The last couple of weeks I have been going back and forth between Firefox and Safari as my default web browser, trying to appreciate their full-featured nature over the fact that they are both so sluggish in comparison to the lovely Chrome Beta. Thankfully, Google announced support for two of the things that have really kept me from making it my preferred choice ... Extensions and Bookmark Management.

I have been working to understand more aspects of the Flash platform and how we are implementing it in our Full Sail curriculum and this XML basics article I just found was really helpful in explaining E4X syntax and how to traverse the XML node tree.

The article does mention implementing the Flash IDE for their code, but Flex Builder is a much nicer environment for building ActionScript projects. Plus, you can install a copy of ...

It has been a few days now since Ars Technica announced Google's Developer Preview for Chrome on the Mac and I have been loving every minute of it. While I do miss the robust plugin architecture of Firefox and the slickness of Safari 4's "Top Sites", Chrome's speed trumps all.

New tabs and windows are quick to respond and page loading is ever so snappy. And though I am not entirely won over by it yet, ...

All the unnecessary hatin' that has been happening lately toward the Flash platform has been getting out of hand and definitely on my nerves ... so I have decided to start animating small little nuggets of fun into some of my drawings here on the blog. If you are not among the misinformed and propaganda-gobbling masses, please enjoy! Of course, I am also adding a nice bit of accessibility for all the iPhone users, ...

Despite how much I love the new Safari 4 features, I have been experiencing some really poor performance as of late ... specifically, a 3-5 second stall at every new window launch, new tab or trying to scroll through a part of a page I had not been using previously. Though it may be due entirely to the upgrade to Snow Leopard, I don't have anything concrete to back up that theory and am forced ...

One of my favorite Action Script-ers to follow, Felix Turner of AirTight Interactive, recently posted about all of the applications, plugins and resources he uses for Flash development. It is definitely a list worth checking out (as are many of the lists compiled by the great Smashing Magazine) and if nothing else, it gave me a reason to draw this nerdy guy, marking out all of the languages and frameworks I am either working with ...

The last few days have been full of a lot o' work ... creating code and pre-pro examples for students, updating curriculum in the classroom, then keeping busy through the wee hours of the night and morning creating for some Illustrative clients.

Thanks to Norm reminding me about how easy it is to setup local databases with MAMP or XAMPP, I have been having an easier time working with Wordpress:http://wordpress.org lately. I will eventually need to ...

It appears that the AIR 1.5.1 runtime has a minor issue with re-maximizing windows after miniziming them to the Snow Leopard dock. I have submitted a bug request, so hopefully it will be fixed soon.

I also should probably start recording some sound when I am taking these screencasts with the new Quicktime X ... it's like I have been making them for a deaf person.

Sadly, one of my favorite lil' Mac tools, Validator, which is perfect for validating XML files against custom Document Type Declarations (DTDs), is currently not working with Snow Leopard, or more specifically, Snow Leopard's implementation of 64-bit Perl.

There is an easy way have 10.6 load the 32-bit version of Perl, but unfortunately, even after doing so, it looks like Validator is still having some other issues.

There is no contact information on Robert Crews' website, so ...

While creating an example AS3 file for our Deployment of Flash Projects class just now in Flex Builder, I almost found myself in an absurd "the-files-are-missing" predicament that we hear about every now and then from our students. Turns out some of it may not be so absurd ...

While Flex Builder allows for multiple Undos in several areas of its interface, it also has a subtle way of not indicating where those Undos are taking ...

If you are like me and love the wonderfully scripted things that Apple's Automator application can provide, you are going to be pretty excited for some of the changes in Mac OS X 10.6.

You will, however, find that if you were using any custom or third-party actions (i.e. those by Dropbox, Junecloud or AppZapper) and they were implemented in Leopard as Finder Plugins, they aren't going to work the same way anymore. Most can ...

I saw that Apple had put out this handy list of software that is incompatible with Leopard, and I thought it might be helpful to start collecting a list of smaller third-party apps that may cause issues. Here are mine so far ... feel free to comment with any others you are finding.

Applications Incompatible with Snow Leopard

Adobe Creative Suite - @summero said that CS3 hasn't given her any problems yet, but I can't confirm that ...

I've mentioned this great article before for instructions on enabling the built-in PHP5 functionality of 10.5 Leopard (this article is not so bad either), but with 10.6 Snow Leopard install I did today, I found that I was getting "403 Forbidden" errors when trying to access the localhost, so I thought I would share this quick tip on how to correct the access and resolve the issue. Besides this, I haven't experienced any issues with ...

