Hello dear readers. In case you haven’t already noticed, there’s a bit of lull here on Pennywised. Well, it’s because my wife and I just had our first baby. A baby boy! His name is Jonah and he’s the most beautiful little guy.
There was some good response to the last post (in which Markdown was introduced and we were shown how to install and process Markdown from within TextWrangler). So let’s keep this Markdown train a’rollin’ by discussing how to get back to Markdown from HTML.
While largely undocumented, my favorite free text editor, TextWrangler, can process Markdown files (turn ‘em into HTML, that is) just as well as any of the big boys. Unfortunately, it’s rather tricky to get Markdown up and running in TextWrangler. Thankfully, you’ve got Pennywised looking out for you. So here’s how to do it…
For those keeping score, Apple announced a whole slew of new stuff at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco today. Updates to their desktop (OS X 10.7) and mobile (iOS 5) experiences, as well as a brand new cloud-based service called iCloud.
Here’s a quick way to get a file’s system path on a Mac in handy text format. From there, the sky’s the limit! Ready? Let’s do it!
Take a gander at this fantastic list of free ebooks covering a ton of web design and development topics. There’s some less desirable topics in the list (like “20 Things I learned about Browsers and the Web”… C’mon, really?), but there are a few real gems too! 45 of ‘em in total.
If you were a sponsor, this post would be about your product or service. But instead, you’re reading a post about what it would be like if you were reading a post about your product or service. How dizzying.
Check this out: in the finder, right-click on any application and choose Copy. Open preview and choose File > New From Clipboard. Now observe the magic!
Interested in ripping apart your apps and extracting their fleshy innards? Well sure you are! I mean, who wouldn’t be? (DISCLAIMER: May void warrantee)
I’m super-stoked to have just read that, in addition to a fistful of awesome, WordPress 3.2 will ship with a built-in, distraction-free writing environment. (Yes, “super-stoked.” And yes, “fistful of awesome.”)
You’re a savvy web worker, and as such, you should know about these web utilities. Seriously. They’ll help optimize your workflow. They’ll make you happier and enhance your overall quality of life. They’ll even clean your house, water your plants, and do your taxes. They’ll do a number of things that are just plain awesome and incredibly useful.
How ’bout another one-trick-pony Mac menubar freebie? Let’s take a look at Isolator… because sometimes your apps are antisocial.
I’m not really a set it and forget it type of guy (have you noticed?). I find myself constantly digging into the System Preferences to tweak stuff. Most often I’m headed straight to my energy saver settings where I’m turning it off entirely. That’s inefficient and a waste of time. I hate inefficiency almost as much as I hate wasting time. Which is why I heart Caffeine.
Here’s a quick and massively useful TextWrangler tip: Got two versions of the same text file and need to know how they differ? Use TextWrangler’s built-in diff function… because, like snowflakes, no two text files are the same… oh, wait, yeah, I guess they could be.
Sometimes you just need to know the dimensions of an object on screen. You could, I guess, scooch your face up real close to your monitor and count pixels, one by one. But you’re a savvy web worker, and… um… not an idiot. So you know there’s a better way. You need a screen ruler. You need Pixus.
