Why You Need XtraFinder

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I’ve played around with Path Finder and Total Finder in the past, but recently I’ve come to love XtraFinder. It’s free, relatively stable and (like Total Finder) concentrates on filling the gaps in Finder rather than starting from scratch.

Here are a couple of reasons I love XtraFinder:

Folders on Top

Foldersontop

I got used to this in Transmit and really missed it when I came back out into the Finder. No longer.

Split Panes / Tabs

Tabs

This is the obvious one, perhaps. I don’t actually use split panes that much as I find them a little ugly and unwieldy, but tabs are a must. Pretty much #1 on every ‘Finder replacement’ feature list.

Middle Click to Close / Open

For years I’ve used this shortcut to open / close browser links and tabs. Now I can carry that behaviour into the Finder.

See a pattern emerging?

Create a New File from the Context Menu

Newfilecontext

Coming over from Windows this seems like a glaring omission. I end up doing this through an Alfred v2 workflow most of the time, but this is arguably even simpler.

Click Path Bar to show Contents

Pathbar

A great shortcut to skip ahead in a directory tree.

No reason for Vanilla

I never found TotalFinder particularly stable, but I’ve had very few problems with XtraFinder. It’s quick, free and relatively seamless.

As far as I’m concerned it’s a must have.

Ulysses 3 Review

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Ulysses 3 icon

The Soulmen‘s new attempt to revolutionise plain-text editing is finally out after eighteen gruelling months in the oven: Ulysses 3. It’s all new from the ground up.

A Change of Heart

Ulysses (1/2) used to be primarily marketed to (slightly geeky) novelists who wanted a lightweight editor focused on content, not presentation. It sought to be the antidote to Desktop Publishing programs such as Microsoft Word by letting the user write semantically, a phrase I believe the developers coined themselves. Collections of texts were stored in ‘project’ files which allowed the user to organise, search, label and develop a piece of long form writing without worrying about the output until the export process at the end.

Ulysses was a tool based around the notion of projects. Interestingly, however, the new tagline reads:

All your texts. In one place. Always.

I found this initially a little confusing – most of my texts already are in one place, stored in individual files in my Dropbox – but it turns out that whereas Ulysses once sought to organise bundles of collected material into one cohesive piece, the new approach encourages you to hand off all document management to the application. Ulysses 3 doesn’t just want to organise the text within your projects, but the projects themselves. Every piece of text you’re actively editing should apparently end up in it.

This is problematic for two main reasons:

  1. The best features of Ulysses 3 require you to rely on iCloud or local bundles consisting of randomised file names and xml files hidden deep away in your file system.
  2. There’s no universal search functionality across groups, or any kind of tagging system. You’ll probably have a hard time finding anything if you need to manage more than a few document groups.

The first is the most problematic and requires some elaboration.

External Sources

If you want to use Dropbox (or your local filesystem) to store ‘sheets’ as plain text files, then you’re required to add an ‘external source’, a rather hidden option in the left hand pane:

External source Ulysses 3

From now on you’ll be able to see this group in said pane and add groups/sheets to this section instead of ‘On My Mac’, ‘iCloud’ or ‘Daedalus‘ (if you have it). This would be fine, if a little cumbersome, if it wasn’t for the lack of support of some of Ulysses’ most touted features, mostly derived from the ‘Markdown XL’ syntax its file packages provide.

The FAQ elaborates:

Several advanced features are not available in External Sources or Daedalus. This is mostly a limitation of plain text files and Markdown which does not support these kinds of content.

Say goodbye to notes, annotations, comments and attachments. It’s true that these features are bonuses on top of the flexibility Markdown already provides, but they’re also key selling points for Ulysses as a composition platform. Take them away and the whole package becomes significantly less compelling.

Think you’ll just roll with iCloud and use Daedalus instead of your current Dropbox-enabled iOS text editor? Say goodbye (once again) to notes, annotations, comments and attachments, similarly unsupported in its iOS counterpart.

