Ionut Staicu - Webdeveloper Blog » Software

Microsoft is a funny company!

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:57:07 +0000

Microsoft recently published a comparision table for three big (?!) browsers: IE8, Firefox and Chrome. Here is the table (i made a screenshot in case they change their minds):

After you stop laughing, let’s take it step by step. So:

Security. Ok, maybe I lied when I said we will take it step by step. I don’t worry about security because I don’t visit obscure sites (too often). However, in last three or four years of using Firefox I had NO PROBLEMS with security. Ok, if an obscure site will ASK you to install a toolbar and you will install it… That’s not poor security. That’s great stupidity!
Privacy. I will skip this step too because I’m the only one who use my PC. Besides that I don’t login on other machines. However, Chrome have a “stealth mode” and Firefox permits you to clear all private data (just hit CTRL+SHIFT+DEL).
Ease of use. I’m not the right person to judge about this, so I won’t.
Web Standards. ACID test: Firefox 72/100 and IE8 12/100. I don’t even start Chrome.
Developer Tools. Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you kidding me? The “web developer” is a joke if you compare with firebug. You only can set breakpoints with debugger but you can’t see values on that breakpoint! How stupid is that? Also, if you want to debug a page you need to… (guess!) RELOAD the page! Dumb asses! And for network monitoring what do you have? Nothing? Oh, that’s a bummer.
Reliability. Indeed, this is a problem on Firefox. But not on Chrome too (Chrome will open a new process for each tab).
Customizability. Riiiight. Please show me some IE8 themes!
Manageability. I�m not in a company, i don�t care.
Performance. It�s a tie, they admit it.

I wonder why they didn�t include Safari and Opera in that chart�

CSS Groups in E-texteditor

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:02:19 +0000

Press CTRL+SHIFT+B, open CSS folder then CSS language (with a black L on it, usually is last). Go to line 286 and find this:

"foldingStopMarker" : "(?

Replace with this:

"foldingStopMarker" : "(?

Without grouping:

With grouping:

Thanks to Chris Coyier.

E-texteditor is slow?

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:57:46 +0000

Today I had a very annoying problem: E-texteditor was slow as hell. Besides that, he had over 50% cpu used. Uhm.. Ok, something is wrong when a simple text editor (ok, not so simple, but you get the point) is using CPU so intensive. I looked on forum and I found next solution (which actually works!).

1) First of all we need to make sure E is not opened (eventually look in Task Manager) and a command prompt: press win+r, then type cmd and press enter.
2) After that, you need to go where E is installed. Mine was (and still is ) in : c:\Program Files (x86)\e. If you have a 32bit windows, I guess you will find in c:\Program Files\e. Anyhow, the fastest way to find it is to right click on the E shortcut, choose properties then click on “find target” big ass button.
3) Next (and last) step is to launch the editor. So just type: e.exe --clearstate --clearundo

That’s all. Now I have a real speed boost and no extra CPU usage

ATTENTION!

Even though this is a good speed improvement, you will loose ALL undo and all opened files. So do this when you actually KNOW what are you doing

E-texteditor new releases

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:29:24 +0000

Ok, it’s been so long since last E stable (1.0.32) and I started to think that Alexander dropped the project. Well… I was wrong. And I don’t remember being so happy when I’m wrong
Anyhow, two weeks ago, another release hit the wild: 1.0.33. This is what was new with it:

Added simple (but fast) Find in Project dialog.
Search and Replace now has pop-up history.
Settings dialog now have page with info about cygwin setup [adamv].
Settings are now saved in JSON format.
Repeatedly pressing home key will now toogle between beginning of line and the beginning of the indented text #354 [adamv]
Improved multi-monitor handling #356 [adamv]
Fixed shortcuts using windows keys was broken.
Fixed re-opening previously edited bundle items.
Fixed problem with unicode paths in projects #342 [tea]
Fixed inf. loop after deleting bundle item #309 [tea]

With this release i saw a nice (and so waited!) performance boost: from 20 seconds (or even more!!!), the startup time dropped to 1-2 seconds

After a week or so, big surprise (and I mean it!): a brand new version of E! What’s new with this? Let see:

