Musings from Mars

Getting Started With Cocoa Scripting

Getting Started With Cocoa Scripting . (...)

Adding An Apple Help File To Your Cocoa App

Apple Help Screencast Here's a 2008 screencast from developer Matt Neuberg explaining how to make an Apple Help bundle for your app. (...)

CocoaLab: New source of info for Cocoa programmers

CocoaLab. This site has loads of tutorials and other articles on Cocoa-programming topics. It also goes into specifics on issues such as software licensing and code signing. (...)

Quartz Composer Lab: qtzlcodex.com

qtzlcodex.com. If I ever find time to learn more about QuartzComposer and making compositions, here's a site I'll want to revisit. Includes patches, compositions, and tutorials.

Government Going Apple?

Government going Apple? - Security Systems News. I guess I missed this little tidbit from last fall, courtesy of Security Systems News. (...)

Eight New Themes Coming in CrystalClear Interface 2.5

Besides the set of Crystal Document icons previewed recently, another feature of the forthcoming CrystalClear Interface 2.5 is a new set of eight beautiful preset themes, shown below. (Click the images for a closer look.) The themes are designed to complement the eight Frosted Crystals desktop pictures released with CCI 2.2. Of course, you can still set colors, frames, and transparency settings for Mac OS X windows to your own taste, as always. The preset themes are ones I've enjoyed and find a convenient shortcut to designing custom themes.

Introducing Crystal Documents:A Set of Document Icons for CrystalClear Interface

This is a set of 74 document icons intended to complement CrystalClear Interface and the set of Crystal Albook system and application icons I released a couple of years ago. The set covers most of the document types used by Apple's applications as well as a limited set of document types for third-party applications. The icon set for third-party apps will be augmented substantially as time permits.

These icons are available for download now, and they will be included in the forthcoming release of CrystalClear Interface 2.5 (more on that in another article). In CCI 2.5, you will be able to automatically install and uninstall the various icon sets displayed below, including any of the Crystal Docs icons for any of the third-party applications you use. The new icon install feature will be included in the new CCI Preferences window.

Enjoy!

Microsoft Exec Admits Windows 7 Emulates OS X

Microsoft rebukes exec for Mac inspiration comment. They can run, but they just can't hide.

ComputerWorld Pits Snow Leopard Against Windows 7 (Again)

Smackdown: Windows 7 takes on Apples Snow Leopard. Now, this is more like it! (...)

Analysis Shows Snow Leopard Faster Than Windows 7

Performance showdown: Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard | Windows 7 Insider - CNET Reviews. (...)

CrystalClear Interface 2.2

I posted the new version of CrystalClear Interface a few days ago, and then proceeded to hunt down and squash a couple of last-minute bugs. Yesterday, I was also moved to make one of the hard-wired features a configurable option. While not as dramatic an upgrade as version 2.1, CCI 2.2 nevertheless has a large number of new features, enhanced features, and bug fixes, as well a great deal of code optimizing. This article summarizes the more significant changes since version 2.1 was released in June.

Introducing Frosted Crystals for CrystalClear Interface

.frostHolder { position: relative; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: auto; width: 329px; height: 312px; } .frostedBg { position: absolute; width: 329px; height: 312px; background: transparent url(/images/frostedimages/background.png) no-repeat; } .frostedimg { position: absolute; right: 0px; width: 324px; height: 307px; margin-top:2px; margin-left:2px; margin-right: 3px; margin-bottom: 3px; -webkit-box-reflect: below 0px -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(transparent), color-stop(0.82, transparent), to(rgba(255,255,255,0.9))) 0 0 0 0 stretch stretch; } .title { float: left; width: 125px; height: 45px; top: 186px; position: relative; }.gradientBox { position:relative; width:470px; left:0px; right:0px; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; margin-top: 45px; padding:15px 12px 10px 2px; height:381px; background: url(/images/frostedarticle_bg.jpg) top left repeat-x; -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 3px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -moz-box-shadow: 0px 3px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 8px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 8px; -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 12px; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 12px; -webkit-box-reflect:below 1px -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(transparent), color-stop(0.9, transparent), to(rgba(255,255,255,0.9)));}#credits { text-transform: uppercase; font-family: Trebuchet-MS, Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.3em; font-weight: bold; font-size: 7pt; margin-top:50px; color: rgb(70, 70, 70);text-align:center;text-shadow: 0px 1px 1px rgba(253,252,252,0.9); z-index:5;} These are snippets of the 9 "Frosted Crystal" desktop pictures that'll be distributed with CrystalClear Interface 2.2. (...)

