Contents tagged with Tools
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Two great Kickstarter projects ending soon: Durandal JavaScript framework and bitCommander File Manager
I like Kickstarter. It's not a store, it's an easy way to help fund creative projects. You back projects you find exciting at different reward levels, and then follow along with the project's progress. I blogged about the AGENT watch last June and was excited to see them hit 10x their goal - I'm really looking forward to getting my AGENT watch when they ship.
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8 Windows Live Writer tips
Windows Live Writer really is an amazing application. It does one job really, really well. I've been using it on several blogs including this one (running on Community Server, Herding Code podcast (running on Wordpress). I've also used it to manage content in a variety of ways, including posting content to "hidden" blogs which were really content repositories for consumer facing sites.
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[Utility] TeraCopy removes the file copy pain from Windows Vista
Last September, I asked why aren't Windows file copies restartable? It's a huge productivity killer - and very frustrating - when you're copying a large file from a network share or over a VPN and the copy fails when it was 80% complete. At that point, your file copy has just failed. Try again and hope it works this time.
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Inkscape to support XAML export
Today, Adam Kinney gave me the tip off to some cool news: Inkscape is adding XAML export.
Great, what's Inkscape? Glad you asked! Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, like Adobe Illustrator. Rather than drawing in pixels (like you'd do in Photoshop, Paint.NET, etc.), you're drawing in vectors. Inkscape is a little unique in that it uses SVG (scalable vector graphics) as its base format. SVG is a W3C standard, with pretty good support in most non-IE browsers (check out SVG Tetris in Firefox 1.5 or higher). It's unfortunate that IE doesn't (and likely never will) support SVG, since browser support for standards based vector-based graphics and text could do so much for the web.
Although the drawing primitives in XAML are very similar to SVG, up until now there hasn't been a really solid way of developing assets in SVG and moving them to XAML.
Right now, there are only two real ways to do any serious design in XAML:
- Buy Expression Blend and Expression Design ($599)
- Buy Adobe Illustrator ($599) and use the XAML export plugin
Now that Inkscape is picking up XAML export, there's a third way that doesn't start with any buying.
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Ten Tips for a Happy Upgrade to Visual Studio 2008 (Release)
Visual Studio 2008 has been out for over a week. I've upgraded three machines (two Vista, one XP) from Beta 2 to RTM, then upgraded a couple of projects. I've also been watching blog posts and listening in at the Twitter water-cooler to hear about other developers' experiences, problems, and recommendations as they go through the upgrade experience. So, here's my quick guide to a smooth upgrade to Visual Studio 2008.
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CSSVista - Edit your CSS code live on both Internet Explorer and Firefox
CSS editing is extremely frustrating without immediate feedback. Until a few years ago, you didn't really have a choice: you typed some CSS, you refreshed the page, you tried to figure out what was wrong, repeat until you hopefully got it working.
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YOD'M 3D - Multiple Desktops for Windows
One of the coolest things I saw at MIX07 was on a Linux computer. Miguel was showing us something on his laptop when all of a sudden the desktop turned into a cube and started spinning around. Miguel told us it was Compiz, which has been available for X Window System (GNOME, KDE) for over a year now. Sidenote: A lot of people know it by the name of a fork of Compiz named Beryl. It sounds like Beryl is basically Compiz with a neater name and a better website. Anyhow, Beryl has rejoined the Compiz trunk.
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Cropper Plugins 1.1 release
We lost the everything but my local source copies for our CropperPlugins when gypsies stole the CodePlex TS02 server, which slowed us down a bit.
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New Cropper Plugins Release (includes Flickr, OneNote, TinyPic)
Patrick Altman added his plugins to the Cropper Plugins bundle out on CodePlex. His SendToFlickr plugin has become an essential part of my blogging routine - I grab portions of the screen directly to Flickr, then add them to posts with the Flickr4Writer WindowsLiveWriter plugin.
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CropperPlugins on CodePlex
Cropper is my favorite screenshot application because it supports plugins. I've published a few over the years - Capture to AVI and Capture to Animated GIF. My favorite plugin is one that I didn't write - Patrick Altman's Send To Flickr plugin. Now that we've got a Cropper build that works in Vista, I set up a CodePlex project for my plugins and am releasing a few more. It looks like Patrick's gonna join me, and Brian is planning to release his Cropper Plugin documentation there as well.