ianhaigh.com

You can never have too many text editors. The codebunnies at Macrabbit – who created the glorious CSSEdit – have released a public beta of Espresso. They’ve recycled the live preview code from CSSEdit, meaning you can see your edits as you make them, even on a database driven site. Instant gratification! More competition for the Textmates of this world – especially as it’s completely extensible.

Espresso info and beta. Requires OS X 10.5 (which is, like, a bummer, ‘cause at work I’m only on 10.4).

Crisp and clear monospace font designed for coding and terminal use. Very easy on the eyes — and it’s free.

Default Folder secret settings
Originally uploaded by haighy

Amazing. Default Folder X has “secret settings” that allow you to jump to the recently used folders in the Finder. By turning on the two settings pictured, you can use option-up and option-down to instantly jump between recently used folders (the OpenInFrontFinderWindow isn’t strictly necessary for this, but prevents a new window from opening every time).

You can reach this dialog by option-clicking “Settings…” in the Default Folder system preference pane. Read more about the settings on the St Clair software blog here.

Ease and Wizz, my adaptation of Flash easing equations for use with Adobe After Effects, broke with the release of After Effects CS4. However, thanks to Adobe’s free trials, I’ve managed to get it working again.

You can grab Ease and Wizz 1.12 here.

I found this interesting, and I don’t even have an iPhone: 10 useful iPhone tips & tricks.

Graphically debug HTTP services with HTTP Client (Leopard only).

[Via Hivelogic - Hivelogic Combined Feed.]

Always fascinating: Google Zeitgeist 2008.

I’m delighted to see that “large hadron collider” made it on to New Zealand’s top ten fastest rising queries (but only just).

If anything appears broken around here, it’s likely because I’ve just switched from TextPattern to Movable Type. (Mainly because I wanted to post with MarsEdit.)

Super quick way to get create an icns file (Mac icon resource for programmers) from a Finder icon.

When you’re used to using programs like InDesign and being able to position things to within 0.3 nanometers, it’s frustrating to then use Microsoft Word and lay out pages with all the elegance of a drugged wildebeest in high heels.

So. I wrote these little scripts in Visual Basic — I know, weird, huh? — and they let you set the position of the left and top edges of the graphic you’ve got selected.

Warning: you have to be geeky to even get these to work, let alone to use them, but they might help out someone tasked with the unhappy task of making a Word document look good.

vb_layout_scripts_for_word.zip

Favourites include getPosition, setLeft, and setTop.