on the App Store for this week.

Happy downloading!

Oh, and one more thing…

Here’s a date for your diary, people.

This coming Thursday, Coda 2 will be available for download, which is a massive update featuring a completely overhauled interface, tonnes of new features (over 100 in total, according to the developers) and a few surprises thrown in for good measure as well. The update will be paid however any customers that have purchased Coda in the past month or so will receive it for free. The developers are also running a 50% off promotion for the first 24 hours of sale as well.

Coda 2 brings a whole new kind of web editing with code folding, a much requested feature meaning that you can still focus on subsections whilst still managing large portions of code and a new smart complete function for auto-completion of custom variables and functions. There are also workflow improvements, such as automatic indentations and a new find and replace system, an indispensable tool for most developers.

The user interface of Coda 2 has also been given a significant overhaul with an all-new tabbed interface and a customisable dock for your tools. The update also focuses on better site management, with iCloud sync for your sites and clips (if purchased from the App Store) and a new MySQL editor with a full GUI.

Alongside Coda 2, Diet Coda is also being released for the iPad, meaning that you aren’t tied down to your desk if you want to make a few quick tweaks to your website. Another groovy feature for Diet Coda is AirPreview, meaning you can view the changes to your website directly on your iPad without having to save and go into preview mode first, which is a definite bonus for developers.

Of course, you’ll have to wait until Thursday to find about all the new features Coda 2 has to offer and We will, of course, be doing a full review of it when it is released so watch this space!

Coda 2 will be released this Thursday on the developers’ website as well as on the Mac App Store and will be priced at $75 (upgrade pricing).

May is coming to a close and June is upon us, which means one thing for the Apple community: WWDC, that famed yearly event that sells out faster than a U2 concert. WWDC typically brings with it an exciting look at what’s coming down the pipe for Apple.

With any luck, we’ll get a peek at both new hardware and software that Apple will have us shelling out for all year.

In our poll question today, we want to know which product you’re most excited about. Are you one of the thousands of people who have been waiting for months and months to see a new iMac or are your sights set on the next iPhone? Vote in the poll, then leave a comment below telling us why you’re excited and what you think is coming.

The moment you boot up your Mac, a variety of things pry for your attention. Email, social networks, reminders, and all sorts of distractions eventually trap you in the middle of a tug-of-war, making it almost impossible to focus on a single activity.

As a result, you lose track of what you’re supposed to do. You might just find yourself looking up, wondering where the sun went all of the sudden.

Here’s the good news though: there are apps that can help you solve this productivity problem. In this round-up, I’ll share 15 Mac apps that help you focus, whether it’s dimming the screen, blocking social networking sites, closing inactive applications, or working in time bursts. You can use one or mix a couple of these apps to fit the way you work.

Focus, Focus

Time Bursts and Breaks in Between

Conclusion

Depending on how you work, you can use a combination of these apps to achieve the ideal work balance. For instance, you can use Isolator to dim your desktop and focus, while using FocusBooster to work in time bursts. You can also use Time Out or BreakTime to push yourself to take breaks in between work to avoid feeling burnt out.

Give yourself a few days to test these apps out and see which combo works best for you. We hope your productivity levels and focus improve with the help of this round-up.

What other apps do you use to stay focused? Do you work in time bursts or by simply blocking applications and distracting websites?

With Apple’s self-imposed sandboxing guideline coming up on June 1st, developers have already started tweaking their applications to conform to Apple’s new guidelines. But what exactly is sandboxing and how will these changes affect apps in the Store?

Read on for our complete guide.

What Is Sandboxing?

Sandboxing is basically a term for restrictions implied on applications to stop them accessing certain system resources or functions. If it is enabled on an application, then the program cannot access certain features such as the ability to print or read and write from the file system (such as opening and saving documents).

This would obviously be an extreme case as most applications need the ability to read and write from the file system (for example, in accessing files necessary for the program’s running). Currently, there are no strict limitations in OS X on what system resources applications designed for the operating system can access, however Apple is looking to change this from June 1st by imposing tighter controls on what can be accessed by Mac applications.

