sugarenia.com

…Well I’d be damned!

I’ve already propagandised this app to anyone close that showed even the remotest interest in the rantings of an app-loving Sugar (ask anyone: I can be pretty weird when I’ve discovered an interesting new app). 9 times out of 10, this app is a MacOS one, so everyone just keeps on ignoring me. This time, Jono, Aza, Atul and Andrew helped me get my revenge.

These guys started a series of apps that intends to make your Windows life easier. They offer Enso Launcher and Enso Words, two apps based on the same framework that can help you never reach for your mouse again. I can only review Enso Launcher, the trial version of which I’ve already installed both at home and work Windows machines and plan to buy when this trial ends.

Enso Launcher is a Windows application similar to Quicksilver for Mac. It’s intuitive and easy to use and has a less steep learning curve than Quicksilver (I know I’ve not even scratched the surface of this app). It involves typing commands that the computer can understand while holding down the Caps Lock key (or any other command key, it’s configurable). It may seem hard at first but believe me, after some times it’s completely intuitive and straightforward and you’ll wonder how you lived without it.

Looking for an app but tired to look for it in all the cascading menus of the dreaded Start menu button? Try it. Just hold down Caps Lock and write “open firefox”. Boom, your favourite browser is there. You don’t even have to remember the exact name: just type some characters that you think are there and Enso will present you with a list of the apps that fit. Use the arrow keys to select the app that you want, leave the Caps Lock and the application of your choice launches.

Apart from its strong launching abilities, Encho Launcher can also help you quickly calculate a sum, uppercase a string of letters, or google some search terms. What’s more is that since it’s based in Python, it’s extendable, and with some help from the Enso guys we’re bound to see some cool stuff floating around in the next months.

What’s great is that these apps have been created by 4 guys with a passion for simplicity and usability. They’ve put together a nice website and an extremely well done demo video (I strongly recommend it, check it just to know what this is all about, it’s very fun to see and the guys are great. Fav moment: “Soon!” by Jono). With the success of the app, they even decreased the price from $39.95 to $19.95, offering even a money refund to all buyers. Now that’s what I call play-it-nice marketing.

Oh come on, what’s not to love about these guys?

All in all, Enso offers an attractive interface, a simple mechanism and a relatively low number of bugs that will be soon squashed. If you’re a Quicksilver fan and you don’t really like Launchy like me, you’ll surely find it interesting.

enso, humanized, enso launcher, enso words

Today, for some reason, Firefox decided to play some nasty tricks on me and my precious bookmarks.

The dreaded “empty bookmarks toolbar” was there when I fired up my FF, in addition to the dreaded “empty bookmarks list”. After the initial panic (OMGBOOKMARKSGONEZOMFDDIEOWSDD*thump*) I decided to check the Application Data Firefox (that probably looks like C:\\Documents & Settings\\Application Data\\Mozilla\\Firefox) folder to see if anything interesting is there.

I found that I had an empty bookmarks.html file (thus the empty bookmark list), but when I checked the bookmarks.bak file I saw that everything was in there. So it was just a matter of renaming the bookmarks.bak to bookmarks.html and replace the original empty file.

Now everything seems to be in order, at least in the order I remember it. My sole problem: Sage. It’s empty, and I must do tricks to fill it up again.

*sigh* Should I give Flock a try?

Firefox, bookmarks, Flock

P.S. Please don’t tell me to save all my bookmarks to one of the numerous social bookmarking service that are out and about. I’m not that kind of gal: I save only the important ones there, articles and things I want to come back to and read when I have the time.

P.S.2 If you’re Greek or somehow you know how to read greek and you’re into the same grave situation as me, check this article from the guys at Wiggler. It may help.

Well, Unix & Apple folks, you won. We lost Bill.

(or we will, sometime in the end of 2008)

The tragedy!

Btw…I miss my Technorati. Where is it today?

Btw2…Check a great tutorial in HTML newsletters by Sitepoint. Eventhough it’d look like ‘back to the table and nonsense code origins’, it will help you build robust newsletters, that will actually work. Blame the e-mail services for the rest.

microsoft, bill gates, technorati, newsletter, HTML e-mail

So I guess that after Hotmail, RSS readers stand-alone applications will be my next nemesis.

I just spent many hours of my precious afternoon to find, download and deploy an acceptable RSS reader. Why not some FF extension, you’ll ask? Because my faithful Sage, after months of flawless execution, just ..died. I don’t know why, but it keeps crashing my Firefox after the first two or three clicks. And since I greatly despise the Wizz RSS reader, other popular option, I decided to take the leap and move to stand-alone applications.

