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Jekyll: Sites Made Simple:

Jekyll: Sites Made Simple

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For the full text of this article go here

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Just this last August, I decided to relaunch my web site; I chose to give WordPress the flick and try out Jekyll, a Ruby-based static site generator.

Jekyll at its core is a text transformation engine.

The concept behind the system is this: you give it text written in your favorite markup language, be that Markdown, Textile, or just plain HTML, and it churns that through a layout or series of layout files.

Throughout that process you can tweak how you want the site URLs to look, what data gets displayed on the layout, and more.

This is all done through strictly editing files, and the web interface is the final product.

Jekyll is a blog-aware, static site generator.

It uses a set of template or layout files, the associated CSS files, and plain text files for the posts.

The posts can use the Markdown format or another similar markup language.

There's no content management system, no database, and no specific language support on the web server required---your site is a collection of plain old static HTML files.

Switching back to static markup may at first seem like a reversion to the late 1990s.

Yet Jekyll is a simple and elegant system that mimics the characteristics of a dynamic site---drawing content from a database and inserting it into templates via a CMS---without all that complexity.

As a firm believer in the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), I always try to find the right tool for the job, and Jekyll is a simple solution to a common problem: "I want my own customized blog."

It's also flexible enough that it can easily be used for other tasks.

For example, GitHub uses it to drive GitHub Pages.

This article describes using Jekyll to build a web site: from downloading it, setting up a development environment, and hacking up template files.

I'll conclude with a word on maintaining updates between your development instance (for example, new blog entries) and synchronizing them to your web server.

Note that I've written this piece from a designer's perspective.

Although I had a number of technical hurdles to hop over, Jekyll remains rather simple; for instance, using Jekyll's template system and Liquid tags is easier than hacking a design as a WordPress theme.

Never fear, I intend this article to be as designer-friendly as possible.

Setting up a Jekyll blog is relatively smooth-going and boils down to a few straightforward steps.

Jekyll is written in Ruby, so you'll need to install it.

It's as simple as downloading the latest Ruby version for your platform and following the installation instructions.

The Ruby installation also includes the RubyGems packaging system, and allows you to download and install other Ruby libraries and programs.

If you're using Windows, choose the one-click installer, and make sure you tick the Enable RubyGems option when running the installer.

We'll be fetching Jekyll from the Gemcutter RubyGem hosting repository, but we first need to install the Gemcutter program.

The tumble command will simply make the RubyGems installer query the Gemcutter repository first, when downloading RubyGem packages.

This ensures that Jekyll is downloaded from the Gemcutter repository.

If you're on Windows you'll be entering the commands at the Windows command prompt (Start> Run...

Jekyll, like all good software, is modular and does one task very well, relying on other programs and libraries for additional functionality---after all, why reinvent the wheel?

This modularity also gives us choice: you can pick and choose from a variety of slightly different tools that perform similar tasks to extend Jekyll, depending on your preferences.

For example, if you'd rather write your blog posts in Textile instead of Markdown, you can.

For me, however, the default (Markdown) does the trick, and Gem only needs a small number of other dependencies, which are fetched automatically.

For a full list of available gems that extend Jekyll, see the list within the install instructions for Jekyll on GitHub.

Now with Jekyll installed let us set up the file system structure.

First, create a new directory---placing it within your user directory is fine.

That done we can execute Jekyll by issuing the jekyll command at the command prompt.

You'll notice that Jekyll creates a directory _site, which now holds an index.html file.

It's typically only a few lines long and allows you to avoid having to specify optional flags every time you run Jekyll from the command line; just stick them into _config.yml and Jekyll will use them every time it's run.

For more info on Jekyll configuration, see the configuration page on the Jekyll wiki.

When Jekyll is run, your posts are injected into the layouts using the Liquid tag: {{content}}.

Posts are plain text files that are named with the format $YEAR-$MONTH-$DATE-$TITLE.$FORMAT.

We'll create two templates for us to pick from: base.html, which is our base layout and post.html, which extends the base layout and is used for posts.