The new guidelines will give developers the possibility to enable Apple-supplied entitlements that allow access to certain system resources, such as printing, network features and reading and writing from the filesystem.

Why Are Apple Doing It?

Although this may be read by some as more stringent laws and regulations imposed by Apple, sandboxing does actually have its benefits. Programs firstly make specific use of the resources that are made available to it, meaning a more optimised running environment. Another advantage is error reporting. If a program crashes, then the OS X operating system can better isolate the problematic behaviour, seeing as it knows exactly what caused the crash (say, by accessing a certain resource) and for better security measures, block the program from modifying or accessing data in unauthorised ways.

The guidelines, which were originally planned to be implemented for March 1st, may have something to do with the upcoming Mountain Lion release, which is much more focused on security than previous releases (OS X has been criticised recently for its security, with some sources calling it “10 years behind Windows). The new upcoming Gatekeeper feature, a main feature of OS X 10.8, is designed to stop your Mac getting spyware and prevents the installation of malicious software from third-party sources.

What Is Going To Happen With My Apps?

It must be noted that these sandboxing guidelines only apply to any new applications submitted for distribution on the Mac App Store (this includes updates as well). Apple does not require applications to be sandboxed to run on OS X and therefore any applications that are distributed through the developers website are not subject to these changes.

There may be a problem here, though, as non-sandboxed applications that are distributed through the App Store may no longer be supported (as they do not conform to the guidelines) so for updates, you may have to turn to the developer’s own website in order to download future builds, instead of relying on the automatic update feature on the App Store.

Most of the changes that are implemented are likely to be behind-the-scenes, meaning that you will notice no visible change in the design and running of your favourite OS X application.

Do I Need To Do Anything?

Simple answer: no! Although these new guidelines are a bit of inconvenience for developers (seeing as they have to modify their programs to conform with them), it’s ultimately the end user that will benefit. If you’ve purchased apps from the Store, you can expect updates for them being pushed through in the next week or so, so keep checking back to make sure you’ve got the latest version.

Share Your Thoughts!

As always here at Mac AppStorm, we’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on this matter. Do you agree with the new sandboxing guidelines and do you think that they will help improve OS X security? Or is it more regulation imposed by Apple without much effect? Share your opinions in the comments section below!

Anyone who has used Wikipedia understands the concept of a wiki — and who hasn’t used Wikipedia? It’s a network of pages or articles linked through keywords. A desktop wiki just takes that idea and makes it personal.

VoodooPad is one of the original desktop wikis for Mac OSx. Today, we’re going to take a look at the recently released version 5.0 to see if it lives up to the longheld VoodooPad legacy.

What’s New in VoodooPad 5

Mac.Appstorm published an excellent review of VoodooPad 4.0 a few years ago, so I won’t go into too much detail about the basics of the program, but some essential things have changed. The application is now available through the App Store or you can still purchase through the developer, Flying Meat. The upgrade price is $24.99. For what is called a “limited time offer,” everyone can purchase a new license for the same price.

Flying Meat is no longer developing the free “lite” version of VoodooPad, but the older lite version is still available at the web site.

You can run a trial of VoodooPad if you download from the developer’s site. You get a zipped folder that automatically unzips and the application is ready to run. Just drag it to your Applications folder. If you’re testing the upgrade, you should be aware that VoodooPad now uses a new file format, which does not provide backward compatibility, so be sure to back up your VoodooPad 4.0 (or earlier) files before letting version 5.0 have at ‘em.

Many significant new features and functions have been added to VoodooPad with this version, starting with the fact that it is now a 64-bit application. Other major additions and improvements include the following:

• New ability to publish straight to ePub and PDF.
• New Collections palette for an additional layer of organization.
• A new type of page that recognizes native Markdown editing.
• Find to-do items embedded within various pages and list them in the palette.
• New synchronization capability with Dropbox.
• Java scriptlet support, and revamped event script system.

