Apple has released the newest suite of media applications for youe Mac, the iLife bundle which includes iMovie - the movie editing application, iPhoto - the photo management application, GarageBand - the music and podcast creation application, iDVD - the DVD authoring application and finally, iWeb - the web site creation application.

Of the group iMovie stood out as the best of the group. Apple has written this from the ground up so it's a brand new application. They've also completely re-thought how movie editing should work. The first thing you will notice is the new interface, which is composed of and iTunes like interface where you have your sources on the left, and your working are in the center. Another thing you may notice is there is no timeline! And once you see how you edit - you won't need it. Apple has figured most users want to quickly edit roughly 30 minutes of video into a 5 minute clip which you'd want to share with others in some fashion which iMovie is setup to easily upload to your .Mac account or youTube.


Another area iMovie has changed is reviewing your movies. Previously you'd have to double-click a clip and review it, now all you do is mouse-over any part of your movie and it will begin playing, a technique known as 'skimming'. Editing your movies is completely new here too- no more clicking on clips to review them, trim to this spot, then copy; paste; delete non-sense. Instead, just drag over an area in a clip, then add that portion to your movie. It's that easy. Lastly iMovie is a project manager, which means all of your projects are held in a single window. Like iTunes and iPhoto, import your movie clips here for permanent storage. Your movies are copied to the iMovie Events folder in your Movies folder. Because the latest iMovie has be re-written, previous plug-ins and extensions will not work, in fact because this version of iMovie has rethought what iMovies are and where they are viewed, there aren't even themes available, just your media browser and a handful of transitions. If you need some of these features - keep iMovie '06 on hand which is left behind by default.

I personally am happy with this new version though much talk lately has been against this new app because of how much has been left out. David Pogue has said it's been a huge step back, and I agree with his argument, but I do like the new direction. I suppose with a brand new application there will be some give and take and at some point we should be in a similar point. Hopefully at leas with iMovie '09.


iPhoto is the second application that's gotten a nice upgrade. The major feature is Events, which is essentially an intelligent method of grouping your photos. When you import photos, iPhoto creates an event(s) and hopefully logically breaks down your images into proper groups. So far for me it seems the events are simply time based. I was doing a photo shoot for myself then imported the pictures into iPhoto. Then went back and resumed to take more photos, and returned to import the newer photos - iPhoto created two events from those two sessions but probably should have been one event. But Events does making your images easier to manage, since it's super easy to split or merge events together with drag and drop. iPhoto also uses the same skimming feature iMovie has, just mouseover any event and view what images are in that grouping. Beautifully executed and a nice new UI feature.

If you have a .Mac account, you now have access to a new online gallery. Simply select an event group or a series of photos and click the Web Gallery button and voom! It's on the web. The new gallery is no lame picture show either, this is a fully ajaxified online experience. Apple has developed a flexible gallery which you can view in a number of modes like CoverFlow and Mosaic. The presentation beautiful and makes me feel like I'm in iPhoto. There are some other interesting features here, like allowing anyone to download an image, upload an image to your gallery, subscribe via RSS and tell a friend. The gallery does require pretty intensive processing power, so a slow system would really run horribly and the experience would be completely lost. That's a bit unfortunate because its likely anyone you know isn't running the latest and greatest of hardware.

The rest of the iApps I haven't had much of a chance to really get into, but I suppose I will at some point. iWeb seems a bit more promising with it's Google integration and HTML snippets. GarageBand I just haven't had the need for and iDVD, if all they did was make it faster and usable it's a good upgrade.

Tags: iMovie, iPhoto

Apple released a new version of Safari today at the Developer Convemtion, well sort of, it's really a public beta release, so it's not an official version yet. If you downloaded it and kept using it as you had previously you'd almost think it was the same. And for the most part it is. Actually, one of the most exciting things about this release is not a new feature at all but a version that can run on Windows XP/Vista. Why is this exciting for a Mac user? Well for a few reasons I can think of.

