User Profile for Toadling

User Name Toadling

Member Since 2002-02-20

Total number of Feedback Posts: 30

Total number of comments: 4

Last 10 Feedback Posts by Toadling [ Search for All ]

LaunchBar 4.3.7 (Mac OS X)

LaunchBar and Spotlight Are Not Competitors

I don't agree with thebroz's criticisms. Sure, Spotlight is nice. It's come a really long way and certainly plays an important role in Mac OS X. I use it all the time. But if you think it obsoletes LaunchBar, you're missing the point and probably haven't fully explored what LaunchBar can do. First off, Spotlight and LaunchBar are not competitors, they're complimentary. Despite some overlap, they're really designed to do very different things. While Spotlight excels at full-content searches of your entire hard drive, LaunchBar excels at adaptable, name-based, abbreviation searches and manipulation of your most frequently-used items. As for not finding the built-in scripts, have you looked in LaunchBar's Configuration window? They're all listed in there. I've been using LaunchBar for a couple years now and love its stability, reliability, unobtrusiveness, and versatility. It's a key component in my workflow (along with Spotlight). [alert admin]

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Monday, April 07 2008 @ 10:19 AM PDT

LaunchBar 4.3.4 (Mac OS X)

Keeps Getting Better

I've used LaunchBar for a couple years now, taking a few breaks along the way to try out the competition. But I always come back to LaunchBar. Others may have even more features, but LaunchBar does nearly as much and with a much greater degree of elegance and simplicity. It's proven to be a rock-solid, reliable companion on my MacBook Pro. I love it. [alert admin]

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Friday, January 18 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST

OmniFocus 1.0 (Mac OS X)

Great App

I've been using OmniFocus for the past month or two in its late alpha and beta stages. It's always been very stable and reliable. So far, I've been very happy with the 1.0 release as well. I've tried Things and took a close look at Midnight Inbox and iGTD2, but I think OmniFocus is the best of the bunch in terms of capability and usability. It allows me to view my projects and actions in the most intuitive way. Documentation is sparse but adequate and support from the Omni Group is stellar. The price may seem a bit steep compared to some other GTD apps, but OmniFocus is worth it in my mind. Plus, Omni Group provides some nice discounts. I actually ended up getting OmniFocus for less than most competitors are charging. And OmniFocus is arguably a better app. [alert admin]

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Tuesday, January 08 2008 @ 03:05 PM PST

BBEdit 8.7 (Mac OS X)

BBEdit is still the best Mac text editor

TextMate has a very vocal following. I was convinced to try TextMate on a project for a few months last year and I grew to like it. I even bought a license. But after extensive comparisons, I ultimately returned to BBEdit and concluded that it is still the better tool. I haven't seriously used TextMate since. First of all, BBEdit follows long-standing Mac paradigms: text dragged onto BBEdit's icon opens in a new window, events trigger on mouse up rather than mouse down, renamed open files are automatically updated, text selection feels more natural, undo is chunked rather than performed on each individual character, etc. Second, BBEdit provides several features that are amazingly absent in TextMate: split window editing, tabbed editing OUTSIDE of a project, multi-file search and replace OUTSIDE of a project, ability to open very large files (>250MB) and function reliably, spell checking by right-clicking on a word, single click selection of multiple lines, ability to assign a key combination to just about anything, complete AppleScript support (so the application itself can be scripted not just the text in a document), GUI file comparison showing character-level differences, synchronized scrolling between multiple windows, optional display of all non-printing characters, optional display of tab stops, search for the current selection with a single key press, double-click to balance, named markers (a.k.a. bookmarks), ability to jump to previous insertion points, Text Factories, etc. And third, BBEdit's implementation of key features is often superior to TextMate's: code folding triggers on mouse up rather than mouse down, opening and closing fold markers are easier to distinguish, BBEdit allows multiple arbitrary folds on the SAME line (useful for very long lines of code), folded blocks can be selected/copied/pasted/dragged, clippings auto-completion is easier to use and doesn't require remembering obscure strings coupled with a tab to complete, BBEdit's tabbed-editing makes it easier to work with more open documents (easily handles 40 or more) and with longer filenames because "tabs" are displayed vertically rather than horizontally, tabbed documents can be dragged between multiple windows, ALL unused features can be turned off (resulting in an interface I personally find less cluttered and easier to navigate), BBEdit's File Groups makes it easier to work with multiple projects simultaneously because they are displayed in separate windows, more fully-featured grep search/replace, visual feedback when looping on a quick search, line numbers are NOT part of the text view and don't scroll out of view when scrolling horizontally, a better organized and more fully-featured function menu, BBAutoComplete (a free BBEdit plug-in) allows arbitrary word completion based on text in the current document or in all open documents or from the system's spelling dictionary, etc. Of course, TextMate has a few nice features: more control over syntax coloring and style, excellent scope system, slightly nicer column editing. But I can easily live without those considering all the advantages of BBEdit. The bottom line is TextMate is a nice editor and it's less expensive than BBEdit, but it's also significantly less capable. If I used TextMate, I'd still need BBEdit to have all the capabilities I want. However, I could easily live entirely in BBEdit and never even miss TextMate. If you make your living writing code or working with text, and you want the best tool available on the Mac platform, the choice is clear: BBEdit. [alert admin]

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Monday, August 06 2007 @ 11:45 AM PDT