Libin Pan

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Coda 1.5 entering limited private beta

One of my favorite editor on Mac is Coda, the most important part for me is in their tagline:

Compare with my another favorite editor, TextMate, every time I open it, I will open three more windows at the same time:

  • Terminal for running application
  • Terminal for mysql
  • Browser for view my pages and documents

Coda has all of these and even more:

Text editor + Transmit + CSS editor + Terminal + Books + More = Whoah.

But, on another side, leaking of version control and no powerful bundles as TextMate keep a lot of Ruby developers out of it.

Things may change:

After a lot of work, we’re finally ready to work with some people to test Coda 1.5 — the next major release of Coda — and prepare it for the general public.

To enter Coda 1.5 limited private beta, go to:
http://www.panic.com/hive/
If registration is still available, the registration link will be in the upper-right corner of the page. (If there’s no link, we’re full.)

So what’s new in Coda 1.5?

  • Better Search and Replace?
  • Source Control Support (SVN or Git)?
  • Custom Books? Add more Ruby Document in it?
  • Better Support for more than one languages mix together in one file?

Stay tuned. :)

* Unless you want to use more than one window. Which is totally cool.

iftop: display bandwidth usage on an interface

How to install?

  • Download and install the Universal Binary from here
  • Or if you already have MacPort installed

sudo port install iftop

How to use it?

  • run “ifconfig -l” or “/Applications/Utilities/Network\ Utility.app” to get your network interface id.

  • In my case is ‘en1′, so I just type into Terminal:

sudo iftop -i en1

Enjoy!
Tales From The Command Line: Where Has My Bandwidth Gone?

Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts on Mac

Top Ten Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts

1. ⌘ + l = focus address bar
2. ⌘ + d = bookmark current page
3. ⌘ + k = focus google search bar
4. ⌘ + f = find
5. ⌘ + g = find next
6. ⌘ + t = new tab
7. ⌘ + w = close current tab
8. ⌘ + shift + t = reopen accidentally closed tab (Best one ever!)
9. crtl + tab = tab through tabs
10. crtl + shift + tab = tab backwards through tabs

Bonus for Delicious Extension users:

⌘ + Shift + . = pulls delicious page if you have delicious firefox extension installed

Mondrianum gets a update!

Mondrianum is one of my favorite color pickers on Mac OS X, as it brings all the goodies from Adobe® kuler, the best color themes sharing community!

The last version of Mondrianum, 1.0b5 had exired on June 14, even it is still a freeware now. So two authors did a quick update and sent an apology out, which I think is great.

You can download the latest version from their site, and this version could be used until Sep. 30, 2008. I believe they will release another before that day.

The most interested part for me is not the post or software itself, it is the comment! One of the visitors left a comment said “I love your product and what you are doing… For the heck of it I slightly edited your statement to make the english flow a little more ‘natively.’”

What a lovely reader! I wish I could have some of them too!

Anyway, before they could update the post, I did a quick diff on them:

So, my dear readers, if you find anything wrong in my posts, please leave a comment. I would love to fix it!

Thanks! :)

  • 0 Comments
  • Filed under: English, Mac, OS X
  • Java SE 6 on Leopard, Officially!

    Half a year after Leopard has been released, we finally get an official Java SE 6 from Apple today!

    Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 adds support for Java SE 6

    Thanks Apple! Anyway…

    As you can see from the description:

    This update does not replace the existing installation of J2SE 5.0 or change the default version of Java.

    So if you want to make Java SE 6 your default version of Java, there is one thing you need to do:

    sudo ln….. OK, no command line this time.

    Here is the right way to do:

    1. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Java/Java\ Preferences.app
    2. Drag “Java SE 6 (64-bit)” to the top of the “Java Application runtime Setting”
    3. Save

    You could change Java Applet Runtime Version to J2SE 6 too, but please make sure you know you really need it.

    Enjoy!

  • 0 Comments
  • Filed under: Apple, English, Java, Mac, OS X
  • RubyGems just updated to version 1.1.0. Couple of the major changes are “Index updates are much faster now” and “only updates from a latest index by default”. So, time to update.

