As a final word of thanks, here is a list of third party products used in the development of Differencia and the DayTime Website. I like to support the Mac Independent Developer community, but had not quite realised how much, until I wrote this post and saw how many third party products I use and have purchased.
Differencia
Accessorizer, Kevin Callahan. Accessorizer has been of great use, however it doesn’t seem to be under active development, so I will probably be moving to customising Xcode’s existing accessor scripts.
Code Collector Pro, M-Cubed Software. A useful little utility. Whilst I only needed the free version, I purchased the Pro version as I thought Martin Pilkington’s business model was a little bit flawed. He should really be charging for both versions of his product, or drop the free version completely.
FileStorm, MindVision. Simple, straight forward app for creating disk images with background images and licences. A little bit confusing getting the sizing of the window correct the first time, but once the settings are correct, it works great.
svnX, La Chose Interactive. Occasionally Xcode 2’s Source Control system doesn’t cut it, and I need to get a wider overview than the command line can give, so I dip into svnX as my preferred Subversion GUI Client. However with Xcode 3’s improved source control features and my intention to migrate to Git, svnX has unfortunately got a limited life in my tool set.
Graphics
OmniGraffle, The Omni Group. I have employed graphic designers for most of the graphics work for Differencia and the website, but for simple graphics that I feel that I can create myself, I have generally used OmniGraffle. I have had a play with Acorn and have been a long time user of Graphics Converter as well.
iPhoto Library Manager, Fat Cat Software. A great utility that allowed me to keep website and Differencia graphics separate from my main iPhoto library.
Can Combine Icons, ITTPOI. A great little utility that helped to create document icons for Differencia. Again, it seems that it is no longer under active development, which is a shame as it will not be able to create Leopard high resolution Icons files, but it has been really useful up until this point.
Website
Coda, Panic. The harsh reality of Web Development is that WYSIWYG editing is just not possible for anything but simple, template driven websites, without the sledgehammer, expensive, DreamWeaver. Coda is a happy compromise that simplifies web development as far as it can go. I’ve slowly come to really appreciate Coda, as it takes out as much pain from web development as is possible.
CSSEdit, Mac Rabbit. Although Coda includes a CSS Editor, I purchased CSSEdit quite some time ago and still use it, as it is still considerably better than Coda for CSS. CSSEdit has fantastic attention to detail, but more on that in a future post.
MarsEdit, Red Sweater Software. I initially wondered why I would need a Blog Editor for a single Blog. That was until I had to use come to terms with the online editor included with Wordpress. With MarsEdit, you really do blog more.
ChronoSync, Econ Technologies. As with many web hosts, 1 & 1 do not provide automated backups for site content. ChronoSync has been an excellent tool for keeping the DayTime website reliably backed up.
MacFusion, Michael Gorbach. Occasionally I dip into direct access to the website’s file system when I need to do something that Coda or ChronoSync can’t handle. MacFusion is an excellent way to do this easily.
Planning
OmniOutliner, The Omni Group. Omni Outliner is one of my favourite applications and I have put it to all sorts of uses. I have, like many others, been using the OmniFocus betas and as of yesterday will be switching to it full time for planning. However, as project manager, the state of Mac project management tools is sadly disappointing and OmniPlan is unfortunately the best of a bad bunch, in my opinion. So in the mean time, I will make do with OmniOutliner or OmniFocus for task planning.
FogBugz, Fog Creek Software. For bug & feature request tracking, I use FogBugz. There is a little publicised, free, hosted version of the software for start-ups & students. You sign up for the trial and when it expires you can “downgrade” to the free version.
TimeOut, Dejal. Staring at a computer monitor all day can be a real strain and can do a lot of damage to the eyes, along with the risk of RSI. TimeOut is a simple utility that helps you to take regular breaks, when you might otherwise be engrossed in work.
Colloquy. Colloquy has been the sanity saviour, allowing contact with other Mac developers, either for help and advice, or simply for a bit of mindless chat to help take a break from work.