It was designed to allow designers and front-end developers to tweak their shopping interface without affecting the security on the server they're built on.

Apart from the specific directories and files mentioned above, all other directories and files are handled by Jekyll as expected and will be included in the generated site build in _sites/ when Jekyll is run.

Thus, a css/ and js/ directory and its contents, a favicon, and whatever else will all be added to the site build.

Jekyll comes with a simple web server that allows you to pop over to http://localhost:4000/ and view your site.

Even better, if you're actively updating and making changes, a useful flag to append to the jekyll command is --auto.

You can also add auto: true to the configuration file so that you can avoid having to type it in every time.

If you want to track your Jekyll files in a version control system, it's recommended to make an exception for the _site directory.

That's because the files in the _site directory are bound to change a lot, particularly during the development phase.

Deploying your generated static site is just a matter of copying the output in _site to your web server.

You could use FTP to upload your files, but there are a number of automated methods that make life easier, particularly when you just want to upload the new changes since the last upload.

My preferred current method is to use rsync, a little UNIX utility written by Canberra locals Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.

rsync synchronizes data from one location to another, and in doing so only sends changes rather than full files where possible.

There are a range of other, more complex automated methods, but they're beyond the scope of this article.

As a static site generator without any dynamic extensions means Jekyll has no comment support.

I've personally decided to avoid comments; besides avoiding having to deal with them at all (code-wise, styling-wise, spam-wise---yay!), the best feedback I've ever received were face-to-face or directly via email.

I also echo some of the sentiments raised by Alex Payne in his article, Why I Don't Allow Comments, and More on Everything Buckets in regards to fostering a higher quality discussion.

Despite blog CMSs as powerful as WordPress, Movable Type, and so on, I hope you can now see why it's worth reverting to a simplistic and rudimentary system like Jekyll: you use the right tool for the job.

Jekyll is a breeze to pick up; its learning curve is certainly less steep than say theme design or hacking for WordPress, in my experience.

With GitHub Pages using Jekyll, it's common to see many Jekyll users sharing their Jekyll blog sources openly via GitHub.

There's a listing of Jekyll-generated sites in the documentation, along with links to their respective GitHub repositories when available.

These are great to browse through for some knowledge on how other Jekyll users have built their web sites.

Learning curves aside, if you're after a simplistic blog tool construction-wise that does not require multiple users or a fully featured web publishing interface, then Jekyll could easily do the trick.

(Be assured, the sophistication of the final output for Jekyll can generate beautiful multi-layout blogs akin to WordPress.)

Ultimately, I changed to Jekyll because WordPress seemed like an overkill and I was up for learning a new platform.

I hope this article serves to help you if you're experiencing a similar predicament.

Feature image
by macaroni1945.

Google launches Chrome for Mac, Linux - with a caveat | Topics | Macworld

Google launches Chrome for Mac, Linux - with a caveat

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Source: Macworld

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by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Editor's Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visit Computerworld's Macintosh Knowledge Center.

Google late Thursday released developer-only versions of its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux, making good on a nine-month-old promise that it would eventually add those editions to the Windows version that debuted last September.

The Mac and Linux versions are rough and unstable, warned Google. "We have early developer channel versions of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux, but whatever you do, please DON'T DOWNLOAD THEM!" said Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg, a pair of Chrome product managers, in an entry to a Google blog. "Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software."

The new versions lack important features and functionality, Smith and Grunberg warned, including compatibility with Adobe's Flash Player plug-in and printing. A current bug list catalogs other missing pieces, ranging from a working bookmark manager -- users can bookmark pages, but there's no way to retrieve a bookmark -- to a memory leak.

Google launched Chrome Sept. 2, 2008, as a Windows-only browser, but began taking names for a notification list for Mac users that same day, and for Linux users shortly after.

Chrome accounted for approximately 1.8 percent of those used last month, according to the most recent data from Web metric company Net Applications, a surge of 27 percent from the month before.

