It's been a while since we've posted anything new up here on the blog. I have a whole list of topics to write about but I thought I might condense a couple of them down into one post. I've recently come across a slew of software that has made my life a lot easier or better. So, without further ado…the list:
Remote Desktop Management
If you're one of the poor souls who doesn't have a new Intel Mac (like me) and you still need to check out site's you're developing on a PC to see how badly Internet Explorer is breaking your HTML/CSS and find yourself jumping back and forth between your computers so you can reload IE over and over to see if your changes are having any effect, this little program will make you're life a lot easier: Remote Desktop Connection (by Microsoft). It allows you to connect to a PC on your local network and control it from your Mac and it's free!
Likewise, if you have another Mac sitting around in your office that it would be handy to be able to work on without having to get up from your desk, try Desktop Transporter. My printer is not network friendly so this allows me to drop a file on my Mac that's connected to the printer and print from my main working computer. Desktop Transporter gives you complete control over the other computer.
Deleting Applications Without Hassles
I recently purchased the MacHeist software bundle which had a number of programs I've been interested in using. AppZapper was a big bonus that I hadn't really paid attention to when I purchased the bundle. I had a demo version of Illustrator CS3 that I hadn't been able to get rid of because it would delete some of my CS2 files along with the CS3 files. It had been sitting on my hard drive taking up space for probably six months (I don't have time to mess with a reinstall of Illustrator). I installed AppZapper and the first thing I did was delete Illustrator CS3. AppZapper gave me a list of files that it would delete on the uninstall and I was able to uncheck the CS2 files from the list. Presto! CS3 was gone and CS2 still worked great.
Screen Flicker After Upgrading to OS X Leopard Fix
After I upgraded my PowerBook G4 to Leopard, I kept getting a strange green flicker on my 30 inch Cinema Display when I maximized or minimized windows or closed programs. I spent some time trying to find some answers on the Mac forums and finally found a post about the problem but no real solutions. In the meantime, the new Leopard Dock was annoying me so I was looking for a way to modify it. I came across DockDoctor and installed it so I could customize my Dock. I was messing around with the settings and discovered that changing the dock from 3d to 2d fixed the screen flicker issue (and gave me an easier to use dock).
Help for Teaching Clients How To Use a CMS
One struggle that I inevitably run into as a web developer is teaching clients how to use the systems I've created. Even though we mainly use WordPress as our CMS of choice, we still run into folks who have some problems remembering how to work their sites even after a couple of training sessions. My new solution to this problem is Snapz Pro X. It allows me to make videos of the steps necessary for a client to post new content to their website so the client can always refer to the video if they can't remember how to do something. I can easily do a video and a voice recording walking them through everything step by step. I had been using the demo version of Snapz Pro X for about a week when I came across the MacHeist software bundle. The minute I saw that Snapz Pro X and CSSEdit were a part of the bundle, I bought it right away.
Other Programs
Here are a couple of other programs I'm looking into:
DDWRT – a better firmware for wireless routers.
OpenVPN – so I can access my files from anywhere
Lighthouse – dynamic port forwarding
MAMP – Apache, MySQL, and PHP for Macs. I'm using this currently since the PHP that comes with OS X Leopard is missing some libraries that I need. Easy set up and install for local development.