I’m sorry for the abundance of Apple posts lately, people, but hey, I’m like a little kid. Playing with the brand new toy and discovering new things every day. And a little kid does what little kids do: making adults dizzy with their questions and little discoveries.
Another of my “discoveries” (not really, it’s widely spread and used by most MacOS users) is Quicksilver. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a “unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data”. In plain words, it’s a mini-search engine, that indexes your machine data (all of it, music, pictures, applications, contacts, you name it), making search in MacOS as easy as 1-2-3.
I really cannot explain any better. You have to use it to understand. Think Spotlight on steroids. Think Windows search on illegal drugs, untraceable meds and grog all at the same time.
At first, i though Quicksilver was just a fancy hype. I kept wondering why many Mac users swear by it, insisting that it played an important role in their everyday computer life.
…and that lasted till I tried to find an application (namely Download Accelerator) when I was working on my PC.
Tabs after tabs of applications. Cryptic company names behind which the real applications lie. You’ve all had the feeling, admit it. Finding stuff in Windows XP is more than a drag, it’s a hideously difficult task.
Life with Quicksilver: Hit Alt-Space. Type the first two or three letters of the file you’re looking for. You’re there.
And it’s not just that, lots of special functions lie in this nifty little thing. Alas, I don’t use them all, I’m no Mac power user – yet.
macOSX, apple, mac, quicksilver
For days now I explore the Mac applications world and I’m really glad that I found some gems (more on my favourite Mac applications in another blog post – isn’t a “fav Mac apps” post like, obligatory?).
One of the most shining gems that I discovered today is Scrivener. Scrivener is one of my dream apps, really. Essentially, it’s a writing helper, that can help you gather material and write stuff, from novels to blog posts. I can’t describe in words my adoration for this project… and yes, it’s freeware.
Let me explain to you what I wanted… I was looking for a writing application, that could hold any kind of material I’d toss into (pics, URLs, favorably whole web pages) and help me organize my PC magazine life. This dream app should have characters / word count capabilities (I always exceed my word limits), folder hierarchy, ability to hold much stuff and a nice and intuitive interface that would “bind” them all.
Scrivener in all of its glory
Scrivener offers me all that, and more. An overview of the features I love most:
- Full screen edit mode, plus 4 really helpful view modes: Binder, Compose, Draft and Storyboard.
- Simple versioning system through “snapshots”.
- Ability to hold anything in its material folders: pics, video, text, pdf files, even imported web pages.
- Every page has its outline card and notes page.
- Annotations and split-screen editing mode.
- Templates & tagging functionality, for the Web 2.0 afficionados.
- Split & merge documents.
- Full text editing tools, including link, lists and table insertion.
- Spotlight-like, speedy search.
- .scriv files are packages: you can always view your files stored in standard formats, even if the .scriv file is not recoverable.
…and it’s not all. I strongly recommend you to download this app and go through the tutorial, you’ll understand the capabilities of Scrivener better.
This blog post has been written in Scrivener, as you’ve already assumed. I decided to keep an archive of my blog posts in it and it goes well so far. The most dreamy of additions would be a “Export to blog…” functionality, but hey, I don’t complain.
Scrivener is a real gem, I assure you. If your writing requires much research and material gathering and draft revisions and you want a place that you’d store them in, you’ve come to the right place.
scrivener, literature and latte, writing
I edit CSS, you edit CSS, we all edit CSS. Sometimes, every piece of the puzzle just falls into place, and some others, all hell breaks loose and your precious code does everything to strip you from your sanity.
Just to share, here are my 5 most common CSS mistakes:
International Rules
Sometimes I do everything at the same time. Responding to blog comments and CSS editing is only two of them. Most of the times I forget to switch language from greek to english, and tada! I end up with rules like:
#?????? { ????-????? 12??? }
Unless you use the ISO 8859-7 encoding in yout browser, that’s supposed to be:
#header { font-size: 12px; }
So thaaaaat’s why my rule won’t work, hm…
Typos
Typos must be the first and most common reason why some of my rules just don’t work. Some are easy to spot, some are really pesky: imagine my frustration when I was trying to locate the error in this rule:
.parthers { color: #F00; }
Of course, “parthers” was supposed to be “partners”. But just scanning the rule won’t work, you have to look really close to identify the error.
Multiple selectors woes
My code is girl code, so I like neat stuff. When I can sum up two or three rules in one, I will certainly do. For example, with these rules:
.section h1 { background-color: #FFF; }
.section h4 { background-color: #FFF; }
…I will make this one:
.section h1, h4 { background-color: #FFF; }
…right? Wrong, of course. My mind is quicker than my fingers, so I often make this mistake. Just for reference, the right rule is:
.section h1, .section h4 { background-color: #FFF; }
. and # and :, oh my!
I do that all the time, messing my classes with my ids. So, instead of applying
#header { width: 800px; }
to my
…I apply this:
.header { width: 800px; }
…which isn’t what I want. Another common error of mine.
Forgetting to link
No, really. I do that all the time. Craft the first lines of the CSS file, fire up the browser, refresh the page… No styles, why? Well, it’s an easy error to fix, but I still always fall for it.
Do you make similar mistakes when editing CSS? What are your most common mistakes when coding stuff?
CSS, edit, code, errors, bugs