If you use Keynote as much as I do and still haven't tried out Apple's Keynote Remote for the iPhone, you're missing out on a pretty decent control interface. Even with the $0.99 price tag (one might think buying a copy of iWork at $79 would be enough to warrant a free companion app), it is worth downloading and giving it a test run. I do have a couple of notes, though.

While I was in Building 2 at Full Sail today, waiting for IT to install the complete Adobe Web Premium Collection on my MBP, I had a chance to submit an entry for this week's Illustration Friday:http://illustrationfriday.com theme of "idle".

If my ears look big, I'm going to blame it on the fact that I haven't draw dailies in a while and not on the possible fact that they are big ;)

The overall scan is pretty ...

I really think Adobe is heading down the wrong path with their no coding push of Catalyst. Didn't they learn anything from the WYSIWYG garbage that can be produced by Dreamweaver? I guess not. While there may be a small percentage of legitimate UX development planned for this app, I can already see it becoming another eyesore in the Adobe periodic table.

After fiddling with some older older backups, a couple attempts to install from a Mac OS 9 CD and trying to extract files from the "Classic" emulation app, I finally realized that I could get my hands on the original "Platinum Sounds" Apple soundset from Courtney's older IBook G4.

Of course, it was mainly so that I could use them in conjunction with the great Xounds APE haxie from Unsanity ... there is just something ...

Thanks to Jason M reminding me yesterday about the joy that is the free MySQL database management app for the Mac, Sequel Pro, you will now find that many of the old posts (especially of the sketch variety) are now correctly displaying images.

Also, for all you RSS and XML fans out there, you may want to check out the following:

iTunes RSS Generator
HTTP Client

Both are coming in really handy for the Project 2 ideas our DFP ...

During the DFP lab session yesterday, Norm and my students were having issues validating their XML data files using a couple of the services we normally recommend. Namely, their XML files were showing no errors, despite adding intentional mal-formed tags and whatnot.
It just so happened that Norm was reading through one of FlashTuts newer posts about different methods for setting up a Flash Development Sandbox and discovered a great Eclipse plugin for writing and validating ...

After more than a few months of hearing so many things about “gumbo” and “thermo” and whatnot, Adobe has finally officially announced some of their newest technologies, including a beta version of their hottest prototyping app and apparently the new center of the universe … Catalyst.But before you go all crazy, start revising your game plan and implementing untested workflows, I just want to remind you of a few other Adobe products that were supposed ...

In my ongoing attempt to fall more and more in love with the “One-Window Web Development” amazingness that is Panic’s Coda app, I have reached another yet milestone. I present to you the following Syntax Modes, re-colored to match the ever-popular Textmate “Twilight” theme:ActionScriptCSSHTMLJavascriptJSP-HTMLPHP-HTMLXMLCoda Coloring Theme - "Twlight"In case you are wondering, the font I am using is the delicious Inconsolata by Raph Levien.P.S. If anyone wants to send me a few example files of ...

Thanks to a silly cold I got from someone at work (still not sure who) and taking night-time medicine, I was late arriving to prep with the rest of the Southside worship team and kinda had to rush my pedal setup.I am guessing that is why during the service, both my tuner pedal and BOSS Blues driver kept dying on me … it eventually worked out, but was still kinda non-confidence instilling.I did however manage ...

After Sitepoint showed us all how easy it is to add custom references to the "Books" section of Coda (using their excellent HTML and CSS references as examples), I began my search for even more handy code guides with which to fill out that big empty gray space at Command+6.

Jon Hicks had some good stuff to say, as did the Coda Google Group, but what really got me moving was when I found Ray Brown's ...

Ah gah! In the monster-y mood and this is what I end up with for this week’s Illustration Friday theme of “vacant”.This guy started out with some free-form Rita line goodness, then slight coloring in ye ole Photoshop, then finished it off with a light paper texture and some noisy noise. And done.

Open in Textmate (uploaded by DRA Studio)Had a really fun lunch meeting with one of the WDD (Web Design & Development and) degree course directors yesterday. It is so enjoyable being able to sit around and talk about web standards, markup and CSS syntax. Yes, Courtney, that is really nerdy … but still, so much fun. For all of you coding-kids, Chris dropped a little script on me that I am finding really handy. MacroMates, the ...