Until this is addressed in some form I can see a lot of people giving Ulysses 3 a miss. For an editor which wants you to put all of your eggs (or texts) in one basket, it stops at nothing to fragment your library into a variety of subsections with varying feature sets. You’ll likely end up using External Sources to manage existing files you need to version control or manipulate elsewhere, iCloud for OS X only projects, and Daedalus for anything you might want to edit on iOS.

Consolidate only at the risk of feature loss.

Cut to Size

This is what Ulysses used to look like:

Old ulysses interface

This is what it looks like now:

New ulysses 3 interface

The simplicity and minimalism of the new interface speaks volumes about the direction that The Soulmen have taken to refine, simplify and expand the audience of an application that (up to this point) has had a reputation for being more than a little unfriendly.

Yet it’s also a good example of an unnecessary embrace of iOS design. The original layout is less ‘clean’, but no space is wasted, and information is displayed without summoning up a series of detachable floating panels. If you wanted to remove them you could, but now everything is hidden away.

Worse, perhaps, is that a lot is simply gone.

The export options before (only a screenshot of some of the options):

Export options old

And now:1

Export options new Ulysses 3

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does denote a serious change of audience. You’re not going to be able to produce finally formatted documents in Ulysses 3 with the same flexibility as something like Scrivener:

Scrivener export

On the plus side, the three-pane layout is a huge improvement over the tab system, and the ‘join’ functionality provides a long needed Scrivener-esque means of viewing multiple documents as if they were one.

The Ulysses 3 Rundown

The problem with Ulysses 3 is that it’s now an editor without an audience. The inability to utilise the full feature set with ‘external’ (read: portable) documents hampers its usefulness to those of us who like to keep an inventory of Markdown files in a Dropbox directory. Strip away the annotations, comments and file attachments and you’re faced with a decidedly mediocre editor with a few cute tricks with regards to hiding markup. Meanwhile, the aspiring novelist who doesn’t care about any of the above still has no universal text search, no hierarchical overview and extremely limited export options.2

Ulysses used to advertise itself as a long form writing tool, yet now in its third incarnation the focus has clearly shifted to short form pieces – a move likely inspired by the growing popularity of Markdown amongst bloggers. There’s some great potential here; the iCloud integration is tight, the interface is beautiful, the markup additions are clever; but in trying to cater to two separate user groups, Ulysses’ famously uncompromising ethos has become a little murky. As Gabe says, it’s ‘no match for nvALT or a nerd-editor like Sublime Text or BBEdit’, but unfortunately it’s also no match for more user friendly applications such as Scrivener, which offer a wealth of power user tools for those who need them and a basic toolset for those who don’t.

Ultimately, Ulysses 3 doesn’t do anything well enough to seriously recommend it over the alternatives. It’s a good application, but a lot less relevant than it used to be.

  1. Although I am grateful for the opportunity to open the current document (without saving it) in an alternative application. ↩

  2. Alfred to the rescue, apparently! ↩

The Text Editor Evolution

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My progression (sometimes regression) through text editors has been rapid, frequent and productivity sapping.

Every time I hear of a new editor or a new major version of an editor I drop everything, switch to it and play around with it ceaselessly. When there’s a dry spell in development I just cycle once more through all the editors I’ve already tested in their current state.

Part of me accepts that this is just something I (sadly enough) really enjoy. For me it’s not just a case of finding the right tool for the job, the editor I feel most comfortable in, or what I’m fastest working in. In fact, one of the biggest problems with any kind of app-based schizophrenia is a complete lack of productivity. Anybody can be at least capably fast in an editor provided they’ve learnt at least some of its intricacies, but it’s nearly impossible to be even the slightest bit productive when jumping around.

You’re either stuck in one of two states:

  1. You’re interrupting your work constantly to figure out how to perform a ‘time saving’ function (like get your equivalent of Zen Coding working) and how to work harder / better / faster in your new editor.
  2. You’re interrupting your work in order to figure out how to get your new editor to behave more like your old editor.

Either way it’s a disaster and a total time sink, albeit a rather enjoyable one.

The Evolution of the Editor

My needs in an editor started out (and still remain) basic. Since I’m working only on front end design I don’t need to worry about autocompleting PHP variables or any Ruby/Python prettiness. I just need a fast, reliable HTML/CSS editor with support for preprocessors.