I’ll look more closely at most of these below, then I’ll provide my overall impressions of VoodooPad 5.0. But first a few VoodooPad basics.

Some VoodooPad basics

Before delving into the new features, a few words about how VoodooPad works. To start, the basic interface will remind you pretty much of a standard word processor.

Write or paste your information in the editor window. When you decide to create a new page, you have a few options for how to do so. If you’re referencing something for which you have text, say a name, just highlight the word or phrase, press command-L (or use the link button in the toolbar) and a new page is created with that word or phrase as a title, and a link to this new page is embedded in the text of the original page. That’s simple and pretty basic wikiness. You can also create a new page without creating a link in the current document. Just press the new page button.

To get to the real meaty power of VoodooPad, you will need to develop a familiarity with the Palette window and the various palettes it gives you access to.

The screen shot above shows the palette pane with the Info Palette selected. You can choose which palette to display from the list on the left. These palettes will factor into our upcoming discussions.

And finally, a couple of definitions. In VoodooPad your open file is called a document, and your various notes are called pages.

Publish or perish?

It seems that everyone wants to get into the act of turning written material into an eBook these days, and VoodooPad is no exception. Version 5 has the added ability to publish your documents in ePub and PDF formats so you can “publish your document as an electronic book on Apple’s iBookstore, Amazon.com, or even your own website.”

I’m not an expert on ePub formats, but this function certainly appears to work fine. As you’ll learn below, I do have some reservations about how powerful this feature is. Nevertheless, it works and should prove useful in many situations.

New Collections palette and export functions

One of the advantages of a wiki database like VoodooPad is how you can grow your treasure trove of information organically, without having to consider how you want to structure it ahead of time. Sometimes, however, you may find that structure is important. The new Collections feature in VoodooPad 5 attempts to solve this issue, allowing you to build an organizational hierarchy to supplement your wiki network.

Let’s look at a possible real-life example. Say you created a VoodooPad document to manage a new project. You’ll probably end up with a lot of pages, only some of which you may want to export into a report for your supervisor. You might create a collection called Executive Report, which would allow you to assemble the report from the appropriate pages of your overall project document.

As with many of the functions of VoodooPad, you do this work in the Palette window.

There are at least a couple of ways to build a collection. In the first, you select the pages to include in a collection via a drop down menu, as illustrated below:

This is a little time-consuming, so I recommend opening an additional Palette window, clicking to the Pages palette, then dragging the pages you want into the open Collections palette. Confused? This screen shot should clear it up:

A Collection can be referenced when exporting to the new PDF and ePub formats. This is a nice feature, but it has some limits and functionality omissions that are important to note. For one, in the PDF export, each page from your Collection starts a new page in the exported file. There is no way to change this action at this time. This is a major issue to me, as it seems reasonable that you may want to combine some pages from VoodooPad into one section of your exported document, and not have each start a new page. There should be an option to toggle “make new page” on or off for export.

This would be less of an issue if you could use Collections when exporting to Word, because you could quickly and easily edit the document in Word after export. But as of this writing, you can’t reference a Collection when exporting to Word or any of the export formats other than PDF and ePub. (The developer has said that he’s added this to the features request list, so it may appear in a future update.) VoodooPad does include the ability to select which pages to export to Word, but that does not involve the Collections feature.

Markdown editing

VoodooPad now includes three page types: Plain Text, Rich Text and the new Markdown type. Markdown is a tool used to convert a specialized, plain text syntax to HTML. In other words, add the special character codes to your plain text document, then use the Markdown conversion tool to render your page for export to the web or, in the case of VoodooPad, to ePub format as well.

The new Markdown page type performs a quasi-preview for you. It will be easier to demonstrate this than describe it:

The screen shot above shows a Markdown type page. Bracketing “Abbey on Education” in double hash marks makes it a headline, and bracketing “Edward Abbey” in double asterisks makes it bold. the Markdown format page retains the syntax code, while providing a quasi preview in the main window. You can see a genuine HTML preview, as above, by selecting “HTML Preview” from the VIEW menu.