Added support for Regular Expressions in Find in Project.
Added keyboard shortcut for Find in Project (Ctrl-Alt-F).
Fixed some keyboard shortcuts in menu.
Fixed problem that prevented some bundle shortcuts from being detected.
Fixed restoration of unsaved files #358.
Fixed double-click on project pane folders #357.
Fixed problem when re-opening remote file.
Fixed cygwin path off-by-one error [adamv].
Double-clicking projectpane folder now toogles.
Fixed plain search in ‘Find in Files’.
Removed old ‘Find in Files’ bundle command (it had conflicting shortcut).
Fixed adding slash to drive in cygwin path [adamv]

Of course, the download link is here (click).

Windows Vista and Microsoft mices

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:24:43 +0000

Until two months ago I had a Microsoft Laser 6000. I also runned Microsoft Vista. Hilarious (or not), two MS products doesn’t work together. Or not in the first place.

On some applications, the scroll from the mouse was choppy as hell and kinda impossible to use. I founded two application: winamp and e-texteditor. If winamp is not a big deal (because i use foobar), the real problem was my editor. After few searches on google, i found this solution:

I installed the driver (intellipoint);
Go to start -> run -> msconfig -> startup tab -> find and uncheck ipoint.exe;
And finally, restart your computer

A real pain in the ass was when I wanted to change scrolling speed. I used a system tweaker and change settings from there. After that, restart and saw if is fine. Usually, 3-4 lines for scroll was great.

Few months after, I changed position of my computer and i had to unplug all wires (and trust me, i have A LOT of wires there). Of course, when I plugged all things back, i didn’t put the mouse receiver in the same USB port and it doesn’t worked well. I guess the same problem you will have if you have a notebook, then be sure you plug in the mouse in the very same usb port, because all things will be messed up. Solution? Put the receiver in the same port or redo all settings. I always picked first.

E-texteditor and open source

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:25:13 +0000

Yes, is somehow true. E-texteditor goes open source. Or something like that. From Alexander blog post i extracted this:

The source will be made available in few days;
Even though the source will be public, the software will not be.. free. Licensing code will not be public
Yes, there will be (finally!) a linux version. Which will be free

I can only hope that the TEAM will work on three aspects: stability (a lot of bug fixes), speed (sometimes i encounter some “slow motion” when i open large files; also, on old computers will simply… won’t work) and networking (FTP client can be better than that). Also, a 64 bit version would be nice

Let’s wait and see the evolution of the new Open Company.

Recovering after a crash of e-texteditor

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:23:14 +0000

Even the best software have troubles sometimes. Today i will show you how to survive after a crash of E-texteditor (i survived twice so, you can do too ).

For various reasons, E-text can crash or just hang when you want to save (especially when you work remotely, via FTP) and can ruin the work of a whole day (or even more) because when saves, the editor will first empty/remove current file, then will write the new one. And if the editor crash just after file is removed, you are screwed. Or, at least, you think so.

Whan you need to do:

Grab a small and fast editor. My pick is Scite. Is small and is DAMN fast with huge files.

Hit your WIN+R on your keyboard and write this: %appdata%\e\temp. Then dragg all files in Scite. Here you can find all recently edited files (may be many files, on my pc there is around 30 or so). Now, all you need to do is to find the file you was saving when the editor crashed. I know, it may be hard, but i can bet is not harder than rewritting your whole file

Bonus tip:

Older version of E-texteditor was somehow unstable in various circumstances. And because i use E since 1.0 or so, i had to develop a good habit: backup my settings. For doing that i use Sync Toy 2. Every night i close my editor and every morning synctoy will copy my settings on another partition, just in case. It’s VERY important to close the editor before backup, because most settings (like ftp accounts) are saved when editor closes. So, unless you want your backup to be useless, please, close your editor

Bonus tip 2:

From time to time, visit e-texteditor forums. Most new versions don’t hit the front page if they are not well tested. Live example: on homepage, the last version is 1.0.30 and on forums is 1.0.31 (which is way more stable). So.. Keep an eye there!

I don’t use CS4. Not yet.