    As Leopard already has Ruby and RubyGems preinstalled (Thanks, Apple!). So the default update way:

    $ sudo gem update –system

    will NOT work well.

    Here is what you should do on Leopard 10.5.2:

    $ sudo gem install rubygems-update
    $ sudo update_rubygems

    Enjoy!

  • 2 Comments
  • Filed under: Apple, Mac, OS X, Ruby
  • Fix New MacBook Pro AirPort problem

    I’ve got my Shinning super cool new MacBook Pro two weeks ago. Everything works fine until recently after some automatic updates.

    The MacBook Pro I have is 2.4GHz 15′ version. I am so loving it! But the AirPort problem is really annonying!

    For some reason, at the end of the day, pretty much every day, MacBook Pro wireless connection just suddenly stop working with my AirPort Extreme. But at the same time my old MacBook works just fine. Turn MacBook Pro AirPort off and on, and try to connect to my wireless network again and again. Nothing helps. Rebooting AirPort Extreme again and again just helps a little. Some logs on console:

    airportd Error: Apple80211Associated() failed -6

    _emUIServer Error: airport MIG failed = -6 ((null) port = 45523

    Did a google search and found a lot of people do have the same problem and so far there is no good solution yet. Some of them said go back to 10.5.1 actually fix the problem, and this is a suggestion from Apple Genius. Which I think is a solution but it is for away from good. I don’t really want to downgrade as I already installed too much into my Leopard and spent amount of time to make it works smothly as what my MacBook does.

    This is really pain!

    Spend some more time these two days and did some more tests. Finally have good progress. But couple of the tests is really risky, such as, Leopard told me no AirPort Card installed after rebooting. :D

    Anyway, here is the simplest but working solution:

    1. Find your original “MacBook Pro Mac OS X Install Disc 1″, please make sure it is yours, not somebody else’s!
    2. copy /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext from “Mac OS X Install Disc 1” overwrite to your Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext
    3. After couple of seconds, Leopard will pick up your changes and your MacBook Pro will link back to wireless network again without any problem!

    Yes, you don’t even need a reboot! :)

    If you couldn’t find your original install disc 1, you still can use someone’s if them have the same model as your MacBook Pro. But make sure do a backup for IO80211Family.kext.

    Enjoy!

    Maxwell Rocatanski suggested Pacifist for whom aren’t as comfortable using the terminal. Thanks MaxWell!

  • 10 Comments
  • Filed under: Apple, Mac, OS X
  • Democamp Toronto, Flex and Air, Haxies

    1. Democamp Toronto 17

    Democamp Toronto 17 is absolutely another great event again! More than 300 people have attended.

    Only want to highlight two here:

    • AskItOnline is a online survey system created by Kaitlyn MacLachlan totally on her own. It is a pretty beautiful and useful application. Kaitlyn wins the best demo prize.
    • Ignite presentation “The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks” from Tom Purves could be the best ignite presentation in the history of Democamp Toronto so far. Well done, Tom!

    Joey Devilla had a very detail post on the schedules, please check it out here. I believe he will post some more tonight soon.

    Check out the official site of Democamp Toronto too: http://democamp.info/

    2. Adobe Flex 3.0 and Air 1.0

    Finally, its On - Flex 3.0 and Adobe AIR 1.0 Are Here!

    3. Haxies updated! It works on Leopard!

    Haxies - Love it or hate it!

    In computing, a Haxie is a term which was coined by developer Unsanity to describe their products. It is a blend of “hack” and “Mac OS X”. Unsanity uses it to refer to “hacks” that are specifically designed for use with its Application Enhancer (APE) software. These are typically small interface and functionality tweaks to the system or existing applications by injecting code into programs as they load.

    Until yesterday, all the haxies which come from Unsanity or other companies didn’t work on Leopard, all of them. It is a real pain for somebody who loves these little, cute and useful hack tools, such as me.

    After several months hard work, the development team in Unsanity finally bring them back to Leopard today: Enthusiastic Trepidation!

    Here are some of them what I use all the time:

    WindowShade X. It minimizes your windows on desktop, or shades them.

    FontCard. It shows a WYSIWYG font menu for your applications.