New features for task management

A very handy new feature of VoodooPad 5 is the To-dos palette, which shows all the instances in your document of the string “@todo:” followed by a line of text. This may be my favorite new feature. See the screenshots below to see this in action:

@todo: is the default action token that VoodooPad searches for, but you can also set any string of text that follows the @ sign to be an action token, such as defining a reminder or a phone call to make.

Another small, but very useful new feature is the ability to make any line or paragraph of text a Check Box Item via the FORMAT menu. You can use the action tokens at the start of the line of a check box item to add an additional dimension to your task management.

Synchronize with Dropbox

The new full-featured synchronization function is probably going to be very popular with VoodooPad users. Save your VoodooPad document to a Dropbox folder and you can keep it fully synchronized between two or more computers, and with the VoodooPad iOS app. You can even collaborate with someone else on the same document. I have only one Mac, so I was unable to test this function. (I must note, however, that the comments on the App Store about the iOS version of VoodooPad include several that are not very complimentary, for whatever that may be worth.)

Java and Event Scripts

Two additional new features may appeal to the more technically minded user — which is not me, so I am not going to try to explain or test them. Here’s what Flying Meat has to say about them:

Java Scriptlet support with Web Export, ePub, and PDF export!

You can now write mini-scripts into your pages that are rendered when you export to HTML, ePub, or PDF. Dynamically change the content of your page with simple <%= %> tags. Generate static websites without giving up dynamic content. Read all about scriptlet support in the documentation.

New Event Scripts

The event scripts system has been rewritten to make it easer to extend VoodooPad’s functionality. No longer do you have to make multiple pages and hook up crazy palettes just to customize what happens when a document opens or closes. Just create an event specific page, and write your script using JavaScript. Easy.

The World’s Easiest Personal Wiki

VoodooPad has always been a very good information manager. I’m not sure I buy Flying Meat’s claim that it is the world’s best personal wiki (my vote would go to the Windows application ConnectedText). But it is certainly the easiest wiki I’ve ever used.

If you know how to use a word processor, you’ll have no trouble with VoodooPad. I do think the application loses some of its wiki-flavor by moving much of the information management out of the main window and into the Palettes window, but this is also what helps to make it easy to use. By contrast, a lot of what VoodooPad does in the Palettes window can be done directly in the main window of ConnectedText, but this requires embedding some coding in your text window. VoodooPad’s Palettes handle all of that for you.

I’m not here to tell you which way is better, and it doesn’t matter. VoodooPad is fun and easy to use. The learning curve is quite flat for most of its functions. It does the job effectively and is a stalwart OS X application that just got better than ever.

If you tried and rejected VoodooPad before, I don’t think there is anything in the new edition that will change your opinion (unless you were holding out for synchronization). But if you already use VoodooPad, you will find it well worth upgrading. And if you’ve never tried it, now is the time to give it a whirl.

Elegance is not a word that you would associate with Font Book, Apple’s built-in font management application. Personally, I found Font Book to be clunky and annoying at best. For designers, who have font collections ranging in the thousands, managing and previewing text in Font Book is far from ideal.

There are not many font management applications available for your Mac, but at least one clearly stands out as worth revisiting: Fontcase.

Fontcase is an application developed by Bohemian Coding, who also made the recently updated Sketch application. Created to replace Font Book, or any other font management application, Fontcase is a beautifully designed, powerful application.

Design

The application features a gorgeous icon and a wonderful user interface that pays attention to detail. Living all inside one window, Fontcase consolidates your fonts into three different views: Collections, which are custom groups of fonts, Genres and Tags. In the settings, you can even create Smart Collections, like Smart Playlists, as well as organize your fonts by Foundry, Designer or Language. Fontcase even fills in the information for you. Using Typedia, a online source for information about thousands of fonts, most of the metadata information will be filled in automatically.