• Windows users can once again finally see their websites look awesome. Every-time I look at aliased fonts in IE & FF on Windows, my body shudders, I can't explain it.
• Web Developers can more accurately develop on a single platform for all browsers (even though that platform is Windows)
• With Safari on Windows, we should see more website supported in Safari rather than 'Coming Soon' or your browser is unsupported messages.
• This should once again push MS to have better CSS support. Some of the coolest CSS features work awesome in Safari, lets start seeing in all browsers already.
• A larger Safari base (which in turn shrinks the IE user base). What's better than seeing Windows users love Apple software?

While these are just great reasons for Safari on Windows, there are actual feature in this new version of Safari. Simple but cool and interesting.

Resizable Textarea form elements

Just click and drag the lower right corner 'grabbers' and stretch. Kind of cool, there are so many times I've wished I could do something like this. Only drawback is it can break your layout, and since this is proprietary to Safari, will you have to use proprietary markup to control it? Hope they don't go there.

Awesome Find Feature

Who'd-a-thunk the Find feature would be so cool? I love it. Try it out now!


Default RSS reader. I'm not totally sure if this is new, but in the preferences window, you can choose a reader for RSS feeds to load into.

If you use 1PassWord, it will not work in Safari 3, which I am sure the developer knows by now, an error lets you know that it's not going to load. Also this version of Safari breaks MailPlane, but there is a workaround for now which to enable Rich-Text Editing in the advanced preferences.

So have you found anything else new? Let me know.

Tags: browser, Internet, software

Ecto 3 is on it's way and it's looking pretty nice. A screen has been posted on their site today shows off its new interface which has a nice updated Mac interface. Ecto 3 is being rewritten completely with full plug-in support for the major blogs. It looks as though there will be some iLife integration from the looks of the image. Looking forward to the new release being my blog app of choice.

Tags: ecto, blog

I tried downloading HandBrake 0.8.5 beta this week but had issues with the file. The dmg file downloaded without issue, it was when I tried mounting it I received an error claiming there was nothing to mount. Anyone having issues here? I've tried on an MacBook Pro and G5 tower both with the same results.

Tags: dvd, software

Though the version number only jumps .1 to 3.6, there are many improvements here and unfortunately an upgrade cost of $25. Much of the changes are small interface tweaks, such as there is no long a code vide tab in the main window which is good and bad - yes its great to view the code but you couldn't edit in there so it had its usefulness but there are also some great new features which I will give an overview here.

If you write a blog, as I do, using Rapid Weaver you'll notice there isn't a drop menu of you categories any long, instead an empty text field for you to enter. It's a smart field so if you have categories setup, the auto complete helps you out. This method is pretty cool and it also allows you to file this into multiple categories. A new feature is tags, you can now tag your blog with keywords, works exactly the same as the categories. Both tags and categories are saved in the setup dialog, so you can go ahead and make your modifications there.

A brand new Flash Slideshow is now included with new transitions, Ken Burns effects and Flickr support via RSS feed. This looks like a pretty nice looking slideshow, just remember to get the latest JavaScript file if you are using a custom template.

A huge and exciting edition to RW are snippets which are reusable chunks of code that are saved by name. This could make managing the sidebar easier from page to page, or if you have some dynamic code you'd like to maintain a little easier.

Lists are easy to make now with the List feature. Select a bunch of lines and choose Format->List and a dialog asking what kind of list to make, choose one and click OK. If you aren't fluent in HTML or CSS, I must say the menu is a bit archaic looking.

A basic list will look like:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3
• Item 4

Only 1 issue I wish they'd make a bid easier is linking an thumbnail to a larger version, this should be built in, but you still have to manually do a lot of work to do this. Please fix this. RapidWeaver costs $49 for a single license, and $25 to upgrade and is a great tool for building small to medium websites quickly.