Coda

AppIcon 512x512 75

So my journey began initially with Panic’s Coda, which I seem cursed to forever talk about. When I began using it Coda was a considerably less capable package (back in 1.#). Yet it was pretty, put everything under one roof and kept everything relatively easy to visualise and manage.

This remains Coda’s strength: cohesion. In fact, it’s not dissimilar to how you might subscribe to one manufacturer in order to achieve a unity between all your devices (hardware and software), such as buying mainly Apple products. Your FTP is sitting prettily next to your HTML, your snippets side by side with your MySQL editor. Brilliant.

Espresso

Espresso

Then I moved to Espresso. It was like Coda, but (at the time) a little more impressive. A live CSS preview and the ability to actively rewrite CSS rules for live websites locally was pretty neat. Some of the perks of CSSEdit crammed into another all-in-one package.

Textmate

TextMate

The big one. The second I started to get annoyed with Espresso’s handling of completion and Coda’s lack of auto-refresh I began to consider a more modal setup. Everyone talked about Textmate as being the editor, for blogging, for coding, for everything. It sounded like the Swiss army knife I was missing, the editor I’d never need to replace.

Sublime Text 2 (3)

Sublime Text 2

Disaster strikes. Only a year after buying it, Textmate and its successor are shot down. Textmate 2 is made open source, and despite seeing a flurry of activity, now everyone’s moved onto Sublime, the new (and cooler) kid on the block.

It’s non-native which gives me pause, but I bite the bullet. It’s my first experience having to edit an app’s preferences in a text file, with the app itself.

Yet it’s brilliantly fast, at least with small files, and the magic of Emmet particularly makes it shine in my eyes. Combined with great plugins for multiple panes (Origami) and a robust equivalent of Textmate’s command palette, I settle in.

Less than a year after Sublime Text 2 is officially released (and a scant few updates since then) Sublime Text 3 is announced, complete with upgrade pricing and an even higher initial cost.

Do Not Pass Go

Sublime Text is a fantastic editor. It’s easily the best non-modal editor I’ve ever used and I have nothing but respect for its developer. I don’t think a yearly update or pseudo subscription is unfair, particularly if it helps it avoid a Textmate style death. I am in no way complaining, despite how it may sound.

Rather I’m trying to skip ahead to the final stage of my text editor progression. I can see myself getting increasingly bothered by Sublime’s update fees and relatively small amount of visible activity, annoyed at continuously paying for an editor when I honestly don’t need the entire feature-set.

The journey of choosing the right app (or tool) is something I find enormously fun – in fact most of my free time is sadly spent doing just that. What’s the best podcast app? Let’s buy them all!

The problem is when that journey invades your professional workspace as well. Your text editor should be the last place you experiment. Textmate wasn’t broken for me, I didn’t need or honestly benefit tremendously from any new functionality in Sublime, but I do know I did lose time.

The answer to this is to skip ahead, if at all possible, and leap in at the deep end. Pick the very best possible answer or app or tool and roll with it. Learn it.

If you’re trying to learn photo editing, start with Photoshop.

If you’re trying to learn logo design, start with Illustrator.

If you’re trying to learn version control, start with Git.

So what’s the best text editor?

Apparently, Vim.

Vimtastic

MacVim

I’m not going to list all the benefits of Vim because about a thousand people before me have done just that.

Essentially, however, it comes down to longevity and ubiquity. Vim isn’t going anywhere. It’s over a decade old and still going strong. It’s already on every ‘nix based system – your Mac, your server, everything. There are hundreds of plugins, an incredible amount of documentation, community support and tutorials.

Yes you’ll be jumping in at the deep end. Yes you’ll have to relearn most everything, and your productivity will take a dive – but if you commit, it’ll likely be the last dive it will take in a long, long time. Don’t just switch on Vintage mode in Sublime, it’s a poor emulation. Do or do not, there is no trial run.