I have downloaded and installed GreatNews recently, but alas, my little brain could not get a clue on how to operate it. I didn’t know how to bulk add feeds, how to import stuff… Maybe I ask for too much, but this application didn’t satisfy me at all.

Next stop : Download.com, let’s browse the RSS readers. Aha! Active Web Reader? Sounds cool. So I’ve downloaded and installed the application. How can I import my FF bookmarks to the new reader? Nifty OPML.

But wait, Firefox does not natively support bookmarks export to OPML. So let’s search the Net, once more. After some light search, I discover an extension that sounds great: OPML support for Firefox. Let’s you import and export your bookmarks using OPML and not the standard .html files that Firefox uses. Download…install…restart Firefox…run extension…voila! .opml file ready.

I open the Import… dialog of Active Web Reader and try to import the brand new .opml file. Alas! There seems to be a problem with the syntax of the file.

(this is the point when I start sighing)

I search for an OPML validator, and I find one almost immediately: validator.opml.org. As the author states clearly, it’s in beta, so it may not work. But I give it a try anyway. Tada! The validator informs me that there is a problem in character #382, ending tag expected.

I fire up jEdit to check it. The file is pretty messy, since there are no newline (\n) characters embedded and all the XML is one huge sentence. I fix the indentation and try to find the source of all evil. I find character #382, but all seems to be OK. I delete the whole line, thinking one less bookmark, I can cope. Re-run the validator and..tada. Exact same problem, exact same character. (the foaming mouth point starts here)

I ignore the validator results and try to feed it in the reader. TADA! “No feeds found in the file”.

*sound of head dropping on desk*

Don’t you hate it when computer things just don’t work out for you at a particular moment? That’s one of those afternoons.

I’m back to my Druid.

RSS reader, Active Web Reader, Sage, Firefox, RSS, feed, GreatNews

The Problem

If you’re like me, you often use Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 to quickly edit the CSS you create (on a break from excellent TopStyle Pro from Bradbury Software).

Dreamweaver offers a good deal of code hints, which can be particularly handy when authoring CSS. One of the attributes I (and by I, I mean everyone) use the most is the “padding” one. Everyone loves paddings, no? Paddings are cutier than margins.

Since the padding attribute does not have specific values that can be applied to it (like in “font-size: small” for example), Dreamweaver automatically displays only “inherit” as its code hint. In addition, I (and by I, I hope everyone) extensively use tabs to indent my code.

So that’s what happens : you write “padding:”, you press Tab, “inherit” is the default option, you press Tab again (because one can never be enough) and voila! Dreamweaver decides that padding: inherit looks better on your CSS document, and writes so.

This has repeatedly led me to a) crying out loud b) ripping my hair off c) making ridiculous finger acrobatics with the arrows and Tab buttons to avoid auto-completion, adding up to the pain of my poor, strained wrist. This had to stop. This had to stop without disabling auto-completion.

The Solution

Thank God for Dreamweaver XML configuration files. A little search around Dreamweaver live docs, and the answer is right there.

Browse to %yourDWfolder%/Configuration/CodeHints folder. There you’ll find a single XML file called CodeHints.xml (inspired, no?). If you’ve never concerned yourself with XML in the past, fear not, we will not go deep. So, open the file in your favourite editor (hey, maybe DW will do - haha). Around line #5363, you’ll find the following lines :

Click on the image to enlarge

See the evasive “inherit” menu option? Good. So now we have two options : either we delete the thing, forget about inherited padding and go to sleep, or we burn with remorse and leave the darn thing, only to add another option and avoid the auto-selection because it’s the only option. I’ll show you how to do both, but it’s really up to you.

Don’t forget to make a copy of your file before you edit it, so you’ll be able to get it back if things go terribly wrong (they won’t, but do it anyway).

1. Delete “inherit” option : For all the “padding” attributes (padding, padding-top, bottom, left and right) delete the line that lies below. Also, because we are XML monsters, since the tag is empty, delete the ending tag and add a forward slash (/) just before the end of the menu line (before the closing >). This should leave your padding lines look like these :
   
   Click on the image to enlarge

2. Add a foo option so that “inherit” is not automatically selected: Copy the line of “inherit”, and paste it just below it, changing label=”inherit” to whatever you like. Like label=”inherit2″ or label=”foo” or label=”George”. Do that for all the padding lines, and your XML file will look like something like this:
   
   Click on the image to enlarge

Save and close the file, restart DW, and never worry about auto-inherited padding anymore.

P.S. If you’ve got another way to deal with this particular problem, I’d be thrilled to know.

dreamweaver, code, CSS, code hints, customization