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:37:16 +0000

Everyone knows (ok, not everyone, but most people know) that i’m not a design guy. When i have some free time (rarely and rarely ) i start to play with colours and try to make a great design. I never did until now, but i’m a perseverant guy.

Anyhow, let’s get back on CS4. Even CS4 was released officially few days ago, all suite is available on certain sites since two months ago (give or take). I don’t know why, but CS4 was one of the most waited (by me) version of Photoshop. I’m not a photographer or a designer, but… i’m just dying to see it at work.

When i finally have it, i was like.. uhm… that sucks! Because of numerous bugs and flaws, Photoshop was a BIG disappointment. Some parts were good, but the bad parts were… awful

Good things:

64 bit support. I own 8gb of ram but CS3 can’t handle more than 3.2Gb. Actually this is a limitation of all 32bit programs (yes, including windows!). Adobe fix this with a 64bit release of photoshop.
Using GPU for processing. Again, it’s a great thing, but you need a decent video card. I owned a 7600GT from nvidia but no use. With my new 9800Gtx, works great
Canvas slide (i don’t know how is named exactly) – you drag the canvas (with hand tool) and the canvas will move with a nice slide. Not necessary a workflow improvements, but it’s some kind of eyecandy.
Rotate canvas – if you use a tablet pc or a Wacom Cintiq. Not for regular users though.
Content aware scale – you can resize your image with AMAZING results. Great for photographers, for me… Not so great (actually isn’t good or bad)

Bad things:

Well.. Not so many bad things. But those who are here, are enough to make me not to use CS4. I use Photoshop mostly to slice layouts so here is what i found wrong:

You can move a slice over the canvas boundaries. You can’t make it directly bigger, but you can resize/move. After you make a huge slice, you can’t resize it back (only double click, change width/height).
On “save for web” window, if you pick gif/png format and you want to pick colours that will be transparent with color picker, you can’t SHIFT+drag on colors for multiple selections. I use this function kinda frequently, because it’s more easy that creating a “chroma key” layer. On the other hand, on “color table” box, you can pick multiple colors. Nice, but useless because i can’t guess colors…
Photoshop CS4 64bit used to crash after 1-2 minutes. After i google it, i found the problem: if you had Guitar Pro installed, you have to remove “Guitar pro*.ttf” from c:\windows\fonts folder. I deleted that and i have no problem now

Overall, i’m happy with CS4 for only one big reason: 64bit and more than 3Gb ram support. Sometimes i get some huge files to slice (over 50Mb) and every single MB of ram is important. But those problems with slice make the whole program useless for me

I don’t use any other software from CS4, but i heard that Fireworks have some big problems too. Adobe was in big hurry to launch this, and it succeed to mess things up. I hope an update will be launched soon, otherwise CS4 will have the lowest sells in Adobe history.

E-texteditor 1.0.31 Released

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:16:11 +0000

Fixed detection of correct syntax for bundle items.
Fixed insertion of separators in bundle menus.
Fixed cases where deleted bundles returned on restart.
Fixed completion within autobrackets.
Pageup/down now works in completion popup.
Fixed some issues with transformations in snippets.
Symbols are now stripped of newlines before transformation.
Fixed crash when opening project settings with file selected.
Lots of minor bugfixes.

Download free trial of E-texteditor 1.0.31 HERE.

E-texteditor v1.0.30 released

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:56:02 +0000

My favorite editor is on version 1.0.30 (launched today). The main feature is that Alexander finally fixed a MAJOR bug: E used to crash frequently when you use remote or SVN. I didn’t have problems with SVN because i never used and frankly i don’t know how to use But ftp made me to pull my hair out.

Here are the release notes:

Fixed a really nasty memory corruption bug that has been the source of a lot of crashes.
Fixed creation of shortcuts in bundle commands.
Fixed deletion of bundles via context menu.
Fixed crash when clicking on empty dir in ftp project.
Fixed webpreview crash.
Fixed correct restore of bundle pane state.
Fixed bundle env is now also set for CompletionCmds.

