Try using either Safari or the WebKit nightly build (www.webkit.org). Both are much faster than Firefox, I've found, on the Mac. Firefox isn't nearly as fast on the Mac as it is on Windows, sadly. Another really fast option for Mac OS X is the latest Opera, which is worth a try if you haven't tried the 9.x builds. I've never noticed any sluggishness on the Blacktree wiki site. Also, try using Google for Quicksilver info. There are more guys out there with tips and tricks for QS than you can shake a stick at... mostly motivated by the poor Blacktree documentation (although it's much better today than it was a year ago).
Leland
It would never occur to me to use Ecto to re-edit an article. Ecto is great for the first draft, but then after that I just edit in my web browser. If you use the nightly WebKit builds, they've implemented the CSS3 spec for resizing divs and textareas, so you can make the editing window as big as you want. Most WYSIWYG tools are good only for the first round, and if you do custom coding afterwards, you're in for trouble if you try to go back to the WYSIWYG tool. Of course, it could also be that you need to adjust Ecto's settings a bit.
If you know of a better blog editing tool than Ecto for the Mac, I'm all ears. MarsEdit comes close, but it's missing a lot of Ecto's bells and whistles, especially for supporting images, videos, and so on, that you want to include. Ecto makes this really fast and easy, since you can set up custom templates for different kinds of images, including custom CSS, javascript, and the like. MarsEdit, unfortunately, is totally bare-bones where that's concerned.
First, there are far too many criticial/essential Mac OS X apps to narrow down to 20. This is a silly, arbitrary number because people seem to like lists, and have very short attention spans. Any list of 20 is easily criticized because it leaves out too many goodies. Go beyond critical/essential to the merely excellent/marvelous, and the list will quickly quadruple, at least.
Second, this list reflects the opinion of someone who tried the first app he liked in a given category and hasn't researched the alternatives. There are too many selections here that are leaders in sales in their category but are way behind in functionality and value. Welch may be an expert or whatever (I have no idea what distinguished background he comes from), and he gets some useful tools right, but he's obviously not nearly expert enough to be getting this kind of attention for his list of 20. Some examples of his cockeyed perspective:
Snapz Pro X. This is every "expert"'s favorite, because it's been around so long and was leader for many years. But it's over-priced for what it does, and the way it works is outdated. Snapz Pro X hasn't been updated in years, because the developer is too busy laughing at how much money he's making without doing anything. Especially in the realm of movie making, Snapz is way behind tools like iShowU, which can be had for a fraction of the cost and are much faster and easier to use. For plain old screenshots, I've found the $10 Constrictor to be a satisfactory replacement. Constrictor isn't perfect, but it has a few very cool bells & whistles that Snapz doesn't, which make the problem of "cleaning up your desktop" and "replacing your background picture" a thing of the past.
BBEdit. BBEdit is a great program, no question about it. However, it's also bloated and outdated from a user interface perspective, and for programmers there are newer alternatives that might work better and don't rely on the older Carbon framework (no that's not the only thing I don't like about BBEdit). For example, TextMate is what all the younger Mac programmers are using, and there's a good reason for it. TextMate is a programmer's dream come true, including HTML tools. I've been using the open-source Smultron for over a year and really like the way it's developing. It's not perfect, but for zero bucks it's a pretty great option. Smultron, by the way, is one of the brainchildren of Peter Borg, who developed Lingon, one of the actually cool choices on Welch's list. Putting BBEdit on the list is such a cliche, and certainly doesn't belong in a list of essentials. Heck, even the lowly TextEdit that comes with Mac OS X has cool features that are unknown to most Mac users. For example, it's a terrific HTML editor and has options for controlling the way HTML is output that make it much better for ensuring gunk-free code than any of the WYSIWYG tools. Yet you can format your HTML in TextEdit while in RTF mode (as long as you don't try to include images). Great for text tables, lists, etc.
Transmit. Yawn. Everybody loves Transmit... I'm a license holder, and I used to love Transmit, too. Until I tried Yummy FTP, that is. Yummy FTP has so many great features that Transmit lacks, and most important it's a speed demon. I got so tired of Transmit's poky behavior that I went around trying all the Mac FTP clients out there. When I got to Yummy FTP, I couldn't believe how great it was. Yummy can get files to the server while Transmit is still thinking about what you asked it to do.:-) Don't fall for Transmit without trying Yummy FTP. Transmit is very good software... heck, it's Mac software, right?... but Yummy is the one to get if you do a lot of moving files around. Like Transmit, it can integrate with the Finder and Dock, so moving 20 files is just a drag-and-drop operation in the Finder if you want it to be. But wait! I don't have time to go into all of Yummy's virtues. I wrote them all up in a
Hey, clearly the country sees no disincentive to being an IT fiefdom of Microsoft, but I certainly won't buy anything made solely with Microsoft software. I haven't bought Microsoft products in years as a personal boycott of the company. If everything imported from South Korea has been built by the Microsoft Monopoly machine, it simply won't be coming into my household. Obviously, one little guy boycotting Korean products isn't going to make a difference. But the same is true of my Microsoft boycott, yet I continue to hope that one day more of my peers will realize that we have a government-sponsored monopoly running our computers, and all the money for the monopoly is going to that monopoly company. Is this right? Can anybody still say, "free enterprise" with a straight face? IT, computers, and software now touch everything we touch, and it's just not right to let it be controlled by a single private entity that has no accountability.
Oops... this really got me started. But I need to stop before I spend the next hour here.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Try using either Safari or the WebKit nightly build (www.webkit.org). Both are much faster than Firefox, I've found, on the Mac. Firefox isn't nearly as fast on the Mac as it is on Windows, sadly. Another really fast option for Mac OS X is the latest Opera, which is worth a try if you haven't tried the 9.x builds. I've never noticed any sluggishness on the Blacktree wiki site. Also, try using Google for Quicksilver info. There are more guys out there with tips and tricks for QS than you can shake a stick at... mostly motivated by the poor Blacktree documentation (although it's much better today than it was a year ago). Leland
It would never occur to me to use Ecto to re-edit an article. Ecto is great for the first draft, but then after that I just edit in my web browser. If you use the nightly WebKit builds, they've implemented the CSS3 spec for resizing divs and textareas, so you can make the editing window as big as you want. Most WYSIWYG tools are good only for the first round, and if you do custom coding afterwards, you're in for trouble if you try to go back to the WYSIWYG tool. Of course, it could also be that you need to adjust Ecto's settings a bit.
If you know of a better blog editing tool than Ecto for the Mac, I'm all ears. MarsEdit comes close, but it's missing a lot of Ecto's bells and whistles, especially for supporting images, videos, and so on, that you want to include. Ecto makes this really fast and easy, since you can set up custom templates for different kinds of images, including custom CSS, javascript, and the like. MarsEdit, unfortunately, is totally bare-bones where that's concerned.
Hey, clearly the country sees no disincentive to being an IT fiefdom of Microsoft, but I certainly won't buy anything made solely with Microsoft software. I haven't bought Microsoft products in years as a personal boycott of the company. If everything imported from South Korea has been built by the Microsoft Monopoly machine, it simply won't be coming into my household. Obviously, one little guy boycotting Korean products isn't going to make a difference. But the same is true of my Microsoft boycott, yet I continue to hope that one day more of my peers will realize that we have a government-sponsored monopoly running our computers, and all the money for the monopoly is going to that monopoly company. Is this right? Can anybody still say, "free enterprise" with a straight face? IT, computers, and software now touch everything we touch, and it's just not right to let it be controlled by a single private entity that has no accountability.
Oops... this really got me started. But I need to stop before I spend the next hour here. :-)