Welcome to The Very Daily Weblog of Joshua Blankenship

Let’s start this off right: I am a hack. An amateur. A hobby web developer who occasionally gets talked into building websites for other people. That being said, I spend an inordinate amount of time designing and developing sites of my own and a few client projects, and if I’m going to spend time doing something, I will try my best to work smarter, not harder.

Being dependent on an internet connection to do development work forces me to work when said connection is available, not when I want to work. During a stint of traveling a few months back, I started researching local development options and the process has been so beneficial to my workflow. Here’s how I do development without an internet connection:

1. I use TextMate ($55) for code editing. Use whatever you’re comfortable with here, but I’ve grown to love TextMate for its flexibility, user interface and integration with my ftp client of choice, Transmit ($30).

2. MAMP (free) is an app that installs Apache, PHP and MySQL as a local server environment on your computer. I point MAMP to a document root at /Users/~/sites and keep my files for each project in separate folders there. A browser sees whatever is in that document root as http://localhost:8888/ by default. MAMP also allows of full installs of Wordpress and ExpressionEngine without the need for setting up hosted databases, so I have the freedom to develop fully-functional, content-heavy sites locally.

3. Fluid (free) creates site-specific browsers for any URL. Each Fluid app is treated like a unique application. I create a Fluid app for each project with the URL structure of http://localhost:8888/projectname/ (which is pointing to /Users/~/sites/projectname in the Finder.) I like being able to focus on one project at a time and keep it quarantined off from the rest of my recreational web browsing.

4. But what about everyone’s favorite browser Internet Explorer? Using a combo of Darwine and ie4osx (both free), I can run IE6 and IE7 as X11 apps on my Mac. I have Parallels ($80), too, but I typically don’t need to boot a full Windows install just to see what IE is doing with a website. ie4osx is awesome in its simplicity.

It’s a work in progress, and I’m certainly still learning, but separating my development from the internet-connected browser has set me free to make websites whenever I want to. Web dev is now no different than sketching or playing in Photoshop or writing an article. And it’s possible thanks to mostly free technology.

Stephen Hallgren asked “[Does] anyone have any good links on how to organize gigantic font libraries (not applications, but methods)?” and then specifically asked me to share my categories for organizing fonts.

I use Linotype’s wonderful free app FontExplorer X as a font manager. It works much like iTunes, in that you can add sets (drop and drag) and “smart sets” (which update automatically based on the given criteria.) These sets keep things organized so I don’t have to scan through the entire massive list every time I need a monospaced font for something or a nice script for a wedding invite. They also help me organize in ways that make sense to me and how I look for the right font for the right use.

I keep a set called “Go To” that’s full of the 50 or 60 typefaces I use most often and then sets for specific clients/projects so I don’t forget what faces I used for what clients. For the most part, this organizational structure works for me and saves me tons of time that I used to spend scrolling through that massive list, one font at a time. I’ll also add that I spent a solid week whittling down my library to around ~1600 fonts total. That helps save time more than anything else because honestly, most of the other fonts I had were complete crap that I never used.

Hope this helps, Stephen (and anyone else who may benefit from nerdy ways to organize font folders and such.) Happy typesetting.

Where did all my RSS subscribers go?

Sad,
Joshua

Viewzi bills itself as “a new and highly visual way
to search that brings all your favorite stuff together in one place.” It essentially gives users multiple visual and contextual ways to search the web and hopefully cuts down on the clutter and boringness so often associated with search engines. They have a 101 video to learn more.

When I was still in Dallas, I signed my first (and thus far only) NDA in the early days of Viewzi (only to choose another v-named opportunity at the time), so it’s awesome to see it come to fruition because it’s a great idea and it’s well-implemented. Huge props to Aaron Martin for a lot of the design details throughout, and to the rest of the team that’s pulled it all together.

Cameron Daigle takes us on a walk down (his) memory lane with a variety of old pictures and insightful commentary. Great editing and timing all around.

Regarding Flickr video: I’m curious to see how useful/cluttery it is after the first few weeks of new-toy-syndrome wear off and people start using it “normally” as a part of their Flickr uploading process. Also: the fact that I can’t comment without the video stopping and reloading is annoying.