In all of these views its incredibly simple to preview fonts. Just click a font or font family and the preview pane changes to show off the different weights and styles of the font. Command + Click multiple font families to compare fonts or just scrub over the font in the main window to get a quick look at each variation.

You can preview fonts in short sentences, in body format or preview just the font’s set of glyphs (like then @ or * symbols). One of the neatest features is the ability to edit the preview text. Just double click and start typing.

Activation

No, I’m not talking about the horrible process of entering in a product key from Microsoft or a license code from Adobe. I’m talking about enabling and disabling fonts to help improve the performance of your computer. In some cases, your font library might number in the thousands. Having every font in your library open and running can majorly impact your memory usage and can even slow down your Mac.

When you aren’t using a font, or in most cases a collection of fonts, you can deactivate the fonts with just one click (or by pressing Command + Enter). The font family will have a green label when activated, gray when deactivated and yellow/black stripes to represent system fonts (which can neither be activated or deactivated).

Auto Activation

In some instances, you may deactivate fonts or entire collections that a file is dependent on. With Auto-Activation enabled, Fontcase can detect when a file is looking for a deactivated font and can quickly activate it so you don’t run into annoying errors.

I found the auto-activation to work as described. It was almost magical as collections and font families reactivated so my text wouldn’t revert to another font. Auto-activation is supported by most Mac applications, including iWork and Adobe’s Creative Suite. This auto-activation does not, unfortunately, work in InDesign. However, Fontcase does give you the option to automatically activate all fonts within the foremost InDesign document.

Typesetter

One of the flagship features for Fontcase 2 is the ability to test fonts on any webpage. Fontcase has a built in web browser with this special capability. To preview a font, just drag it onto the text that you are wanting to replace and the change happens instantly. You can even change the text’s color, size and line height.

 

The default page, called the Specimen, that appears when you open a font in the Typesetter window is also incredibly useful. Being able to quickly grasp all the different letters, characters and how they work together has been very helpful.

iOS

To get a closer look at your font choice, or to see how legible a font is on an iPhone compared to your Mac, you can use Fontcase Viewer. This $0.99 app is available in the App Store for both iPad and iPhone. Fontcase viewer pairs with your iOS device over a Wifi network.

Other Details

The metadata Fontcase uses, like ratings on your fonts, what collections you create, and more is all stored inside Fontcase’s vault, which is another term for their database that they use. This makes it easy to move between systems, or store your fonts on an external hard drive. I personally have stored my Fontcase vault inside of Dropbox. (Though it is important not to open the vault on multiple systems at the same time!) Fontcase’s minimal preferences window can also help you move your Fontcase vault around easily.

When dragging a new font you’ve purchased or downloaded into Fontcase, you also have the opportunity to add it directly to a collection or to a tag. Just drag it over the icon for Collections or Tags and wait a second. This makes keeping things organized a cinch.

Fontcase also makes printing your fonts out beautiful. It will generate a wonderful sheet that can be used to easily compare fonts on paper. I’ve found it to be really useful when working on print projects– just to make sure that I know how the typeface I chose will look in the real world.

Wrap Up

Fontcase is an incredible application for designers and font-lovers alike. With features that let you organize to your heart’s content, automatically activate the fonts you need before you know that you need them, and even let you preview your fonts on websites and iOS devices, I haven’t found an app that can compare.

While I wouldn’t be hesitant to recommend this to a designer, I doubt the average person needs Fontcase. The price tag is also a bit of a hurdle at $34.99. It is available in the Mac App Store as well as in trial form on their website.

If you’re a designer or font lover, give Fontcase a spin, and let us know what you think!

Despite being a relatively old system, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) still has great value to those of us who deal with uploading and downloading lots of data between servers. Some have argued that FTP is dying, along with hierarchical file systems. However, for anyone who has ever worked on a website or dealt with servers like Amazon’s S3, FTP is still the fastest way to manage all your files.

