Laziness is the mother of all inventions (VNC Windows to Mac OS X)

Today has been an eventful day in front of the computer. I need to finish up a lot of stuff before going UX-LX since I'll be gone for a week (if the Icelanders permit).

However at home I use my girlfriends iMac as a stereo. Back when I had a MacBook as a work laptop I would just have a Apple Remote Desktop session running and change the music remotely. Now I have a standard issue Dell Latitude and Apple Remote Desktop is a thing of the past.

I started out using TightVNC but it was not a pleasant experience since the connection kept dropping and there was no support for scaling which is a necessity when you are trying to view the contents of a 24-inch monitor on a 15-incher. So I moved to RealVNC and now I had scaling but the connection kept dropping just the same. After some googling I found out that a lot of people have problems with the built in VNC server that comes with Apple Remote Desktop.

So my new solution is to use Putty to restart the damn thing whenever it goes down with:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -activate -agent -restart -console

It's a workaround but at least it works and I don't have to move.

Tomcat Manager for Mac OS X

Finally some recognition :)

Tomcat Manager on Softpedia

Again with the Mac OS X spell checker...

As an expat in the Netherlands you constantly have to battle with getting the definite articles "het" (neuter) and "de" (masculine, feminine and plural) right. They are easily the Scylla and Charybdis of the Dutch language and just like our definite articles in Swedish ("den" and "det") there is no good rule to help you know when to use which.

During my Dutch course at Vrije Universiteit I got thought the rule that if in doubt use "de" since it is the most frequently used of the two.

I recently wrote a presentation in Dutch and I really wanted to get the Dutch text on the slides correct. I thought that selecting the user "Check Grammar" in the Mac OS X Spell checker would help me but unfortunately is seemed to do very little.

So I did a little test to see if the check box had any effect on the following sentences:

Dutch
De paard loopt snel. (wrong)
Het paard loopt snel. (correct)

English
The horse fast runs. (wrong)
The horse runs fast. (correct)

Swedish
Hästen fort springer. (wrong)
Hästen springer fort. (correct)

According to the spell checker all of the above sentences are correct. I have no clue what is meant by "Check Grammar" according to Apple but it certainly does not involve word order or articles. Thanks be to the almighty for online dictionaries and Wordfinder.

And shame on the UI team at apple who put the checkbox there without checking if the programmers actually had implemented the underlying functionality.

... of course Microsoft Word would be the other extreme warning about old fashioned sentence constructions left and right as soon as there is a deviation from the subject verb object word order.

Tomcat Manager for Mac OS X 0.9 released

Download and enjoy, it is bundled and works like a standard Mac OS X app. The UI is not so nice right now but we have major changes planned. The core functionality is working fine however. We have also considered porting it to various Linux flavours just for fun (would require little change).

Download

Tomcat Manager for Mac OS X released to the public

Tomat Manager for Mac OS X is a minimalistic application for starting and stopping Tomcat on (you guessed it) Mac OS X I started developing it internally at Knowledge Values for business people who needed to use Tomcat for demoing purposes. Instead of typing obscure commands in the terminal the application would allow them to start and stop the server with the click of a button. Knowledge Values was nice enough to release the source on Source Forge. My colleague Leonard van Driel has joined me and we intend to continue developing the application but hopefully we will get some help from the nice people in the open source community.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/tomcatmanager/

I'll post a runnable version of the application shortly which doesn't require subversion and Eclipse. The shebang is released under GPL 3.0.

Blog publishing applications on Mac OS X: part IV - MarsEdit

MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software is the last application I'll review in my series on blog publishing applications on Mac OS X. It has a cool icon with a rocketship and the planet Mars and is priced at 29.95 $. The version used in this test is 2.3.2.


How MarsEdit works

When MarsEdit is launched for the first time you are greeted to a wizard pattern dialogue that takes you through the process of setting up a blog. You can either create a new blog or supply information about an existing blog. After passwords and the title of the blog have been set you are all set to start blogging.

The main view in MarsEdit is a three panel selector which lists your blogs on the left, your posts in the top left panel and the selected blog post in the bottom right panel. Common controls such as "New Post", "Delete Post", "Edit Post" and "Media" are conveniently placed in the toolbar on top.

Creating blog posts can only be done in html but there is a preview mode to help you on the way. The toolbar on top has links to html tags in case you forget or just don't fancy typing. On the side is a panel with the categories and at it's bottom you can add new ones.

Images are added through a the Media Manager. MarsEdit stores your pictures on Flickr so you'll need an account there as well. There is a serious limitation in that images cannot be resized from within the program. Instead that has to be done either in the html img tag or in an other program.