Tags: web, development, design

I was minding my own business one day, doing my work, when all of the sudden the Opera web browser appears and wants to download a bitTorent file. I was a bit miffed at both events occurring simultaneously - one, I didn't even know I had Opera on my Mac since I never downloaded it, and two, I didn't know where that file was even coming from! I really didn't know what to think of it, so I did a little searching for Opera to see where it was which came up empty in my search except for a few preference files, so I sort of let it go for the moment. Then it happened again, Opera springs up out of nowhere and starts downloading some torrent! WTF! This time, I click on the dock icon and Show in Finder.

Ahhh - It's part of Bridge, the media management application thats part of their CS products. Much of Bridge connects to the internet for photo searching, photographer directory and administering Version Cue, Adobe's version control software. I wonder why they chose to use Opera - possibly because it runs on Mac/PC's - oddly I've been seeing Opera turn up in alternate places besides a default browser, I finally got to try the Wii which uses a highly modified version of Opera.

MailPlane, the GMail desktop email application updated their version to 1.45 this past weekend. One of the first changes is the new icon for the application. The developer of MailPlane, Ruben Bakker, approached icon designer Jonas Rask to come up with something to replace their current 'flat' icon. The result is here in this post which I think it's am much more lively looking icon.



Also the new mail badge icon was changed to a chartreuse which I kind of felt was a little tough to read over the read & white. Other improvements include on the fly spell checking thanks to MailPlane using Macs built-in spell checker, Choosing Spam, Archive or Discard in a separate window will close the window following the action. Bug fixes are included in this release as well. MailPlane is still in beta but they are giving away invitations to try it out and still no word on any sort of pricing.

With Coda being released, I found it interesting all of the applications they've brought together into a single interface. It's almost a mash-up of applications (but in a good way). Coda brings together the most common parts of web developers arsenal in a new and from all the talk, profound kind of way. Coda contains modules for HTML or code editing - which is an integrated version of SubEthaEdit, a visual CSS editor, an FTP client (Transmit no less), a command line terminal, and something new to apps of this nature - books! Look up references for HTML/CSS/Javascript/PHP are all built into Coda, all which are by No Starch Press - very cool.

After my initial impression of Coda and reading Daring Fireballs post on Coda, I was curious if I would end up turning myself over to such an application knowing I would be trading simplicity for feature sets. Below is my current web work environment

TextMate
A powerhouse of a text editor has eased my pains in writing code, from simple stuff like closing my brackets for me, wrapping lines of text in li tags and even more advanced editing like formatting a chunk of selected text using regular expressions. TextMate also has a huge array of built-in commands called Bundles which perform various tasks on your selections. and work with everything from HTML, PHP to C++ and Java. TextMate also has a project feature which allows you to work with a set of files, build out your file structure all in a single tabbed window. TextMate is only $25 from MacroMates


CSSEdit
My indispensable CSS editor. A truly 'Mac' application with a beautiful interface that lets me work how I want, and a complete CSS editing solution. Even if you don't know how to write CSS, CSSEdit still makes it easy to generate a CSS file using its visual editor. Along with visual editing, you are able to see your CSS being applied to your html file in real time with CSSEdit's preview mode - it's like watching a professional do all the work in front of you. What's awesome about the preview is you dont have to save your file to see the changes, it's on the fly previews! So Cool! New to the latest release is a CSS rule generator - if you want to really see how to target a specific element with conditions, you can build them with this new feature. CSSEdit is developed by the guys a MacRabbit Software, and costs a measly $25 bucks. Get it now!

Transmit
You need to get your files from here to there. There are so many FTP clients available for the Mac, some built into text editors, many are stand alone apps - but none really compare to the quality and ease of use of Transmit. The amazing coders at Panic truly have the best FTP client on earth. At it's most basic, it's a drag and drop interface where you move files from the left pane window (your files), to the right pane window (their files). How easy! To coin Roger Ebert, "It's not what it's about, it's how it's about it." Transmit just feels right and works like you'd want it to. You can also use Transmit to edit files on the server for quick changes or even getting into files that need root access. I'm not going to go through the tons of awesome features of Transmit, but will tell you it simply rocks. Transmit costs $30 bucks but you can try it for 15 days.