There are plenty of options out there for Mac users who need a solid FTP client. The most important factors for most users when deciding which is best tend to be speed, layout, and price. Today we are going to look a fresh look at the recently updated ForkLift from Binary Nights (version 2.5), and see how it stacks up against the competition.

Getting Started

How quickly you get up and running with ForkLift, or any FTP client for that matter, depends on your comfort level with certain acronyms. If you know and understand things like FTP, SFTP, WebDav, S3, etc., then the setup process for ForkLift won’t be any more difficult to understand any other FTP app you’ve used. You simply click on the connect button to open up a menu, which allows you to enter server details and login information, and you’re ready to go. You get additional options here as you would expect with an FTP client, including changing the port number, local and remote paths, base URL, and encoding type.

Design

ForkLift doesn’t differentiate itself from the competition in any major ways. The main window is divided into two areas, one showing the files and folders of whatever server you are connected to, and the other shows you your local machine. At the top of each window is a file path that helps you visualize where you are.

Ideally, I think a good Mac FTP client should simulate the experience of using the Finder, and in this way, ForkLift succeeds. In fact, one part of the window design that gives it a leg up on certain competitors is having a left hand column, just like Finder, that gives you a listing of devices, shared drives, current connections, and favorites.

Previous versions of ForkLift were eye sores full of excessively decorated icons cluttering up every pixel of the window. The current version has toned all of that down, and the graphics all fit nicely with the more subdued Lion theme.

You can change the viewing format to icons, list, hierarchy, and cover flow. As with Finder, you can also choose what columns will appear in list view (such as date added, date modified, etc.).

Like many other FTP clients, ForkLift has the very useful tab feature (something that Apple needs to implement into Finder). Other FTP apps like Transmit have tabs as well, but what I like about ForkLift is that it lets you use tabs in both windows if you are using the dual pane view.

The top of the window shows the progress bar. When inactive, it takes up an unfortunate amount of space, similar to the top of the iTunes window. I prefer Transmit’s progress bar that sits at the bottom of the window, where it is more out of the way. When you aren’t transferring anything, the activity bar in ForkLift just seems to take up too much space.

Despite having been released almost a year ago, there are still some apps that haven’t made themselves full-screen compatible. FTP clients are definitely apps that benefit from having more screen space, because all the files you need to deal with can be accessed in a Finder-like window. Fortunately, ForkLift has made the jump, and using it in full-screen was a pleasure. Some may find it unnecessary to use ForkLift or any other FTP client in full-screen, but I personally prefer it. You can also use Quick Look inside ForkLift, which I found removes any need to exit out of full-screen to open Preview.

Performance

I decided to do a causal test of speeds for various FTP app that I have. In addition to ForkLift, I tested transfers with Flow and Transmit. There are a ton of other options out there that I’ve tried in the past, such as Cyberduck and FileZilla, but this is a review of ForkLift, and getting a comparison to two other apps should be sufficient.

I used the same 25MB Adobe file from my hard drive, and sent it to my web site’s server with each app. ForkLift took 35 seconds, Transmit took 41, and Flow took 44. Downloading the file, on the other hand, was much faster and about the same for each app. It is important to note that this was not a very scientific test and that your results may vary. I did perform the test several times, though, and ended up getting the same numbers each time with a negligible variance.

Aside from transfers, general performance with ForkLift was excellent as well. Everything is snappy, from opening folders to logging into a server. Speaking of logging in, I found ForkLift to be almost instantaneous, Transmit to take a half second longer, and Flow to be dreadfully slow in comparison. Further speeding up your workflow is a wide-array of available shortcuts, all of which can be customized.

All in all, ForkLift was the single best-performing FTP client I’ve ever used. I have been using Transmit for years and even it still hangs up frequently when trying to connect to my server. ForkLift hasn’t done that to me once.

