specializing in digital media technologies

JetBrains just released version 1 of a new Ruby and Ruby on Rails IDE called RubyMine. It features everything you’d expect in an IDE, like code completion, project navigation, HTML/CSS/JS editing, version control software (VCS) support, plus lots of Ruby and Rails-specific features. Version 1.1 of RubyMine is expected in May, with support for version 2.3 of Rails (a significant upgrade). The software is available under two licenses, one (free) for open-source projects and another commercial license ($99 US at the time of this writing).

In this, the last post in my series on jQuery, I mention an odd lot of interesting things about jQuery that are worth knowing. Some involve specific code; others aid understanding of jQuery’s philosophy. You may or may not want to also read these earlier posts on jQuery:

1. Incorporating jQuery into an HTML page
2. Selecting page elements
3. Adding event handlers
4. Applying effects
5. Manipulating elements
6. Ajax
7. Plug-ins

(continue reading…)

I StumbledUpon this page that lists 21 Lesser-Known Open-Source Applications for Windows. As a person that prefers to use open-source software and tries to avoid using Windows, I was intrigued by the listing. As the article points out, many people are already using open-source and cross platform software like the Firefox Web browser, Thunderbird email client, GIMP image manipulation software, OpenOffice Microsoft Office alternative, and the VLC video player. (Although, as an aside, while I do use Firefox as my primary browser, and often use VLC, I’ve never really thought that GIMP or OpenOffice were really comparable to the commercial alternatives.) The author does a good job of highlighting a mix of things, from utilities to multimedia to games. I expect I’ll try out ZScreen for my next book, as I always need to take screenshots on Windows (while testing code). If I used Windows regularly, I expect I’d love Launchy, as I love QuickSilver on my Mac. Being able to start applications without moving over to the mouse is such a timesaver. I also do use Filezilla on Windows, and recommend it in my books, as a good, free FTP application.

I don’t talk much about Windows, despite so many of you out there using it, so I thought I would pass this along.