Editing html can be a bore and in case you aren't happy with the html tags that come predefined you can always add new ones through the Markup Macros dialogue

My impressions of MarsEdit

MarsEdit is a competent program with some serious drawbacks. I like the clear and logical layout and naming and the stylish icons. It supports pinging sites when you update your blog and the preview mode in combination with the html editing works very well for me. However not everyone has knowledge of html and this will be a big drawback for many people. I would have preferred to have the option to edit in wysiwyg mode as well.

The fact that media can only be added using Flickr is another drawback but not as big as the fact that there is no built in support for resizing images.

Blogger's built in semi wysiwyg html interpreter considers breaks in the html codes the same as actual break tags and I would love to have an option to strip out the breaks before publishing. This is not a problem with MarsEdit however but something that the whizkids at Blogger came up with.

I would not discourage anyone with experience in coding web pages from buying MarsEdit. Just make sure that you know your html before you open your wallet.

Blog publishing applications on Mac OS X: part III - ecto

ecto is next on the list (it is spelled with a small 'e'). The Application is priced at 19.95 $ and is available over the net, but then again, which application isn't now a days.

How ecto works

Upon launch you are greeted with a wizard style setup dialogue. You begin with entering where you host your blog and then the account details. So far, so good.

You are then greeted with a view of your blog in the not quite logically named "Viewer" window (if you access it through the menu). On top of the window there is a handy toolbar that allows you to create new, publish and delete posts among other things. The panel on the left contains a list of your blogs and the panel on the right is a typical two-panel selector with posts in the top part and a window for viewing selected post at the bottom.

New posts are created by clicking the new button in the tool bar or selecting "new Draft" from the File menu. Editing posts and creating new posts is done in a new window that has the categories to the left, a toolbar with frequently used items on top and a panel for doing the actual blogging to the right. In the panel for blog editing there is a field for labelling the post and another toolbar with formatting options as well as the panel for writing. Once the editing is done the blog can be published with the not quite logically placed "Publish" in the Drafts menu or through the toolbar.

Editing can be done in semi WYSIWYG mode or in HTML mode. The HTML mode is accessible in the editor directly and through the Format menu under the confusingly named "Make HTML Text" option. The mode can be switched back to WYSIWYG by clicking the consistent yet confusingly named "Make Rich Text" in the same menu or directly through the editors toolbar.

My impressions of ecto

My first impression of ecto was that it had a nice clean interface with most features accessible from the tool bars. Writing blog entries was from the outset logical and consistent with my mental model, but then it got less clear.

You work with Drafts in ecto (logical since they haven't been posted yet). But posting is done in the Draft menu. This is logical in one way but different from the other applications I've used. In a way it gives the impression that I am publishing a draft and not a final version. It gets even weirder when I open a published post and I can publish that as a draft. Since many blog systems has a separate options to upload drafts I was unsure what the option was meant to do before I tried it. There is such an option "Save as Draft" but it's located under the file menu and works locally.

There is a import media feature and a insert image feature that probably could have been combined into one. The import media feature works as the media browsers in Apple products, whereas the Insert image feature works by letting you pick an image from your hard drive and set additional options for it such as class, border, size,etc.

Once the image is uploaded you cannot move if. For if you do it won't be uploaded too Flickr where ecto prefers to store it's images. During my writing of this review I tried over and over again to have the images line up the way I wanted them to but ultimately it was a lost cause.

When you publish a post there is an activity viewer that shows the progress but there is no indication in the main "Viewer" window of what is going on. The first time I tried to publish a post I didn't know if the program was publishing so I clicked the "Publish" button again only to get a dialogue about how it was already busy publishing. Bringing out the activity viewer lets you see what's going on but an indicator in the main window would have been helpful.

There is a preview mode that let's you view your posts before publishing but it is hidden in the menus instead of being accessible in the toolbar.

Overall I can't help but feel that ecto can be a great program and it has many clever features such as the insert image dialogue, it's interface for custom html tags, a plugin interface and the built in html checker. It's a shame that it is buggy and inconsistent to the point were just uploading a post becomes too much work.

This post was NOT created in ecto.

Blog publishing applications on Mac OS X: part II - Blogo

Blogo is a blog publishing application developed by Brain Juice. It's weights in at a hefty 72,6 megabytes but since issues with storage is a thing of the past it's really not a problem. The price is 25$ and the application can be purchased online. I used Blogo version 1.2.8.

How Blogo works

When starting up Blogo you are greeted to a welcome screen where you enter your blog account information. Nice, since it gives you a clear starting point and removes the need to start fumbling with menus on application launch.

