specializing in digital media technologies

I came across a product called Alkaline the other day, put out by Litmus. Alkaline is a Mac application that allows you to test a Web site on up to 17 different Windows browsers. It’s much like a Windows-specific version of BrowserShots, but guaranteed to always return quick results and with a few bonus features such as plug-ins that work with common text editors and IDE’s like TextMate or Coda. For more, check out this screencast. You should also check out BrowserShots, if you haven’t already. For the occassional browser test, BrowserShots is fantastic. For more frequent and reliable Windows tests, you may find that Alkaline is worth the money (they have a free version, a day pass, or different subscription rates).

Litmus also makes an application for testing how a newsletter will look in different email clients.

Sometime ago I was asked by someone in the forums if I could assist in setting up SSL on Mac OS X Leopard to enable HTTPS connections. The good news is that after a huge delay, I was able to get this to work, without that much effort. The bad news is that I accomplished this over two different attempts, so my notes may not be foolproof. And, um, I’ve already slightly reconfigured my Apache, so that might come into play. Anyway…

So follow these instructions to make this work. If you have any questions or problems, you can post a comment at the end of this article. In order to pull this off, you will need an administrative password for your computer, a text editor, and the Terminal application. If the Terminal scares you, you probably shouldn’t do this. (continue reading…)

I’m a big fan of Mac OS X: it’s arguably the best operating system I’ve ever used. Part of my affection comes from the fact that it just works and part comes from how unbelievably fantastic some of Apple’s applications are (I’m specifically thinking about iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, etc. here). From a work perspective, it’s so useful to me that Mac OS X is Unix, so I can treat it just as I would most of the servers I use for Web hosting. That being said, you don’t have to mess around with Mac OS X from a Unix perspective if you don’t have the need. Anyway, this post isn’t really about Mac OS X but rather about QuickSilver, one of my favorite applications that runs on Mac OS X. QuickSilver is a free (free!) utility that can be used to launch applications, perform an Internet search, control iTunes, run calculations, and much, much more. It’s only real downside is that it’s so powerful that it’s hard to use it to its full advantage. Fortunately, I’ve found some useful resources towards that end… (continue reading…)