Judge Bans Sales of Microsoft Word, Says MS Stole Code

Microsoft Word Sales Banned In 60 Days -- InformationWeek. Interesting tidbit, though I'm sure it will come to nothing with respect to Microsoft's monopoly word processing software. (...)

WebKit Introduces Styleable Scrollbars

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive » Styling Scrollbars. I've been so busy I missed this... (...)

A Gift for Self-Deception

For a long time now, I've been explaining why the world would have been better off if Apple's computers had come to dominate homes and businesses. I've focused on the virtues of Apple's software almost exclusively, even though Apple has for most of existence been primarily a hardware company, like Dell or Hewlett Packard. Why? Because it's clear to all us Martians that what makes or breaks a computing experience is the software. To paraphrase one of your ex-Presidents, "It's the Software, stupid!" I've also come to believe that humans are genetically predisposed to self-deception, allowing them to talk themselves into whatever point of view is most convenient, or is perceived as being in their best self-interest. Thus, argument over the relative worth of one technology or another is pointless, because no carefully researched and supported set of facts will ever be enough to persuade someone with the opposite view. Indeed, the truth of this axiom is encapsulated in the common human phrase of folk wisdom,

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

I've noted that when someone conjures this phrase to explain a colleague or acquaintance's intransigence about something, those listening will nod to each other knowingly and somewhat sadly aver, "So true." And yet, how many humans really think they're as "stupid" as horses?

Mac | I Love Code

Mac | I Love Code. This is a terrific collection of tutorials on software development, covering various languages and platforms including Mac OS X (Cocoa), HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and iPhone. (...)

CrystalClear Interface 2.1

The latest release of CrystalClear Interface is now available. Version 2.1 is a much more significant upgrade than I'd planned when I began working on it in February! Some of these are highly requested enhancements, while others are here simply because they please me. :-)

nib2cib Enables Using Interface Builder for Cappuccino Apps

nib2cib - Cappuccino nib2cib is a command line tool designed for converting Cocoa’s nibs and xibs to <a href="http://cappuccino.org/">Cappuccino</a>’s cibs. (If you aren't familiar with <a href="http://developer.apple.com/documentation/developertools/Conceptual/IB_UserGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html">Interface Builder</a>, Apple's application layout software, I'm sure that xibs, nibs, and cibs are glibly inscrutable. (...)

Compass: A New Concept for Managing CSS Styles

Compass Compass is an open-source project built on Rails that's currently in development. (...)

Another Windows Guru Falls For A Mac

Living on Air: A Windows guru spends two weeks with a Mac. In this case, said Guru had avoided trying out a Mac for 25 years and finally took the plunge, only after being assigned to do so. (...)

Microsoft’s ‘Apple tax’ claims are ’stupid,’ counters analyst

Microsoft's 'Apple tax' claims are 'stupid,' counters analyst. Microsoft is still trying to convince the world that Macs are too expensive and not worth the price. (...)

Atlas: Very Cool Developer UI for Capuccino

Atlas - 280 North. The Capuccino project seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. (...)

JSTalk: AppleScript For Cocoa Fans

ccgus's jstalk at GitHub Here's the latest offshoot of the jsCocoa universe: JSTalk is a scripting language that can be used to easily interact with Cocoa apps. (...)

JSCocoa — A bridge from JavascriptCore to Cocoa

JSCocoa — A bridge from JavascriptCore to Cocoa On the heels of learning about Cappuccino, here's a project that lets developers access Cocoa from within JavaScript! (...)

Nice Library of AppleScripts

JNSoftware - Miscellaneous Snippets of Code There are a lot of useful AppleScripts here, providing functions I haven't seen elsewhere. Definitely worth returning to...