Terminal
Yes, the free one that comes with your Mac OS. Even if you aren't a UNIX guru, and trust me I'm nowhere near one, but there are times when logging into the server is more useful or even the only way to get some tasks done. Have to chown a directory or file? Pretty much the only way to do that, especially if sudo is necessary. Sometimes its easier to deal with MySQL over the command-line rather than having to go through the setup of phpMyAdmin on your web server. Terminal is also most useful for editing those files you need root access for like httpd.conf or other configuration files. There other more powerful Terminal apps out there, but I use it only when I have to so this app suits me just fine.

MAMP
When developing sites for clients, it gets tedious real fast when updating single file to check for changes. The steps are, make changes in your editor, upload file to server, refresh browser to see changes.. repeat as needed. A better way is to run a local web server right on your very computer you are developing on. The quickest and simplest way to do this is turning on Web Sharing in your System Preferences Sharing module. But this only turns on your Apache web server which may be fine if you are working with a static HTML/CSS based site. As soon as you get into dynamic pages using PHP or other scripting language - there are configurations and setups to go through which are often complicated and advanced for many users. Add a database to the mix, you've now stacked more management and setup time onto your dev environment. A quick and dirty way to get all this rolled into a simple application is called MAMP (Mac/Apache/MySQL/PHP). Installing MAMP setups each of these services into its own instance far away from your main system so there is no conflict with your initial setup. MAMP also pre-configures everything so you can just dive right and code away, and check your results using the same technologies many great websites employ locally and easily.

One of the reasons I like using MAMP is that it supports both PHP4 & PHP5, though not simultaneous. If you are developing applications for both, you can change which version you want to load with Apache by simply changing setting in the preferences of the MAMP app, and boom - MAMP reboots the servers and you can start developing in an alternate environment. It is noted that MAMP is not ideal for production environment. MAMP is absolutely free

Console
If you do any type of dynamic web development and just cannot figure out why your app isn't maybe outputting anything - Console is your friend. Like the Terminal, this app comes with your system and is found in your Utilities folder. Console gives you insight to what is either happening on your system or what isn't by watching what is being written to your log files in various folders on your computer. Apache writes access and error logs which can be used to see where referrals requests are coming from and an error log to see what files didn't get transmitted. PHP also has a log file which is invaluable for checking what errors are being output.

Character Converter
Ever copy and paste text from Word or even from your web browser into an HTML file, only render certain character as garbled text? Ever have to look up character codes for those pesky trademark or copyright icons? This little service menu utility from Kavasoft saves me much hassle and annoyance. Since HTML only understand the standard alphabet, numbers and a few punctuation, you must encode many other specialized characters with a special formatting. All you do is select the character in question and issue a commend+&, and boom! - it outputs the correct HTML character code. Makes moving copy from one format to another nice and easy. Character Converter only costs $9.99 but is worth it.

Adobe Illustrator
I know most people use Photoshop for their art/web design software, but I use Illustrator 99% of the time. Illustrator lets me get almost of all the elements I need - and a lot quicker - than designing in Photoshop. Also, because Illustrator is vector based, it's much more flexible when I want to edit elements either major or minor. Just like Photoshop, Illustrator has most of the same slice-based features and uses the same Save for Web module. I simply setup my page dimension, and start designing my interface, this web site in particular was created completely in Illustrator. Because web pages are very structured, Illustrator actually makes designing for them easier with with boxes much easier than you would in Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, I do use Photoshop in my web workflow, obviously for photo re-touching but also to add other enhancements that Illustrators toolset doesn't cover quite as well like filters. When I do need to bring my layout into Photoshop I can export it from Illustrator with layers and maintain the same level of editability.