If you’re happy with your editor and don’t feel my compulsive need to fool around with the new kid on the block, then leave be and stick with what you’re comfortable using (Vim will still be here when you’re ready).

But if you suffer from my text editor addiction, the sooner you bite the bullet and see where this progression is taking you the better you’ll be for it, and (more importantly) the better off your clients will be for it.

And hey – I’m actually having a lot of fun.

Alfred v2 Workflows / Extensions

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Alfred logo beta final 256x256

Recently Running with Crayons released a public beta of Alfred 2. While I wasn’t too sure initially the update would warrant the additional cost, the changes in how extensions (or ‘workflows’) can operate have sparked a host of new exciting extensions and improved old ones.

The real trick is that Alfred v2 can receive and present data actively as you enter commands. Gone is having to wait for Growl to throw back a response, now you can see everything change dynamically from within Alfred itself.

Here’s a selection of some of my favourite extensions:

Alfred Package Tools

Update: Since this post was written, AlfPT has gone down several times and its future is uncertain (although others are taking on a similar concept). It’s probably best for the time being to just install workflows directly from their authors.

This is currently the glue which holds things together: a repository of extensions that allows for developers to issue updates and for users to download them.

Alfred Package Tools

If you can install an extension via ‘AlfPT’ as opposed to directly downloading it, you probably should. In fact, this is the only extension I’m going to provide a direct link to.

Down for Everyone

Pellet’s simple but extremely useful workflow for checking a URL with Is It Down for Everyone or Just Me.

Is it Down

Tabs

Forget Safari’s ‘pinch to move through tabs’ – just use Alfred. Just type ‘tabs’ and your query. As you type relevant tabs in any of your browsers will appear.

Screen Shot 2013 01 24 at 22 07 27

Hit enter and it’ll take you to the tab and bring your browser to the front.

Touch

The cleanest way I’ve ever created a new file. Performs a ‘touch’ command, creating a new file without you ever having to enter the Terminal.

Touch alfred

Easy (and incredibly useful).

Currency Converter

Does what it says on the tin. The difference is that now in Alfred v2 you don’t have to rely on a Growl notification to get the results.

Alfred convert

The one I’m using (by Pellet) automatically displays two currencies so that I don’t even have to specify if I’m going USD to GBP or the opposite way around. It’s true that I can’t specify a random currency, but if I need to do that I can just let Alfred default to a Google query:

Screen Shot 2013 01 31 at 00 08 09

Translation

You won’t be translating essays any time soon in the Alfred search box, but it’s extremely neat to see an English translation of a foreign word or phrase pop up as you type – and because it’s Google Translate it even automatically detects the language it’s receiving.

Screen Shot 2013 01 31 at 00 17 25

Every auto-completing Search Workflow

There are far too many great search workflows out there to list them all (Youtube, Wikipedia and Google are particularly useful) but the principle remains the same. It’s a custom search, but with the results listed from within Alfred.

Screen Shot 2013 01 31 at 00 20 12

(You don’t need to accidentally skip to the wrong Wikipedia page ever again.)

Markdown Processing

This is kind of a weird one since it doesn’t just perform one function – and I have this element of my workflow already covered with Keyboard Maestro – but it’s a great example of the kind of functionality that the new Workflows allow for.

Screen Shot 2013 01 31 at 00 42 45

Typing ‘md’ acts as a file search for Markdown files, which works as you’d expect, but holding down ‘alt’ and pressing Enter opens the file in Brett’s Marked. Pretty neat.

You can also convert Markdown into HTML from your clipboard or from a file using the Actions menu.

Filetype Search

A very neat way to perform on-the-fly file type searches. I have a bunch of these set up already but every so I often need to perform a search for an infrequent filetype.

Screen Shot 2013 01 31 at 00 16 03

Simply type ‘;’ followed by the extension and then the file name (if you know it). Boom.

Faster / Better / Stronger

Of course there are many more Alfred extensions I love (and use daily), but these are some which really stand out as made possible (or a lot better) by Alfred v2.

Although it’s only a beta, I’ve had no stability problems or crashes, and I have to say I’m using Alfred more than ever before.

Launchbar beware.