On Windows, Chrome comes in three flavors: Google's developer, beta and stable versions, in ascending order of fit and finish. Google releases more developer preview builds than betas, which in turn accumulate until the company's satisfied with their progress enough to roll out another stable build.

"[We're] trying to get Google Chrome on these platforms stable enough for a beta release as soon as possible!" added Smith and Grunberg.

Although the two program managers acknowledged that the developer preview crashes, Computerworld ran the Mac browser for several hours without a hitch.

Spice Up Your Blog - Choose From Thousands Of Gadgets

Image by ZedZap(Nick) via Flickr

Choose from thousands of gadgets

Watch this video on how to spice up your blog -
Choose from thousands of gadgets to add to your blog.

Google to provide update on Chrome OS

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by Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service
Source: macworld.com

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Google is getting ready to shed a little more light on its Chrome OS this week.

The search giant has arranged an event for journalists Thursday at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, just days after rumors circulated that the code might soon be released.

When Google announced it was building its own Linux-based operating system, it said it would release the open-source code at the end of this year. It has said Chrome will be designed initially for netbooks, with the first devices hitting the market in the second half of 2010.

Branching out into the operating-system market could ultimately help Google find new revenue streams, since it is almost entirely reliant on search advertising.

The Chrome OS could also pose a threat to Microsoft, which worked hard to gain its share of the netbook market, which was initially dominated by Linux.

Google has said it is building Chrome because the market needs an OS built specifically for the Web. Most of Google’s non-search activities are Web-based applications, such as Google Docs, Gmail and Maps.

Image by B Tal via Flickr

Design your Web site using CSS content boxes

Design-your-Web-site-using-CSS-content-boxes

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Coloured content boxes are a great technique for creating visually-pleasing CSS layouts and content. All it takes is assigning a background colour to a

element or setting an image as the background if you want a sleeker look.

To begin create a <div> element and assign it an ID.


<div id='contentBox'></div>



We then need to define the styles for the contentBox ID. Let's start by setting the font type, size and colour.

#contentBox
{
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 80%;
color:# 2E2E2E;
}


Next we are going to add some filler text to the

.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas feugiat neque sit amet ante tincidunt hendrerit. Vestibulum eleifend erat et enim. Cras nisi arcu, malesuada malesuada, accumsan non, venenatis eget, purus. Mauris pulvinar tincidunt turpis. Aliquam enim. Vestibulum tristique risus eget elit. Fusce urna arcu, dictum sit amet, luctus non, bibendum eu, leo. Vestibulum at diam. Nunc pretium. Maecenas dapibus laoreet leo. Mauris pretium quam. Nulla ultrices. Donec iaculis laoreet diam. Suspendisse a felis quis mauris porttitor mattis. Duis aliquet lacinia odio.

So far we have some text in a

. Let's make this look more like a content box, by adding a background colour and a border around it. Add the code below to #contentBox.


background-color:#FFFF99;
border-style: solid;
border-width:2px;
border-color:#FF9933;


Set the width and height attributes of the box, like this:


width:20%;
height:35%;

We're going to add some padding around the text to make it look better.

padding:1%;

Our text fits nicely within the box at the moment, but if we added another paragraph it would flow over the box. To prevent this we need to add a scrollbar.

overflow: scroll;

Alternatively, you can set the overflow property to auto to display a scrollbar only when needed.

We're going to position the box 10 pixels from the start of the page:


position:absolute;
left:10px;


You can position the box anywhere on the page where you see fit, by adjusting the position attribute.

And tying it all in:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas feugiat neque sit amet ante tincidunt hendrerit. Vestibulum eleifend erat et enim. Cras nisi arcu, malesuada malesuada, accumsan non, venenatis eget, purus. Mauris pulvinar tincidunt turpis. Aliquam enim. Vestibulum tristique risus eget elit. Fusce urna arcu, dictum sit amet, luctus non, bibendum eu, leo. Vestibulum at diam. Nunc pretium. Maecenas dapibus laoreet leo. Mauris pretium quam. Nulla ultrices. Donec iaculis laoreet diam. Suspendisse a felis quis mauris porttitor mattis. Duis aliquet lacinia odio.