Another great use is when I am designing HTML emails for my clients - I design the entire layout and export the sliced file, HTML and all into a folder. I like that it writes out the complete HTML code for me using tables since email clients are fragmented with their CSS support, I know my layout will render properly this way. Illustrator is a professional graphics program and may be overkill for some, Adobe offers FireWorks which is a vector based program focused on web design. If I remember it correctly, it's like Image Ready is to Photoshop as FireWorks is to Freehand - I could be wrong though.

What do you think of Coda, and what is in your web workflow?

MacRabbit Software has updated their essential CSS editing too CSSEdit to version 2.5. This uppgrade offers huge improvements and is free to 2.x users.

•Tabbed windows. This is a very trendy interface feature popping up in tons of programs these days.
• Improved X-Ray: A feature which visually allow you to see what element you are styling.
• Style Builder: Create complex styles visually.

I've been using CSSEdit since version 1.5 and it's been my CSS editor of choice since. If you do any designing or web development with CSS, you should give this a shot.

Panic Software, the developers of the best FTP client Tansmit, has released a new product called Coda. Coda is a web design/development IDE which you control all assets of your site in a single window. Much like a RapidWeaver or iWeb, you manage your site within a manager type interface, add content and publish. Coda seems to take this step even further by giving you access to advanced features, like an integrated CSS editor, integrated Terminal, Transmit built right in.

One feature that really caught my eye was the library of books built into the product - Panic has partnered with No Starch Press to ofer a selction of web development titles as part of Coda. Just choose a book to read, and you can use it as a searchable reference or read as.. well a book. Overall this looks like a pretty solid product which I am certainly going to give some time to.

MailPlane app was updated this morning to version 1.4.3 which adds a number of fixes. Below is from their email:

1) If you used the screenshot feature or optimized photos, Mailplane created some empty folders and didn't clean them up afterwards. This bug has been fixed, and Mailplane will help you remove the garbage folders it created. At first start, Mailplane will show a dialog box with more information. If you don't get the dialog box then there is nothing to be cleaned up.

2) Google Talk Window to chat with your contacts. This feature does only work with "normal" Google accounts (@gmail.com or @googlemail.com), yet.

3) New Tweak UI "Open external links in background" preference.

4) A "page loading" indicator on each window.

5) Make the font size smaller: Tweak UI Gmail font size now has a range from 60% to 140%.

6) "Compose Feedback Mail" menu item to send feedback to me.

7) For advanced users, there a new Tweak UI "Use custom stylesheet" preference.

Picked up a copy of CS3 Design Standard this week, and so far I am truly excited. I've been using CS2 on my MacBook Pro for about a year now and it's been absolutely horrible. Crashes, slowness, bugs - I am so glad to get rid of it. Illustrator in particular I am having a good time with which seems to be much quicker and stable than previously which is all I wanted. Feature wise it's light, but I'd rather have stable and fast than 100 new features. I'll review this product over at my other blog Illustrator Hacks, as soon as I get it back up :).




This package differs from previous version in that ImageReady is no more and Adobe Acrobat Pro is included which I have no problem with. It is odd Acrobat was the only application not to get the icon face lift. It seems pretty unanimous that the icons are really boring and not that attractive. It looks kind of cool lined up on the dock though. Designer Adam Betts apparently was offended enough by them to redesign them himself and offer a full icon replacement package. Check it out here.

I've been using MailPlane beta for over a week now, and it's already has got a comfortable place on my dock. MailPlane is a desktop interface to GMail, Google's free email service. For the most part, MailPlane loads the actual GMail interface into a window with some buttons above it. See picture below.


While the buttons don't really add any extra usability, the best part is simply getting your GMail to a desktop application. With growl support, you know immediately if you've got mail through its notification. For the most part, the application is flawless and very stable. While using it, I could not create a new email using the MailPlan New button but this was fixed in their update to version 1.4.2. Oddly the number badge on the icon seemed to have broke as it now only displays ### instead of the unread emails.

