Panic’s Coda - What an IDE Should Be!

Being a developer, I spend a great deal of my time immersed in an “integrated development environment” or IDE as they are know in the trade. Whether it’s Microsoft’s Visual Studio, Apple’s Xcode or Panic’s Coda, a well designed development environment makes a huge difference in the quantity and quality of the code being produced.

Panic’s Coda for OS X is quickly becoming my favorite web development IDE. The folks at Panic refer to Coda as “one window web development”, but it’s really a completely self-contained IDE for creating “standards” based web applications.

Coda contains seven main “features” for creating great web sites!

• Sites - Which control your local and remote web sites.
• Files - An integrated file browser powered by Panic’s Transmit FTP client.
• Editor - A great HTML & XHTML text editor.
• Preview - A powerful, WebKit-based browser
• CSS - Text or visual CSS editing.
• Terminal - A built in terminal.
• Books - HTML, CSS, Javascript & PHP reference books.

All of this in a package costing only $79 (USD), a fraction of what all these features would cost separately and a fraction of what Microsoft’s Visual Studio costs. All in all, the folks at Panic have come up with a great integrated development environment at a very (very) reasonable price.

Pretty cool for a bunch of folks in Portland, Oregon.

Like My New Logo?

Do you like my new icon and logo? 

Wonder how it was made and by whom?

I’m a developer, not a designer and I know I don’t have the artistic talent to create a great logo or icon. Thanks to the Internet and Google, I came across Michael Flarup of PixelResort, a young and extremely talented university student from Copenhagen, Denmark whom created this new icon for me in little over one week. He’s posted a great article about how he did it in his blog!

If you’re interested in icon design you should give this a read and check out all the cool icons on his site!

Currently listening to: John Gracin’s “We Weren’t Crazy”

More Thoughts on HTML5, CSS3 & WebKit Advances!

I thought I’d take this opportunity to explain a little bit more about why I believe the new “features” in WebKit are so important to the future of web development and design.

First off, let me set the record straight and tell you that I am an unqualified supporter of Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server and the .NET Framework. I’m also a Microsoft MVP for Commerce Server and an avid C#, ASP.NET and BizTalk developer. In my day job, I use these Microsoft technologies to create business-to-business e-commerce applications for the company that I work for.

But at night and on the weekends, I moonlight as a freelance web developer using mostly non-Microsoft technologies such as Ajax, PHP & mySQL. In both areas I strive to create “standards” based web sites and applications and my overriding goal is always to “create the best user experience requiring the least bandwidth” and this is where WebKit comes in.

When you think about how ASP.NET developers create great user experiences today, two things come to mind; ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight. Both technologies allow developers to create really great user experiences on the web but only at the cost of bandwidth (download time, initial or otherwise). The same rule holds true for Flash and any Ajax library such as Prototype, script.aculo.us or jQuery (all of which are excellent Javascript frameworks).

Now think about the potential to create great user experiences using nothing more than the new HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities found in the latest WebKit builds. Gradients, shadows and rounded-corners without images, transforms and animation without Javascript, client-side data that goes way beyond cookies and support for highly compressible vector graphics (SVG). All in a fully “standards” based HTML/XHTML/CSS framework that (hopefully) renders the same in all browsers, both desktop and mobile.

Now we’re talking about actually having the tools to “create the best possible user experience requiring the least bandwidth”. This may be a pipe dream but it looks like the WebKit folks and I are drinking the same Kool-Aid at the moment!

Currently listening to: “Still Feels Good” by Rascal Flatts

Why Safari May Become the Browser of Choice!

If you’re a web designer, web developer or just someone that keeps up with the latest “Web 2.0″ technologies, you know that a lot of progress is being made by ALL the major browsers to become “standards compliant”. You also know that the Web Standards Project has created a number of “Acid” tests that help all the browser developers ensure that their browser works as “expected”. If you’re an experienced web designer or developer, you probably use several different browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, Camino, Safari, etc.) to test your sites against everyday.

What you may not be aware of is some of the very “advanced” features Safari (WebKit actually) has in the works which may well change the way we think about developing Web 2.0 applications.

1. Web Fonts
2. Client-Side Database Storage
3. CSS3 Transforms
4. CSS3 Animation
5. SVG Support
6. CSS Gradients
7. CSS Box Shadow
8. And Many, Many More…

If you look at any one of these new features individually, they are very cool! If you look at integrating these new features together, you begin to see the potential for replacing today’s Javascript (Ajax) “eye-candy” with native browser rendering support!

And why you ask, is WebKit (and Safari) pushing these advanced features out the door so quickly?

Safari on iPhone!

Starts you thinking, doesn’t it!

Currently listening to: Eric Merienthal’s “Just Around the Corner”