Nullam cursus erat id magna. Sed eget lectus. Phasellus dignissim. In purus. Duis scelerisque. Sed suscipit risus nec velit. Sed et neque. Maecenas eget nunc. Ut turpis tortor, varius ut, dapibus quis, lobortis
et, erat. Aliquam vitae odio vitae tellus ultricies adipiscing. In ut diam.

Free Search Term Suggestion Tool by KeywordDiscovery.com

Free Search Term Suggestion Tool by KeywordDiscovery.com

Here is a great tool for keyword research and discovery:

www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Free Search Term Suggestion Tool by KeywordDiscovery.com

reBlog from Brightmark: Steps to Freedom

Image via Wikipedia

I found this fascinating quote today:

Your property investing success starts with your attitude to your investments. Look at each piece of real-estate you buy as a long term investment & it will turn into a new stream of income and work for you all the time making you wealthy.Brightmark, Steps to Freedom, Nov 2009

You should read the whole article.

Must Have Resources for the Web Developer's Toolbox

Fuel Your Creativity - Must Have Resources for the Web Developer's Toolbox

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Must Have Resources for the Web Developer's Toolbox

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If you are a web designer, especially if you are fairly new, you search around for the best and easiest tools to do the tasks you want to do. Here is a summary of this really helpful article.

Summary:

In every creative field, there are certain tools that one always keeps handy in order to get the job done.

As developers (who also design) the toolbox inventory needs to be broad to encompass all the necessary areas to keep you moving and productive.

Below is a list of the resources that we felt should be included in any developer's toolbox.

We have broken it down into different categories to help you keep your tools organized a little bit better.

We hope that the list proves useful.

GIMP is a close second whose price you can't beat (free), especially for web designers who don't need all of the features of Photoshop.

Graybit is an online accessibility testing tool designed to visually convert a full-color web page into a grayscale rendition for the purpose of visually testing the pageâ¬(TM)s perceived contrast.

It returns a set of hue, saturation and tint/shade variations of your color, and suggests color schemets based on your color's complementary color, split complementary colors, and other variations.

FavIcon Generator allows you to easily create a favicon from an image.

The Grid System is an ever-growing resource where graphic designers can learn about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids.

The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels.

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development.

The jQuery Visual Cheat Sheet is an useful and practical 6 page reference to jQuery 1.3 for web designers and developers containing the full jQuery API reference with detailed descriptions and some sample code.

jQuery Plugins contains plugins, extensions and tutorials developed by jQuery contributors for the jQuery JavaScript Library.

Code Beautifier is a free online CSS formatter, optimiser, and parser.

Notepad++ is an open source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.

TextWrangler is a powerful and richly featured tool for composing, modifying, and transforming text stored in plain-text files for Mac.

The WordPress Codex is the place to go if you have any WordPress related questions.

The Spoon Browser Sandbox allows you to run any browser directly from the web.

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

Web Developer's Tools for Firefox is a collection of firefox plugins to speed up the development process.

WampServer is a Windows web development environment which allows you to create web applications with Apache, PHP and the MySQL database.

CSS Tricks Code Snippets is a large repository of useful code snippets in the areas of HTML, CSS, JavaScript (raw), JavaScript (jQuery), PHP, and WordPress.

Angies list includes 26 items in all make sure you check it out at: Must Have Resources for the Web Developer's Toolbox

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Angie is a freelance web and graphic designer who brings her love of community to the online design collective as co-editor of Fuel Your Creativity.