The software is in beta still and only available by signing up at their website which says 100 invites are sent out daily. So there is a very good chance to get to try it quickly enough. There is no information as to how much this will cost, hopefully it will be relatively cheap. Since GMail has a great interface itself and is free, the appeal of the application may have limited value. As long as the price is fair I may buy into this.

I just got accepted to a couple of betas I've been waiting to try out.

First one is Joost, the TV on your computer service by the guys who developed Skype. The other is Mailplane, a Desktop Google Mail application. I will be using these extensively this week and will get a review of both products by early next week.

Apple is offering a beta version of Dashcode, the widget development environment, to Apple developers. Dashcode offers visual editing and code views to develop your widget. I haven't designed a widget yet, but according to the text online the widgets will be designed for Leopard or Mac OS 10.5. Dashcode has a simple wizard allowing you to choose which type of widget you want to create. You can choose from 8 different templates: Custom; Clock; RSS; Podcast; Photocast; Quartz Composer; Daily Feed and Guage. The program really looks promising and I just may make my first widget with this. The beta will stop working July 15th.

Here is a great page showing off Dashboard with a small example.

Madebysofa's point of sale software Checkout has reached it's official 1.0 release and is immediately available to purchase for the price of $430. When I first saw this I was a little shocked since most small Mac application these days have ran around $40-$50. But thinking about it, this is supposed to run your business so perhaps it's being pushed a large commercial product than I originally thought. Checkout aims to make managing product sales and inventory simple and easy, which from the screen shots & tiniest bit of looking through the demo, it seems very Mac-link and user-friendly. Checkout from what I know has zero competition in this market, since QuickBooks Retail Edition is Windows only, but there may be some other POS software I am not familiar with... what does Apple use in their stores? I have not tested this product because I have nothing to really sell or any sort of retail business established, but would like to hear from other users what they think.

As with any web development software, I really like to get my hands dirty - especially software that has pre-built themes. Being a designer, I usually dislike pre-built themes since the tend offer bland, generic styles with little to no direction. Going through Rapid Weavers selection is quite large but still a bit on the boring side, also I want my site to be different, not an obvious canned site.

Before I actually designed anything, I turned to the Rapid Waver website and found a section on developing themes. Ah! So like any good software it's made up of some good 'ole XHTML/CSS with some proprietary RW tags for some of the dynamic content RW does behind the scenes. But before I got knee-deep in building a new site, I checked out some of the great sounding third-party software available which extend the capabilities pretty far for a simple web build app like this.

What I really liked:
I love that you can build a simple website really fast, the templates built-in are better than average and there are enough of them to keep most novice users satisfied. I love that you can easily modify them to create your own, this can require some CSS knowledge or you can simply replace graphics with your own and you have a new layout. I love that you can view the code and see what RW is doing behind the scenes, simply switch to code view and get a look at the actual HTML output. I love the blogging capabilities, simply add a post and you are done. I love the easy 1 button publish feature, unlike iWeb you can post directly to any server to update your site. I love that it supports scripting languages like PHP which you view right in RW! I love that it's completely Mac. This program reeks of Mac love, the iLife integration, drag & drop images, awesome interface, incredible ease of use.

What really annoyed me:
It's really annoying that I cannot easily link small images to a larger image. This is especially crucial in blog posts where I want to only post a small image to click on. It's also really annoying that when I drag and drop an image into my blog, resize it and link to itself to view the larger version- RW actually resized it permanently. It's really annoying that I cannot edit the code in code view, I know it's somewhat what easier to use edit mode (after all, it's name says it all) but sometimes you just want to tweak a bit while you are in code view. It's annoying that RW doesn't offer an easy way to use image based navigation, sometimes you want that look or font that you just can't get with text.

This is all in the past 3 days setting up a new site and creating and building a new theme for this site. I am entirely impressed with it's capabilities and it beats iWeb out of the water. In all, I will be using RW as my main blogging tool for this site and to build some smaller sites for my business. Great product, recommended for all but users with sophisticated needs.