Features

ForkLift has a ton of great features that I loved having at my disposal. The first is Stacks, which is a simple way to organize certain commonly used files. I was using ForkLift while working on a WordPress design, and I found Stacks to be great for keeping a few files that I frequently needed close at hand without having to create a separate folder on my computer.

Like many FTP clients, you can use a sync function to simply copy everything from one folder into another. ForkLift expands on this common functionality with “synclets,” which gives you a bit more control over the sync actions you need. Once you customize what you want to have synced for a given folder, you can save those settings, making any future syncs a breeze.

One of my favorite features in ForkLift is “Droplets.” Droplets are shortcuts that you can place anywhere in your system, (I placed mine in the dock), and then anything that you drag onto it gets sent to the remote folder of your choice. If you’ve ever used DropZone, this feature will look familiar to you.

You can, like other FTP clients, mount connections to your server on your computer. One area where Transmit beats ForkLift here is the availability of a menulet for quick access to mounted drives. However, having that sidebar with devices in ForkLift sort of negates the need for a menulet.

Conclusion

In speaking with other people about FTP clients, I get the sense that Transmit is perhaps the most popular among Mac-users. However, after playing around with ForkLift, I would crown it as my favorite. Transmit certainly has a more appealing visual design, but I think ForkLift has a few features that make it a better value.

Some people spend a lot of their time looking at an FTP window, so Transmit’s eye candy certainly does matter. But if you are ultimately more concerned with a broader set of features and better performance, I think you might want to give ForkLift a try.

For some of us, email seems to rule our lives. Wouldn’t it be cool to see how true that statement is? Mailsum is a unique and attractive app that offers you a way to track various statistics regarding your email habits: sent, received, average response time; track it all in style with Mailsum!

We’re happy to announce that we’ve been able to snag five copies of Mailsum to give away to our faithful fans. Read on to see how you can enter!

Tweet to Enter

Entering is simple, all you have to do is click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet. That’s it!

We’ll announce the winners on Thursday, May 24th. Good luck to everyone who enters! In the mean time, be sure to stop by the Mailsum website to learn more about this awesome app.

Whether you’re looking to do some late spring cleaning, or you just want to liberate some of your guilty pleasure movies from their DVD prisons, it is time we revisit the process of ripping your DVD collection into iTunes. Ripping DVDs is not only easy, it can save a lot of money as you begin (or continue) to build your digital video library.

As the self-proclaimed digital projectionist for the casa de la Stark, let me walk you through the basic steps and available software applications to get those movies off the plastic and into your Mac.

Introduction

If you assume that ripping your DVD collection into a digital format is a task that just isn’t worth your time, you’d be wrong. The typical cost of a movie from iTunes ranges from $10 to $20 dollars. Ripping DVDs you already own, or possibly DVDs you’ve picked up from Amazon.com, presents an opportunity for tremendous cost savings and greater bang for your buck. Those movies are just sitting there. Why not get them into a format that you can actually benefit from, and maybe get yourself even closer to breaking the cable!

When you first begin to rip your DVD collection it is important to map out a plan. Understanding the use of your final output can save yourself time and megabytes. For our purposes, the mission is to get a commercial DVD into iTunes so we can watch it on an iPad or through an AppleTV.

As you move through your DVD collection, you will find yourself fine tuning the process to make it perfect for your particular setup. I would also recommend that you keep all of your original DVD discs. I typically recycle the cases and store the discs on an old CD-R spindle to save space. Keeping the original disc somewhat handy in the beginning is helpful as not all rips will go perfectly, and you might not see the issue until its up on the big screen.

The Tools

The current software options for ripping a DVD are virtually endless. From free to costly, easy to complicated, the right ripping tool is completely subjective to the end-user. Ideally, find something that makes your life easy while allowing you to create an output file that meets your objective. For this exercise, I will be ripping a new copy of The Recruit that I purchased from Amazon.com for $4.25 (with free shipping). The end result for each of these tools is to generate a file that I can drop into iTunes to be played on my iPad and my AppleTV.