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Google Sitemap Generator, Editor + Keyword Analyzer - XML Sitemaps Online

For those of you building websites and trying to get listed here is something that may be useful:

Google Sitemap Generator, Editor + Keyword Analyzer - XML Sitemaps Online

From Amazon.com: Life After Film School: Seth McFarlane

Image via Wikipedia

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Source: Amazon.com: Life After Film School: Seth McFarlane

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'Life After Film School: Seth McFarlane'
Select Results from All Departments

* Video On Demand (2)

1. Product Details

Family Guy Season 8 by Fox (Video On Demand - Sep 9, 2009)

Watch It Now: $0.00 per episode

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Video On Demand: See all 2 items

2. Product Details

American Dad Season 5 by Fox (Video On Demand - Sep 9, 2009)

Watch It Now: $0.00 per episode

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See more fields in Finder Spotlight search results

Image via Wikipedia

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Source: macworld.com

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As detailed in my article on Snow Leopard’s old and new annoyances, my main complaint is that I can’t add the Size column to my Finder Spotlight search results, as I could in OS X 10.4. This feature broke in 10.5, and more than three years later, I’m still waiting for it to be fixed.

Now, thanks to Mac OS X Hints reader vl_tone, my wait is over. Please note that the following is an experimental solution there may be very good reasons Apple hasn’t enabled this fix in the OS as of yet. If you follow this hint, there’s a chance you may cause yourself some grief in the future—I don’t think your system will stop functioning, but maybe the Finder will start behaving oddly. My persona experience, though, is that I’ve had no issues with this tip under either 10.6 or the just-released 10.6.1 update. That’s not a guarantee, of course, so proceed at your own risk.

Implementing this tip requires that you’ve installed the Xcode Developer Tools, as the hint requires editing a preferences file with Property List Editor. Alternatively, you can use PlistEdit Pro, TextWrangler, or any other text editor that can open binary preference files. These instructions, however, assume you’re using one of the propery list editors, as they make things much simpler.

Before you start editing, though, you need to make certain that the Finder’s preferences file has a certain section. To do that, run a Spotlight search in the Finder for whatever—it doesn’t matter what you search on. When you see the results of your search, switch to list view mode (Command-2), then press Command-J (View -> Show View Options), and then choose any one of the additional available columns—Date Created, for instance. You can then close the View Options dialog.

In your editor of choice, select File -> Open, navigate to your user’s Library -> Preferences folder, then open com.apple.finder.plist. (You may want to make a backup first, or insure that you have one on your Time Machine disk.)When the file opens, click the triangle next to Root to open all the preferences values, if they’re not already visible. Search for SearchViewSettings (in Property List Editor, just start typing that word to search on the fly), and then click the disclosure triangle for that section.

The Size column is shown here Inside of SearchViewSettings, you want to then drill down into ListViewSettings -> columns.

Here you’ll see a list of the various Finder columns.Click the disclosure triangle next to a column name of interest—size, for instance, and you’ll see various options, as seen in the image at right. To make this column show up in the Finder’s Spotlight results view, check the box on the visible row.

Repeat this with any other columns you’d like to see in your search results. When done, save the file.The last step is to restart the Finder, which can be done in any number of ways. Hold Option and then click-and-hold on the Finder icon in the Dock, for instance, and you’ll see a Relaunch item in the pop-up menu; this is probably the easiest way to do it.

After the Finder restarts, run a Spotlight search, and enjoy your newly-added columns in the search result listing.

These columns can be used just as they can in the “normal” Finder, so click on the Size column to sort the results by size. (Note that you won’t be able to toggle these columns off and on in the View Options dialog; they’ll always be on.)As noted up front, there may be a good reason why Apple hasn’t fixed this problem as of yet, so proceed at your own risk.

Personally, though, I’ve taken the risk and I’m living on the edge, thrilled with the ability to again (finally!) be able to sort my Spotlight search results by size.

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Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard means business

Image by calu777 via Flickr

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Source: iPodDailyNews

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Tim Beyers reports for The Motley Fool, 'The iEmpire launched its latest rebellion with the release of Snow Leopard on Friday, the newest edition of Mac OS X, which: At $29, costs about what you'd pay for a fast-food dinner for a family of four; Frees up to 7 gigabytes space on your Mac by eliminating digital clutter; Offers built-in support for Microsoft's Exchange network services, making Macs a whole lot more business-friendly.'

