News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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MacRabbit has introduced Espresso, a new Web development tool for Mac OS X. It’s being released now as a preview version; the developer expects to ship Espresso in November.
While CSSEdit focuses specifically on the creation and editing of Cascading Style Sheets, Espresso is a general Web development workflow tool. It sports editing capabilities, organisational tools, a preview engine, search and replace tools, publishing abilities and a plug-in engine.
A rule-based syntax engine recognises code and offers context-sensitive assistance to complete your work. The software will ship with HTML, XML, CSS and JavaScript support, and Sugars — what MacRabbit calls the plug-ins — will extend it further. Source lists let you manage projects, and the Workspace combines the concepts of tabs and sidebars. A Live Preview engine lets you see what your page is going to look like as you’re making it. Espresso will also ship with support for FTP, SFTP and Amazon S3; you can upload projects using dynamic parallel connections.
MacRabbit is accepting applications for users who want to test Espresso; visit the Web site for details.
Critical vulnerabilities remain in Apple’s iCal calendar program, a security company said in an advisory that showed months of back-and-forth between Apple and the researchers over whether bugs were serious enough to warrant patches, and if so, when Apple would patch them. After several delays requested by Apple, the security vendor put its foot down and told the company’s security team it would release information about the vulnerabilities May 21, whether Apple had issued patches or not.
Gregg Keizer | May 23, 2008
Apple has updated Mac OS X 10.5, fixing 70 issues with the operating system and its components. Among the changes in Mac OS X 10.5.3 are several fixes for Apple’s Time Machine backup application. The update addresses compatibility issues with the Time Capsule backup device as well as compatibility issues with Aperture 2, Apple’s workflow application for photographers. The OS update aims to improve reliability when doing a full restore from a Time Machine backup, and an alert message incorrectly stating that a backup volume doesn’t have enough space has been fixed. Apple’s virtual desktop application, Spaces, received some minor updates in 10.5.3. A problem that could cause the reordering of application windows when switching desktops and then switching back has been fixed. The update also tackled an issue where pressing Command-Tab may have incorrectly switched users to a new space. The update also bolsters reliability for .Mac syncing.
Jim Dalrymple | May 29, 2008
Quark has just announced the next major version of its page-layout software, QuarkXPress 8. The new version, which will be available in the next 60 days, will offer many enhancements including a new interface and built-in Flash authoring. According to Quark, the QuarkXPress product team spent a lot of time with designers to determine how they work and figure out what to change in QuarkXPress 8 to help them.
Jim Dalrymple | May 29, 2008
In a Worldwide Developers Conference keynote dominated by iPhone news, Steve Jobs did offer bit of OS X-centric news to attendees: The next version of OS X is code-named Snow Leopard. But that’s all Apple disclosed about the new OS during the hour-and-44-minute keynote. Jobs said more information would be available during the conference’s afternoon OS X State of the Union session; however, like every WWDC session save for the keynote, that discussion is held away from the public eye with its contents covered by a non-disclosure agreement that prevents attendees from talking about what they’re told.
Rob Griffiths | Jun 10, 2008
This morning Apple released a new version of its iPhone SDK for developers. iPhone SDK beta 2 includes Interface Builder, a component of Apple’s development tools that lets developers create the interface for their applications. That seems to be the only major change in the latest build, according to the SDK’s read me, which continues to list some known issues. Apple says “this second beta is known to be incompatible with installation folders other than the default /Developer.” Given the importance of UI on the Mac, Interface Builder is a pretty critical tool in the development process, and some developers had chosen to hold off on their efforts until the SDK was revised. Apple unveiled the iPhone SDK at a special event earlier this month, allowing developers to begin building applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Several high-profile companies have already jumped onboard, demoing their applications at the event. Highlighting the demos was AOL with a native AIM client; other applications from Electronic Arts, Salesforce.com, and Apple were also shown.