Handbrake (free)

Handbrake is an open source application that is beloved by a strong community of users. Try having a conversation about video conversion, and Handbrake will most likely be thrown into the mix. Unlike the other tools in this article, Handbrake by its own definition is not a DVD ripping software solution. Its primary purpose is about video conversion.

The importance of this fact is that it only works on un-encrypted video sources without the assistance of additional plugins or tools. Most commercial DVDs sold today have some sort of DRM encryption on them, and unless that encryption is bypassed, Handbrake won’t be able to access the video files to perform the rip (or more accurately – conversion). There are several options and third party utilities to help manage the encryption on DVDs. Handbrake, however, will actually offer to point you in the right direction and download a small package to help bypass most commercial encryption. To rip a movie using Handbrake:

1. Click “Source” in top left corner of Handbrake window.
2. Navigate to your DVD -> Video_TS folder. Click “Open”.
3. As it scans the DVD, it will (generally) pre-select the title you need. If it doesn’t, or you want to be sure, scan the available title tracks in the title dropdown. The title with the longest duration is usually what you need.
4. In the presets window, select “AppleTV” (or feel free to choose another preset that meets your need).
5. Click “Start”

RipIt ($24.95)

Featured on AppStorm before, RipIt is an easy program for ripping video from your DVD discs. Unlike Handbrake, it has built in tools to circumvent most forms of DVD encryption. It has been purposefully designed with less options in an effort to keep the process of ripping DVDs forcibly painless.

You can use RipIt to burn an exact copy of a DVD, or create a compressed video file (sans the menus and extras) to play on your mobile devices. For most users, RipIt is probably the best choice for getting your digital collection started. Interestingly enough, it uses the Handbrake CLI for the compression part of the RipIt job. You can change output formats and target a specific platform if you want (such as iPhone, iPad, etc). Personally, I think the default settings are just fine for a file that can accomplish this mission. To rip a movie using Ripit:

1. Insert DVD
2. Click Compress
3. Click Automatically Compress

DVDFab ($45.00+)

Relatively new to the Mac platform, DVDFab is a powerful ripping suite. Like RipIt, it too can bypass most encryption on today’s DVDs. Unlike RipIt, however, you can be very specific in your output options. You can create mirrored copies of your disk, or target the output for a particular platform.

If you are a cross platform user, DVDFab has a Windows client that operates in almost the exact way as the Mac version. Unfortunately, DVDFab is a bit pricey for most users and that license does not cover both a Mac and Windows installation. However, it does allow you to purchase specific modules which give you the ability to rip Blu-Rays as well as DVDs. To rip a movie using DVDFab:

1. Select DVD Ripper from the options on the right.
2. Select “More” from the preselects and then choose “Apple TV”.
3. By default, the main movie will already be selected. If you want to change it, do that before clicking start.
4. Click “display only forced subpicture” (optional). Typically, I will edit the profile and increase the volume for the ripped movies to 150%. I also change the audio output to Dolby ProLogic II for my particular entertainment output needs.
5. Click “Start”

Meta Information

These last tools are entirely optional. When you burn as many DVDs as I have, gathering DVD cover art can be a pain. Movie descriptions? Forget it. However, if you want your movies to look like you just downloaded them from iTunes, the easiest way to do that is with a tool like MetaX or iDentify. They use the title of the movie (which you can tweak) and scans different movie databases to pull in cast, art, and chapter information. It then adds this information to the output file itself, so when you drop it into iTunes it looks as professional as the big boys.

Final Stretch

Once you have your output file, its time to load it into iTunes. Simply grab your mp4 or m4v file and drag it over to iTunes. If you’ve used a meta program, then you will see your movie with a properly formatted title, description, and cover art. If not, then all you need to do is right click (or control-click) on the file and select “Get Info”. From here, you can update the name, add cover art, and update any other data you want.

Conclusion

Converting your own DVDs to a digital format is a pretty painless process. Using a few basic tools and some pre-planning, you can bring new life to that DVD collection collecting dust in your closet.