MacDailyNews Take: Anyone with even a cursory understanding of Apple, Microsoft, and Star Wars would never use the term 'iEmpire' to describe Apple or their 'latest rebellion.' For the sake of the value of continuing on, let's pretend that Beyers has never seen Star Wars.

Beyers continues, 'Technology buyers may finally be coming back. To get them to come back to the Mac, Apple needs an OS that does better business. Snow Leopard is that OS... The Mac is back, growling and hungry for market share.

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Apple iPhone boosts profit

Image via CrunchBase

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Source: City AM

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APPLE’S profits jumped by 15 per cent in its third quarter, the firm said yesterday, thanks to sales of its iPhone, which topped five million in the period.

The firm, which recently welcomed chief executive Steve Jobs back to work following liver transplant surgery, said profits rose to $1.23bn (£747m), or $1.35 a share, in its third quarter, compared to $1.07bn, or $1.19 a share a year ago. Revenues increased 12 per cent to $8.33bn.

Sales of its blockbuster smartphone, the iPhone, increased more than sevenfold to 5.2m while the company sold four per cent more Mac computers. But sales of its iPod MP3 player were down seven per cent in the period.

Meanwhile, Yahoo reported an eight per cent increase in its second quarter profit, up to $141m from $131m during the same period last year.

The internet firm beat Wall Street expectations but analysts pointed out that lower revenues had been offset by some $150m in cost-cutting measures implemented by new chief executive Carol Bartz.

Yahoo’s second quarter revenue was down 13 per cent to $1.6bn after it continued to struggle to sell search advertising.

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Bloggers: Mac OS X Snow Leopard could arrive in two weeks | Mac OS X

Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

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Source: Macworld

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Apple’s upcoming operating system, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, could arrive earlier than the expected September launch date. Multiple sources are reporting that Snow Leopard has now been designated “Gold Master” status, which means the OS is ready to ship to users.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard could be on sale as early as Friday, August 28 according to reports from Daring Fireball's John Gruber. Apple also released on Wednesday a final update for OS X Leopard (10.5.8), which could indicate that the next version of the OS is on its way.

Now with a “Golden Master” status, Snow Leopard is reportedly already on its way to manufacturing, where it will be recorded onto DVDs, according to a report from AppleInsider. The site also reports this final build is on its way to Apple technicians and support staff.

Amazon is already taking pre-orders for Snow Leopard and on the sales pages mentions that an “official release date has not been announced by Apple, though they have indicated this product will be released sometime in September.” Back in June, Apple said that Snow Leopard will arrive in September, but they haven’t mentioned any specific launch date.



Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard’s pricing is set at $29.99 for a single-user license and a 5-user license (Family Pack) will cost $49. A Mac Box Set, which includes Snow Leopard, iLife and iWork (productivity suite), is priced at $169 for a single-user license and at $229 for a 5-user license.

For more information about what's new in OS X 10.6, my colleague Nick Mediati has a list of 5 things you should know about Snow Leopard.

---

by Daniel Ionescu, PC World

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Today @ PC World blog at PCWorld.com.

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Apple online offer glitch hints at early Snow Leopard launch | Mac OS X

Image via Wikipedia

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Source: Macworld

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A mistaken offer in Apple’s online store on Wednesday could signal that the company’s latest Mac operating system, code-named Snow Leopard, is primed for launch as early as next week.

The company was offering to ship the as-yet-unreleased Mac OS X 10.6—code-named Snow Leopard—within 24 hours as part of the new Mac Box Set products, which were briefly put on sale on Apple’s Web site.

However, the Box Set products were pulled after a call was made to Apple online sales to check whether the new OS would ship in 24 hours as part of the single-user Box Set edition. The Box Set —which also comes in a family pack edition—offers a plethora of software upgrades to Mac users, including the OS, productivity suites and multimedia applications.

A saleswoman verified that the Box Set was for sale online after checking with technical support. But she said that it might not ship overnight as the Snow Leopard OS was not yet shipping.

The saleswoman could not be reached for comment after the products were pulled, and Apple officials did not return calls or e-mail for comment.

