Category Archives: OSX

Google Chrome is definitely my favorite web browser. It has OSX Lion fullscreen support… it’s fast and lightweight, and Google itself is in charge of pushing it forward. But sometimes it just falls short… you just can’t find a suitable plugin for whatever you need to do. That’s the only reason i have firefox installed in my mac. Even the latest version of FF, release 11, doesn’t support OSX fullscreen feature.

So… let’s stop pointing out weak spots of this browser… and let’s go to the point!. The following plugins make my life easier. Really… so… i suggest you check them out.

1. Firebug
   Yes… it’s also available for Chrome. But this version has far more functionality than the google counterpart. It’s really useful when you’re developing websites…!
2. Video DownloadHelper
   Suppose you wanna download FLV files from whatever site you’re visiting. This is your friend!… it allows you to capture videos from a huge list of different websites.

I hope you find this helpful!

I’m not really the kind of person that recommends things. Good things stand out by themselves, and if it’s true that they’re good, they actually don’t need sponsorship.

But i feel like this app totally deserves a review. I’ve been using Google Reader for years. Somehow, i got used to its rusty interface. It’s true. A RSS reader doesn’t need to be fancy.. it should just work. But why not make it pretty?

That’s where Capuccino app comes in. It can be found in the Mac Appstore here. It’s free. The UI looks like Mail App for Lion. You get your feeds on the left column… a small column just to its right, and the actual post content to the right. Nice… right?.

Well.. hang in there. The best part of this RSS reader is that it sync’s with Google Reader. So, if you mark something as read in your macbook, it’ll get automatically reflected in your Reader account.

Why i think that this app is way better than NetNewsWire ?. Because it’s simple. It just gets to the point. Enter your credentials and read. Clean UI. Definitely Apple’s style.

Go get it!

I know. Real, old school devs.. use nothing but VI… or it’s enhanced incarnation, VIM. But maybe you don’t have the time to deal with a big learning curve. I don’t wanna memmorize obscure shortcuts, just to be considered ‘old school’.

That’s why i’ve been searching for a good html / javascript / php IDE for OSX. So far… i’ve played with few tools. What i was looking for is an integrated environment that allows you to upload your files… right there. That practically eliminates TextWrangler from the list.

TextWrangler is a free editor… available right there, in the Mac AppStore. It’s a great tool, however, it lacks ftp support!.

TextMate… is yet another (paid) tool. The UI looks nice.. and it just helps you get things done. But i liked CODA so much more, because of their UI, mostly. It has a cool navigation function that allows you go forward and backwards… preview, right there, and even SVN capabilities.

The only downside that CODA has is just a monetary one… it costs about 100 dollars. But i think it’s worth every penny…

I most definitely love Quick Time. It’s easy to use, elegant, and it bears Apple’s logo. But it has several limitations. Yeah, you guessed. There are certain video formats that you cannot open with Quick Time.

So… what happens? . You switch to Windows? just to play your favorite show?. No way.

There are few alternatives you may or may not have heard of. VLC, is a great opensource application, that allows you to open, virtually, any file format. Furthermore, it’s available for Mac, Windows… and linux!. I really love VLC, because it has support for Apple’s Remote, and you can lower the volume, pause, or fast forward / rewind, whatever you’re viewing.

The second option is Perian. Perian adds functionality to QuickTime. It’s a plugin, sort of. It extends the number of formats that Quicktime can reproduce. And yes, it’s also a free package.

Both options are pretty cool. So… now.. it’s really your choice!.