Then you are greeted with a quick set of instructions on how to get started with the application.

The interface for posting a new blog post presents you with controls for setting title, date, body and categories of the post. There is some shortcuts for common markup such as bold and italics. There are controls for uploading images and resizing and cropping them. From the outset the default is WYSIWYG mode, however there is an option to edit the post in HTML mode instead. There is no support for more advanced html elements such as tables.

The main window has two tabs one for new blog posts and one for editing blog posts. Editing posts is pretty straight forward. You are greeted with the same interface as when writing new posts plus a drawer to the side of the application where you can select the post you which to edit.

My impressions of Blogo
Generally Blogo is a pleasure to use even though it has some serious flaws. The wizard style setup used to guide the user is welcome. Brain juice has made a conscious decision not to use the standard Mac OS X widgets and have instead opted for a look that sets Blogo apart from the run-of-the-mill applications out there. Some purists might say complain that this is not really adhering to the Apple HIG but I think it is as much about taste and creating a user experience that sets the application apart. In my experience the UI works well even though I find that the custom buttons are to clunky and take up too much screen real estate. All buttons have tool tips but there are no labels for some buttons such as "Preview", "Save as Draft" and "Change Date".

Probably due too the fact that Blogo used custom UI widgets I found it hard to understand when I started using the application. But after a brief running-in period, what I initially found as awkward chunkiness begins to take on a certain charm. Generally speaking the screen flow matches my workflow and except for the strange icon on the button for saving drafts and the button for editing post date, most of the UI controls doesn't require any effort to understand. However, only the window is resizable as a whole and it is not possible to expand the blog post field separately but it's a minor grievance.

Most editors out there that work in html has a WYSIWYG mode as well as a HTML mode. Blogo has a pure html mode that is somewhat senile since it does not keep breaks that you manually insert into the html code when you manually move back and forth between HTML and WYSIWYG mode. Inserting tabs to make your code readable also doesn't work as they are forgotten as well. The WYSIWYG mode is not really a pure WYSIWYG mode since images are shown as placeholders and not actual images which is somewhat confusing from the outset. The are instead managed from two panel below the blog post body, one to control uploading images and one for cropping and resizing.

The preview mode is a nice feature where you can see what the blog post will look like when it's posted. You can set the css so that it matches your blog's.

This post has of course been made with Blogo.

Blog publishing applications on Mac OS X: part I

Now that I decided to take blogging more seriously I've quickly found the web based interface for posting somewhat limited. This blog is hosted on Blogger which I think is a great free service and it saves me the hassle of setting up WordPress.

What prompted me to start investigating blog publishing applications is the blog composer in Blogger. All is fine as long as you use the WYSIWYG mode but once you want to do anything more demanding and switch to html the problems start to build up. The really big problem is that the dumb html editor interprets line breaks as break tags. That means that any tabs you insert to help you structure your html code will affect the layout. So basically forget doing cool stuff using using css floats and tables. Uploading images is also a hassle since the don't appear where you have your cursor but instead on top of the page. My last complaint is that the WYSIWYG mode frequently freaks out and displays everything in massive letters.

Therefore I have taken it upon myself to review the three main blog publishing applications on Mac OS X: Blogo, MarsEdit and ecto.

Stay tuned!

Why can't I switch spelling language in Mac OS X directly?

One thing that really has been a thorn in my side for a long time is the way the spell checker works in Mac OS X.

Spelling wise I have no complaints but rather the fact that I have to go through multiple steps in order to change the spelling language is really annoying. I frequently have to change between Dutch, English and Swedish and every time I have to repeat the same process:

- Right click to get the context menu

- Select "Spelling and Grammar".

Who doesn't like hierarchical menus?

- Select "Show Spelling and Grammar".

Dialogue with more menus, hurrah!

- Select the language I want to use in the Spelling and Grammar dialogue.

- Close the window

Way, way to many steps for something that simple.

I have been scouring the internet for a solution for some time but I have found nothing of value yet. I even looked through the API of NSSpellChecker and Status Bars to see if I could write a program for it. A partial victory was realising that I could use Command-Shift-: to get directly to the dialogue but it's a far way from efficient.

The closest I've come to a solution is the article Switching spelling languages on CoCoa Crumbs. However the solution didn't work on my machine and it is not very elegant because it just automates the process, the dialogues still flash by.

I mean what is the point of the Spelling and Grammar dialogue anyway (I only use it to switch language)? Why not have the languages available in the context menu directly?

Or perhaps I should just learn to spell correctly in the first place.

Please Apple just google "switch spelling mac os x" and realise that there are many people out there who would see it as a massive improvement if we were able to change spelling language directly.