The online store glitch could give credence to reports that Apple is preparing for an early launch of Snow Leopard, which is officially scheduled to go on sale in September. Observers, including analysts and blog sites, have predicted the OS would start to ship as soon as Aug. 28.

Retail sites like Amazon.com are already taking pre-orders for Snow Leopard and the Mac Box Set. Snow Leopard is available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard users for $30.

The OS includes a number of systemwide “refinements,” according to Apple’s Web site.The enhancements include quicker installation compared to predecessors, a new version of QuickTime multimedia software and a souped-up user interface. It also includes a number of internal enhancements to perform tasks like video encoding and decoding faster by tapping into the processing power of multiple CPU and graphics processing cores.

My Favorite Free HTML Editor: Windows -- Notepad++ -- Mac -- Editra

I found this in a the Site Sell Private forum that I am a member of, I think you should be able to click through to the article, but if you can't just leave a comment telling me about the problem:

Image by fzurell via Flickr

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Site Build It! Forums :: View topic - My Favorite Free HTML Editor

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Karen E from simply-kids-play.com

Nothing happens until something moves...

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My Grandson told me about Notepad ++. It is a free HTML editor.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

You can see what things look like by using Run and then choosing the Browser you want to check.

It leaves no stray or awkward codes as the WYSIWYG ones do.

Check it out.

Karen
www.simply-kids-play.com

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PS: For those wanting a Mac HTML editor:
"I just checked with my Grandson again about a Mac program for HTML. He said he likes http://www.editra.org/. You might want to check it out. It also works in windows. It is free. I haven't tried it though."

Karen
www.simply-kids-play.com

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Apple Begins Training Support Staff for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Apple Begins Training Support Staff for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

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Source: Mac Rumors - macrumors.com

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Macenstein claims to have received information from sources claiming that support training for OS X Snow Leopard has begun and that Apple's new operating system will very likely launch on Friday, August 28th.

According to reliable sources, support training for Snow Leopard has begun, signaling an imminent release of the next major release of OS X. Sources claim a date of Friday, August 28th is extremely likely.
The source also provided several screenshots of Snow Leopard training instructions for AppleCare support representatives. The news corroborates claims from several other sources that Snow Leopard will ship on the 28th, ahead of Apple's announced September launch window.

MacRumors has also heard from a purported AppleCare representative that support staff at their location had just been provided with Snow Leopard discs (containing the rumored 'Golden Master' Build 10A432) for installation on their primary machines. The source noted that OS X Leopard was distributed to AppleCare representatives approximately one week before its October 2007 launch, leading the source to suspect that a Snow Leopard release may in fact be right around the corner.

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Article Marketing 101 - Everything You Need To Know About Article Marketing In One Place!

Image by lawtonchiles via Flickr

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Source: warriorforum.com - Article Marketing 101

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Among the many hundreds of emails and free information packages I get each week, this came across my desk in the last couple of days and I was astonished to find someone putting them selves on the line like this.

Article Marketing 101 - Everything You Need To Know About Article Marketing In One Place!

This is a fascinating forum and this article leads to Article Marketing 102 - Beyond Article Marketing 101.

Read it for a lot of great information.

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How Switching To a Mac Can Save You Countless Productive Hours

Image via Wikipedia

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Source: Computer Repair And PC Repair London

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Whether you are an expert computer user or not, you have probably been burned by your computer in the past. For some a computer virus could have wiped out your hard drive, or completely taken control of your web browser. For others, you might have been running an application only to have it crash and lose your data. So what is the solution?

There is a solution to many of the common computer problems: switch to an Apple computer. Although Apple and Microsoft have always competed for the personal computer marketshare, today things have changed. Where once someone with a Windows-based computer would never think twice of switching over, now people are switching in droves.

