Quick keys for search bar

So, I may be the last person on the planet to discover this, but I thought I would share it anyway. (Incase I wasn't the last!). Anyhow, if you are like me you love to use key commands when you can. I tend to use Safari (Mac) for most of my browsing. And I have never put too much time into the shortcuts that I used for it, but there was one that I have used for years now that was... well just not right. It was how to get to the search bar quickly. My old method was CMD + L, then Tab. Simple enough, but as I said, not a right. Or at least not a "true" key command shortcut.

Well as a pure fluke, this morning I wanted to search a page for a particular keyword and accidently keyed CMD + Option + F. Voíla! Google search. It is quite obvious after the fact, but if you are like me, and didn't really put it together... now you know.

And knowing is half the battle. You can also find more at Apple

MarsEdit demo test

I downloaded MarsEdit demo to try for this blog. Seems simple enough (intuitive). Also it beats having to login and post. I can do that all at the comfort of my own tiny window in this app.

I'll post more comments about MarsEdit in the future, as I discover more about it and its use in my workflow.

In Plainview

There are few times that browsers or browser apps get me excited. Mainly because as a whole, they [browsers] aren't that exciting. Especially when you design and develop websites and apps for them on a daily basis and have to deal more with their short comings rather than their strengths.

Now that said, I have come across a few plug-ins worth mentioning, such as firebug or safaristand. However, recently I downloaded a full-screen web browser called Plainview. Though not that much different from the Safari plug-in saft, Plainview offers full-screen kiosk mode as default in a self-contained app.

This native Cocoa app (built on Webkit), is excellent for the proverbial "dog & pony" show for clients. It even works nicely with Quicktime and Flash. For me this is an awesome piece of software. Mainly because... well it's full-screen! And to be honest, I build things in Flash and XHTML, which is great to show interactivity to clients, but when ran in typical browser is a bit lack lustre with the default "chrome." Nor do I really want to mess with Powerpoint!

In my humble opinion this should definitely be in your application arsenal.