all good for linux today

Those that know of my move to Ubuntu linux will probably be all to aware of my grumbling and ranting that there was still no Air environment for Linux... today I popped open my feed reader and saw, to my great delight, that adobe have today, released Adobe Air for Linux Alpha....not only that, they've also released the next alpha release (3) of Flex Builder for Linux too....

no more ranting from me on this subject....I am now happy.

0 comments - Posted by mark at 8:43 AM - Categories: Linux | Flex | Tools

IETester

Just noticed this on one of the feeds that keeps me updated these days and thought it was worth a post given my previous rant on IE8 killing my standalone IE6 install.

Now i've not installed this yet and probably wont until its in a more advanced state of development but it certainly looks promising.

ladies and gentlemen....test all the IE browsers you need from within IE!  

0 comments - Posted by mark at 10:02 AM - Categories: Tools

handy things found in cfeclipse

I thought I'd start a post relating to useful shortcuts etc I've discovered using cfeclipse for my development work. I don't know how much of this will actually be cfeclipse specific or a feature of other plugins I have installed...or even a feature of eclipse itself...I'm not interested in writing a manual here, I just wanted to post some handy stuff that maybe other people will find useful too. The first handy thing I found was the "Link with editor" button in the Navigator tab...this was something that dreamweaver did automatically and that I'd missed when opting for an eclipse environment....the bonus is I can now choose to switch it on or off...choice is king! next up is a couple of shortcuts i've discovered...the first is to add a HTML comment, select the html you want to comment and press ctrl+shift+c....job done!...and for a coldfusion comment press ctrl+shift+m ...can't be easier than that can it? will add more as I discover them, feel free to join in though.

0 comments - Posted by mark at 11:26 AM - Categories: Eclipse | Coldfusion | Tools

Adobe Thermo

Seems to have popped up on labs here: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo

I'll reserve judgement until I can at least play with a beta but its certainly an interesting idea, particularly on the "skinning" front...forgive my apparent lack of enthusiasm, but i've not been the biggest fan of wysiwyg over my years in web design/development, there have been a lot of promises made and a lot of shoddy code generated as a result, which I've often ended up having to deal with...but thats a rant for another day ;)

I'm going to keep an open mind and wait and see...

0 comments - Posted by mark at 8:04 AM - Categories: Flex | Tools

Install Safari on Windows

yep, you heard me correctly...you can now install safari on windows!

Apple launched the public beta of Safari 3 yesterday with support for windows so adding to my arsenal of browsers to test stuff on, I am now, at this very minute, installing safari on my windows machine.

follow along if you like

go here and click "download beta now", select "Safari for Windows XP or Vista" and download the setup file.

Double click on the installer and go throught the various options then sit and watch the progress bar for a bit then press finish and that appears to be it.

gonna reboot now so i'll check back in with any bugs/oddness I find.

0 comments - Posted by mark at 9:36 AM - Categories: Tools

run ie6 and ie7 together

As we know that people will not stop running ie6 in favour of ie7 for some time to come...so, as a developer, how do you get around the problem of having to test for both browsers when writing sites?

Easy...you simply upgrade to ie7(if you haven't already) and then download the standalone ie6 from the evolt site and run it from where ever you choose...job done!

0 comments - Posted by mark at 7:29 PM - Categories: Tools

handy firefox add ons

pretty much every developer I have asked uses firefox as their "working" browser, why? basically because the fantastic open source nature of it has allowed people to build extra functionality for it to help them out in their day to day jobs.

I consider firefox to be part of my development environment as do many other developers and I realised I'd never mentioned it here as part of my "tools" category.

so..here is a list of firefox add ons I would recommend to the developers amoungst you..just to be clear, I use these myself every day at work.

web developer toolbar - every developer should have this!

colorZilla - invaluable for just grabbing a colour off a web page, such a little add on for such a massive amount of time saved!

HTML validator - adds a whole new dimension to "view source"

the experienced users amoungst you will know that this is by no means an extensive list, a quick flick through the "add ons" pages of the firefox website currently shows 2266 add ons...obviously some restraint is needed in choosing which ones to install!

edit

mike from east coast interactive has pointed out a super useful extension I didn't know about in the shape of firebug ...now THIS is super handy!

0 comments - Posted by mark at 11:30 PM - Categories: Tools