Why the sudden shift? There are many factors for this change. First off, the Macintosh operating system has been redesigned from the ground up and is now a more stable and effective operating system. With Mac OS X, users have a lot less to worry about: no viruses, no trojans, and no crashes. What more could a user want? For more please visit computer training

Image via Wikipedia

Apple delivers more: a seamless integration between hardware and software. When you buy a PC and install Windows, chances are that you are installing the operating system on a set of hardware that was never really fully tested together. Different combinations of plug and play hardware are what causes Windows to crash time and time again.

On the other hand, with an Apple computer, you get the operating system that was tested with the hardware ahead of time. Did you ever wonder why Apple sells the hardware with the software? It's because it allows the developers to test their software on the different hardware configurations before shipping the product. PCs come in too many varieties to be tested fully. For more please visit computer training

Plus, Apple delivers all the applications you need to get your work done, and have fun doing it. On a Windows machine, you get the basic Microsoft Office suite of applications. Now, you can get the same suite of applications for your Mac as well.

Yet, Apple offers applications that you can't get on Windows: the iLife set of applications. These programs make your life easier because they organize and import all your digital photos, they play your music, they let you import home movies, and create DVDs right from your computer.

What's more is that Apple does most of the work in the background, and leaves you to focus on the most important decisions. Developers and computer wizards used to pride themselves on knowing the internals of their windows machines. Today that's changing, as people realize they have better things to do than spend all their time at a computer terminal, when they could go out and enjoy life.

That's exactly what switching to a Mac can do for your productivity. Your computer will let you be as productive as you can, by getting out of your way. So that you can get back to living your life to the fullest! For more please visit computer training courses

Tags: fast pc repair, computer repair, computer repair london, data disk recovery"

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Microsoft's Bing Gained 1 Point of Market Share in July

Image by LatinSuD via Flickr

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Source: eWeek

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Microsoft's Bing gained a single point of market share in July, bringing its total to 9.41 percent, according to a new report by StatCounter. The recent partnership deal between Microsoft and Yahoo has given both companies hope that they can challenge Google, which currently holds a double-digit lead in the search market. Under the terms of the partnership, Bing will power search on Yahoo sites, while Yahoo takes over worldwide sales duties for the companies’ search advertisers.

Microsoft’s share of the U.S. search market increased to 9.41 percent in July 2009, a rise of 1 percentage point, according to research firm StatCounter. At the same time, Google’s share of the U.S. market slipped during the same period to 77.54 percent, down by nearly a point, while Yahoo declined a fraction of a point, from 11.04 to 10.95.


StatCounter's report came days after the July 29 announcement of a partnership deal between Microsoft and Yahoo: that 10-year agreement that will see Microsoft's Bing power Yahoo’s search engine, while Yahoo assumes exclusive worldwide sales duties for the companies’ search advertisers. Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TACs) to Yahoo at an initial rate of 88 percent of search revenue generated on Yahoo’s sites.

The deal represents a recognition on both companies' part that the only way to break Google’s lock on the search and online advertising market may be through working together. According to StatCounter’s report, a combined Microsoft and Yahoo search would have a 20.36 percent market share.

"Bing continues to make slow but steady progress but the combined Yahoo figures suggests that the deal announced last week will have to demonstrate major future synergies if it is to make any dent in Google’s dominance," Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of StatCounter, said in a statement.

Microsoft and Yahoo, however, are publicly hopeful that the deal will allow them to chip away at Google’s substantial lead in the online space.

"This deal will combine Yahoo and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search," both companies said in a statement on July 29. "With the addition of Yahoo’s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers."

After Bing started making incremental market-share gains in the wake of its June 3 launch, buoyed to a certain extent by Microsoft’s massive ad campaign, analysts debated whether the relative success of Redmond’s search engine would influence its dealings with Yahoo. Some argued that Bing would lead Microsoft to abandon any deals with Yahoo entirely, especially in context of its failed 2008 takeover bid, while others argued that Bing would compel Microsoft to approach Yahoo from a position of greater strength.

The deal between Microsoft and Yahoo could also help stop the erosion in Yahoo’s paid search spend, which according to a July report by SearchIgnite had declined year-over-year by 26 percent.

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