    FruitMenu. It helps you easily access everything from your menu.

    Menu Master. It helps you to create shortcut keys for any menu items of any your applications.

    Big day today, by all means!

  • 2 Comments
  • Filed under: Apple, English, Mac, Toronto
  • Workaround on Aperture 2.0 Crashes

    I am using iPhoto to manage all my pictures as I don’t think I am a photographer or a shutterbug in any way. And iPhoto does have all the features what I really need. So I didn’t pay any attention on Aperture before.

    One of my friend was coming to me and asked a question about Aperture 2.0 today. He said he was trying it in another day, but it crashed all the time when he want to export pictures out, even click “Export” preference tab would crash too.

    This is really unusual for a software which is came from Apple. :)

    Before ask google, I did a quick look on his log file. Interestingly, before crashing there was one line said something about color pickers. So I opened his ~/Library/ColorPickers and found he has installed pretty much every color pickers what I have mentioned in another post - “Choose your right colors on Mac is not easy - My Mac Serial 1“. :D

    Simply moving color pickers out really solved the Aperture crashing problem. So it is the issue resource then.

    Well, we still need some color pickers, right? I put every color pickers back one by one and found “RCWebColorPicker” is the one who breaks Aperture this time.

    Anyway, here are some more information:

  • 0 Comments
  • Filed under: Apple, English, Mac, OS X
  • I was thinking about my blogging plan today. At the end I decided to start from talking more Mac things at the beginning as it is easier for me now. So, here is a rough list:

    Then I found an interesting post about Color Pickers was just coming from TUAW.com today. So I “grab” it to here.

    A color toolbox

    Title is a little confuse. But the content is very valuable and make sure check what people said in comments.

    Anyway, I’m not a graphic designer, I couldn’t give any professional opinions. So I just list some of them which I’ve tried and kept.

    • Mondrianum

      Lithoglyph’s Mondrianum is a powerful plug-in that enables Mac applications to leverage the resources of the Adobe® kuler community

    • Paint’s Picker

      Painter’s Picker puts an interactive color wheel in almost every Mac OS X application. It adds the ability to choose related colors, such as complementary colors, analogous colors, etc. directly within the color picker. It also adds more precise controls for choosing saturation, hue angle, and brightness. Painter’s Picker is the simplest way to perform complex color selection in almost any Mac OS X application.

    • Shades

      The Shades Color Picker adds an additional pane to the standard Apple Color Picker. It is designed to help you choose colors by showing you grids of related colors. Shades uses Hue - Saturation - Brightness (HSB) color coordinates which many people find more intuitive than Red - Green - Blue (RGB) color coordinates. To use Shades, you choose a center color, a step size and a color coordinate (one of H, S or B) to hold constant. Shades then draws a grid of related colors.

    • RCWebColorPicker

      RCWebColorPicker is a simple color picker for Mac OS X 10.0 or higher that displays the red, green, and blue values in HTML-friendly hexadecimal values. It also allows a user to restrict the sliders to only allow the 216 web-safe colors.

    • Color Picker Pro, this is a stand alone application, it’s not a color picker.

      Color Picker Pro is a small drag and drop savvy application that aids in capturing hex, RGB and HSL color values for use in CSS and HTML production. Pull colors out of application windows, icons, your desktop or anything else that you happen to see on your display. Copy or drag and drop color values to your favorite text based CSS or HTML editing application. Store your frequently used colors, undo and redo color changes or make your colors web-safe at the press of a button. Tailor the format of your hex, RGB or HSL color values to your personal specifications.

    • Tangerine, it is a color management tool.

      Tangerine color management software provides graphic designers and creative professionals with a unique color workflow experience. Now you can have the color you want, when you want it, how you want it. Tangerine offers new and enhanced color support to OS X.

    • Color Schemer Studio

      ColorSchemer Studio is a professional color matching application for anyone from hobbyists to advanced professionals.

      Work with a dynamic visual color wheel, instantly explore harmony relationships and even let ColorSchemer Studio intelligently suggest color schemes for you!

    • Find more by searching MacUpdate

  • 3 Comments
  • Filed under: English, Mac, OS X, Software
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