Indie Software Roundup
Some nice “indie” software I’ve purchased recently:
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CSSEdit (US $14.99)
I am a huge fan of cute little applications that do one thing and do it well, so CSSEdit was an instant hit with me. Of course, it also helps that I hate editing CSS and have never really liked using the facilities other applications (BBEdit, Dreamweaver, etc.) have for generating it.
CSSEdit’s interface is attractive, very logically organized, and full of thoughtful features that could only have come from a developer accustomed to the drudgery of web design (the “Extract CSS from URL” command and various file and clipboard export options are prime examples). In my opinion, the behemoth web design apps could all learn a thing or five from this little upstart!
(Update: I forgot to tip my hat to MacCentral editor Jim Dalrymple, who turned me on to this app via a post on his new weblog. Thanks Jim!).
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VoodooPad (US $10.00)
Like a lot of people, I like the concept of Wikis (the informality, the automatic linking, the easy collaboration) but hate the web form interface and strange “WikiWord” (smashed together) link names used to edit them. Fortunately, Gus Mueller has given us VoodooPad, an application that provides most of the benefits of Wiki on the desktop (and doesn’t require WikiWords to generate links).
There has been some recent talk in the mainstream press about the possibility of Wikis catching on in business environments, and I really think that if such a thing is possible, it will be applications like VoodooPad that will pave the way. The only thing that VoodooPad is lacking, when compared to a standard Wiki, is the ease of collaboration, but Gus is working on that.
VoodooPad also happens to be the first application I know of that takes advantage of the Note Reader functionality in iPod firmware 2.0, which is also pretty cool.
(Update: I just found out that Kevin Wojniak has incorporated support for Note Reader into the new version of his app, Pod2Go! Pod2Go already parses RSS—now, if Kevin could take things just one step further and allow for arbitrary RSS subscriptions, I’d say he has a killer app on his hands!).
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Suite Modeler (US $25.00)
As I said before, I’ve been trying add AppleScript support to PodWorks but finding the process aggravating due to the weak documentation and strong potential for XML-editing errors. Fortunately, my recent call for help on cocoa-dev was answered by Don Briggs, whose Suite Modeler application can be a lot of help both in generating new AppleScript suites and (more importantly for me) diagnosing problems with existing ones.
In my opinion, Suite Modeler fills a glaring gap in Apple’s Developer Tools. My only request is that I would like to be able to simply drag a header file (perhaps with special comment tags, à la XDoclet) to Suite Modeler and have it automatically generate a script suite. Then Don would truly have created the Interface Builder of the AppleScript world!