My new best WP plug-in starting today: WordPress Automatic upgrade
Seriously, as much as I love active development of super-good web apps/systems, upgrading the ones you are currently using is always a pain. This may need to be done every few months. Well, with this plug-in now I am more than happy to wait for every WP update. Cheers!
I love the guys at Smashing Magazines! I have been collecting and indexing the coolest scripts I find for months, if not years. Now they just posted an article with 75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques. Almost all the ones I like are there and so many more. Thanks!
Read their article here.
Everybody loves Firefox. Even if I use Safari as my main browser most of the time, Firefox’s expandability is still irreplaceable. With so many available themes, plugins and extensions, you can personalize your browser according to your browsing or work behavior.
Firefox toolbar with Web Developer extension
So, what’s my favorite? Since switching to Mac, I do not test out everything one-by-one anymore but I have to say Chris Pederick’s Web Developer extension is one of the best of productivity purpose. It provides you with almost every tool you need as a web developer like customize how the CSS should be displayed, window resize, display outlines (tables, links, frames) and so much more.
For me this is perticularly important and makes everything easier to learn how a site or webpage is built.
This extension is available for Firefox, Flock and Seamonkey, and will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Chris Pederick’s Web Developer page link
If you use a Mac, you would probably use OmniGraffle to replace Visio as a tool to create diagrams, flowcharts and other similar documents. The coolest thing with it is you can add a list of graphics called stencils from the originally provided ones to make a wider use of the app.
Just today I stumbled on Graffeltopia, a site dedicated to give OmniGraffle users a huge range of free stencil add-ons. These are contributed by users, so expect for the number to keep on growing.
Check it now to start adding your stencils or look for the ones you need for your projects.
Sendloop is a promising email marketing service with simple and easy user interface. It is developed by the guys from Octech who created Oempro, a popular email marketing software.
If you have been wanting to promote or manage an email marketing for your website or business, I would recommend to try it. With sleek web 2.0 look & feel, you can easily adjust yourself with the system. I dare to say this because the first email marketing software I used years ago just so hard to adapt, although it worked.
A screenshot of Sendloop's clean user interface
Now with Sendloop and other similar services, everyone can create and manage their own mailing lists for regular newsletter or occasional email blast. This is a hosted service, which means you do not need to install and set it up on your own server. You just need to manage your lists, create your campaigns and send them.
They only charge you when you send email to your list(s). For 1 cent per recipient, this is quite a bargain. If you have 1,000 of subscribed email addresses, you only need to budget $10 for your monthly newsletter. Of course if you have more than 10,000 addresses and you need to send them weekly, considering to install your own newsletter system is a good idea.
One last highlight why I have been following their news recently, because they have this one feature that integrates with Shopify’s webhooks. It will enable you to automatically import your customers email addresses to Sendloop.
More information can be found their website.
Renamer4Mac, batch file renamer for Mac
Price (older version): free, link
Price (newer version): $26, link
Renamer4Mac is a simple tool to batch rename your files. All you need to do is drag all the files to its window and set the rules. On the older version you can rename the files based on Search & Replace, Insert/Overwrite, Remove Characters, Number, or Uppercase/Lowercase. This tool is very handy if you do a lot of repetitive file renaming.
While I am writing this post I just realized that this app is no longer maintained by its original developer. So you need to spend an extra $26 (with 10 days free trial) to get the latest version. I am sure more features have been added, but you can still get the one I have been using all this time here.
For anyone who curious to know what kind of products that Bluelounge make, now is the best time to take a look or even buy one!
By inputting this coupon code during checkout, you wil get a $10 off any purchase of $50 or more: LD2008
This code is only valid until Sept 1, 2008.
There are too many good CSS out there, possibly thousands, but I still want to share my most useful links. I always look that these sites first whenever I need something new or face some problem and need solution.
You can share yours too..
Always having a hard time to find the perfect loader for your AJAX scripts? Then you need to bookmark this site: Ajaxload.
Not only it provides a few dozens of animated GIF image for your loader, you can even customize it background and foreground colors. Nice!
Funny, I never really took any use SSH until recently. So I have a whole lot of commands to learn and remember, and I am lousy at remembering! Good thing I found this Common SSH Commands page. All the basic commands and short description for each of them. Definitely helpful!