nutMac

Have you ever been using the Finder in OS X and wished it could do more? I remember when 10.4 came along and being so thrilled with the new finder. It was so advanced, it had a sidebar… The novelty wore off pretty quick when I still wanted tabs, breadcrumbs and more features. For a while I was using Captain FTP as my main file browser since it allowed tabbed browsing but it’s tough to push an app that was design for “here-to-there” file transfers into a common file browser. It was actually a bit cumbersome at it.

Then I came across Pathfinder, “Path Finder is an innovative file browser and manager with powerful tools to make you more productive on Mac OS X.” Indeed it is. I wasn’t sold on first try. The reality is I didn’t give it a fair shake. I had it open for about 2 minutes, convinced myself I didn’t like the GUI and moved on before so much as opening the app.

It wasn’t long before frustration with the Finder was overwhelming again and since a few months had passed, I thought I ought to try out Pathfinder again. This time, being determined to do away with Finder, I forced myself to use Pathfinder for a week. Well this time it didn’t take more than a day and I was completely hooked. This is what the Finder was always meant to be. Pathfinder allows total system control and file management. It’s a dock, a path finder, a breadcrumb, file manager, image browser, image converter, pdf viewer text and document editor, ftp client, terminal interface, console panel and so much more all wrapped into one.

It shares some things in common with Finder, like the sidebar that is capable of showing your volumes and shelving your frequently travelled folders and files for easy access. But that’s not all your sidebar needs to show. Click on the bar that defines what is being displayed below it and you will be presented with options such as shelf, volumes, processes, file history, folder history, selection path, info, permissions, iTunes browser, attributes, subversion, preview, hex terminal and console. With all of those choices, you might think that one sidebar is not enough. Well that’s why you can have three more, one on the right, one on the left and one below for a total of four programable sidebars, each with two programable panels. We’re talking total file management here!

With all of this you can imagine I could go on for ever about what I like to do with Pathfinder, so I’ve decided to limit it to some of my favorite features.

• Tabs - no common browser, whether it’s for the internet or file browser, should be without tabs. There is no excuse for it.

• Drop Stack - you can easily drag a file or folder from tab to tab, but if you haven’t yet figured out where you want to drop that file or folder, simply drop it into the “Drop Stack” and there it will remain until you find the right place to drop it.

• Breadcrumb - need I say more? Breadcrumbs are the single most important part of any navigation, so why limit them to websites?

• Convert image - resize, crop, and convert the file type of any image. This is ideal in my blogging workflow where I am constantly working images to fit into a particular page size on various blogs.

• Common sense - developers are constantly adding to and digging into their contextual menus. It seems as though Pathfinder has caught on to this. Most of most oft used contextual menus items are right there in the information panel, or the tool bar or in the sidebar, etc… One in particular that saves me a butt load of time is the “open package” button found in the information panel of any app or plugin or proprietary file type. Since the RapidWeaver themes I design are all packages, I find I use this button nearly every minute.

• Information - know everything about the selected file without hot-key combos or contextual menu selections. Select a file and, depending on your panel configurations, you can know all it’s information, attributes, and permissions right there in front of you.

You may like your Finder just fine, but it you are looking for more, get Pathfinder. Your productivity will go through the roof.

Technorati Tags: Pathfinder, Finder, OS X, Cocaotech

So why the FARG to part 4 take so long? I said it would boil down to the tools I use, therefore, I had to make sure I gave all the options a fair shake and really come up with an objective list of lean, mean, blogging productivity tools. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard right? I mean aren’t all blogs accessed via a web browser? Umm… er… uh… well… editing a post in a browser sucks! It’s slow, counter intuitive, inherently unstable (if your connection is lost, so too is your post), and on and on and on… In a pinch, or for casual blogging this is the way to go, but it you are in any way serious, you need to consider some desktop alternatives:

1. TextEdit - if you have nothing else at hand on your local computer then at least consider using TextEdit to compose and safely save your work in progress.

2. MarsEdit - I played with this one a bit. It’s well put together, easy to use, and doesn’t go over board with the features. It’s an editor, manager, publisher all in one, so if need be, you wouldn’t need any other tool.

3. Ecto - This one is a bit spotty. It’s powerful, has a cult following, it’s extensible, but it always seems as though the developer has his priorities elsewhere. I will use this over MarsEdit simply because of it’s ability to have most aspects of it’s templates and snippets edited to suit your own preferences. It earns points for it’s geekery.

4. RapidWeaver - You might think this recommendation is a bit much… a complete web development platform for the single purpose of posting to a blog? Well, on it’s own there is merit for such an argument; host a blog anywhere you like, have it look any way you want with the hundreds of available free and commercial theme designs, host as many blogs as you want without having to know sql, myphp, or go through any convoluted server-side installation process each time. RapidWeaver isn’t just a blogging client that integrates into one of the available blogging platforms… it IS the platform. If RapidWeaver on it’s own is not enough, add to it the amazing plugin from Loghound, RapidBlog, and you have a do anything, go anywhere blogging system with unprecedented control that can be both edited from the comfort of your desktop or from any remote location you happened to find yourself in.

5. TextMate - Are you are the ultimate geek who needs the ultimate power with the fastest, most productive editing tool known to man kind? You need to be blogging with TextMate! You need to be doing everything with TextMate, your coding, developing, editing, your laundry, picking up the groceries, etc… The only app on my machine that gets more time in use is Safari, but TextMate runs a close second. Name the A - Z of coding, markup or scripting languages and TextMate does it and then some. Right, so what has this got to do with blogging. Right out of the preverbal box, TextMate has some pretty cool blogging features that allow you to post to one or many blogs, but add a nifty little plugin called BlogMate from Todd Ditchendorf, and TextMate becomes my number one choice for blogging clients. Here is why; I can type any word, hit some hot-keys and TextMate will find the most relevant URL and title for that word and create a link in whatever language I happen to be writing in, like HTML or Markdown. I can also post to nearly any blogging platform I want, which is good for me since I use WordPress, Blogger, Jaiku, Twitter and have been known to use a host of other platforms in the past. If you are serious about blogging from a mac, you want to consider my number one choice for blogging… TextMate!

I hope you have found this little series on blogging helpful. Hopefully you can take what you have learned here and apply it to your own blog.

Technorati Tags: blogging, WordPress, Blogger, TextMate, Ecto, MarsEdit