Download? As always, on E site: http://e-texteditor.com/download/e_setup.exe

E-texteditor v1.0.29

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:45:50 +0000

Because last time i wrote of E was lucky time (one of the BEST releases!), i will write now about the new version released two days ago. So, what’s new? So, if i quote Alexander:

This update adds an extension to the snippet format, so that you can pipe the contents of individual tabstops through shell commands.

Here is a simple example that allows you to directly evaluate ruby code. Very handy for doing quick calculations without having to do a mental shift:

${1:ruby code|ruby -e "print eval STDIN.read"}

Added an extension to the snippet format so that you can have the content of a tabstop piped through a shell command.
Fixed some projectpane related bugs which had been the cause of a lot of crashes.

Ok, what this is mean? I have no freakin idea! But sounds great! Besides that, Alexander said he will post an entry on E blog with more explanation on this. And if he made this version stable as last time did, this is GREAT!

You can download last version HERE.

For those who don’t know, E-text is a Textmate clone for Windows (Textmate is Mac only) which is better than Textmate

E-texteditor 1.0.27 Released

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:19:35 +0000

This great (and is really great, trust me!) editor has a new version released which have a brand new bundle editor and a lots of minor bugs fixed:

All new bundle editor! You can now edit the bundle items directly in the editor with all basic features available (syntax highlighting, snippets, undo history, etc..).
Hold down shift when selecting an item from the bundle menu and it will open directly in the editor.
From the context menu in the bundle pane you can now export full bundles and individual items for easy sharing.
Added syntax for MSDOS batch files (.bat).
Lots of minor bugfixes.

The latest release can be downloaded at:
http://e-texteditor.com/download/e_setup.exe

I hope only will be stable as previous version (.26) and not like .21-.25 version

News from Adobe

Staicu Ionuț-Bogdan — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:55:55 +0000

Today it seems that it’s a big day. First of all, i redesigned my blogs. Both have same design (and i’m proud with this ). And second, Adobe launched a beta version for Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks and Soundbooth. I won’t comment for FW or SB, because i’m not a design-the-web guy or let’s-mix-all-sounds-in-the-world guy, but let’s see some of the features of DW.

So i downloaded, and i start to install. The process was unexpected FAST. I mean any CS3 product take a LOT of time to install, but this was… wow. In less than 2-3 minutes was done:

First thing i said: OMG, 64bit version! I’m on Vista 64 (i have a lot of Gb of RAM and i don’t want to be wasted on 32 bit version ) so that was a pretty big surprise for me. I knew that Photoshop CS4 will have a 32 bit version, but i didn’t expect to see this on a beta version of DW.

I use JING for making screenshots and since i pressed the button for capture, the installer was half done. Pretty nice, eh?

As i said, the install process was FAST. After install, i press the big button on that window (Click here to run DW CS4 Now) and… nothing happened The first tough was: oups.. didn’t work on Vista 64? I opened Windows Explorer->Program Files and… there is no folder from Adobe. Where the heck was installed? Well.. In the same way as all other Adobe products: Program Files (x86)\Adobe\. I run the new CS4 and… Wow.

The interface is changed. More stylish, nicer, cleaner. I like it, but is too bad i didn’t use DW. And i saw again why…

the most annoying thing: bracket highlight and balance is… missing. On big files, this is really helpful, especially when you have nested function or when you change some code that is not written by you.
the autocomplete for html is the best i ever seen. just add
the autocomplete for css is a great thing for a beginner. This can be a great way for learning and these last things was determining me to use DW for a while. But the bracket thing make me to quit it
doesn’t have line bookmarks. Is a very useful function that is missing from a LOT of editors

New things that i don’t use (and probably i won’t use ever):

subversion integration. I saw that most editors have this feature. Unfortunately i don’t know how to use and every time i tried, i fail. I still try
live view allows you (like the name said) to view your changes in real time. DW uses WebKit engine for this.
new user interface (you can see in a screenshot)
and more.

Anyway, i don’t think i will ever return to this editor too soon (or ever!). That’s because E-texteditor have all function that i want (oh, well, maybe is room for few more things ) and is far more cheaper. Again, if you are a beginner and you want some help on code writing, you should give a try for DW for a while, until you get used with all CSS and HTML tags.