gnapse corner

I don't know really how to start this as I've been absent for so long, but I guess I don't need to get a lot into it. I'm back and that's it. The main problem for me is time, but I've been missing writing here a lot. Mostly because a blog like this is more for me than for the casual reader that might stop back. I am venturing myself in lots of new projects and experiences and I am constantly doing research and documenting my progress and stuff in a place like this serves me as a back reference in the future, but it might also be of some use to someone stopping by.

After all this time my interests haven't changed a lot. I'm now working mostly on Ubuntu Linux developing Ruby on Rails applications using also Git as my source-code management system. So that's what I'll be talking about here mostly on the technical side, which does not preclude getting away from these subjects every once in a while.

Regarding Opera, I must say that it gained me back after flirting with Firefox for some time. But finally the speed made me turn back. Firefox is so damn slooooooooooow I cannot even imagine how people use it anymore. It has become slower and using more memory than ever before. Opening a new tab freezes it for a few seconds, which is not tolerable. Coincidentally today they release the version 3, which I've been testing for a while in its beta and RC forms but it is still the same. The only thing that keeps me using Firefox is for web development, because Opera really lacks a Firebug killer (don't tell me it's dragonfly because it isn't, although it can be in the future).

And back to Opera, kudos for Opera 9.5!!! Firebug appart, Opera is still the great choice! Damn Google for not giving first class support for its fantastic web applications on Opera (read Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Reader, etc.) but they are mostly usable anyway, and the advantages of using Opera really outweight the need to use Google Apps. I hope they are listening.

Well, that's it for the moment. I hope not to let this blog down this time, at least for a while.

Yes my friends. Dreamweaver is over now. At least for me.

Have you heard of Aptana, the Web IDE? It is based on the Eclipse platform, which I have been already using for Web development since I dumped Windows for good a few months ago.

And I really have to say that I've been missing Dreamweaver during all this time, honestly. I even have to confess that I cheated for a few days and I used it while on a friend's machine, and I felt delighted. Why is it that Macromedia then (and Adobe now) don't do it for Linux? People would really pay for it.

But Aptana is platform-agnostic and it's free (as in speech and as in beer), just like Eclipse. It is available as a standalone download (with or without the bundled JRE in some cases) and it is also available as a plugin for an existing Eclipse installation. It features code completion in all of the Web trio: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It is Ajax-oriented and is also aware of several popular JavaScript toolkits and libraries, such as MochiKit, Dojo, AFLAX and my personal choice, Yahoo! UI.

Code-completion pop-up list-boxes show the available tags/attributes/functions/css (depending on the context) along with browser-compatibility icons on the right, so that you can readily see if you are about to use an IE-only or a Gecko-only feature. If you are a Web-standards kind of guy like me, then you'll love it. Here's a screenshot for those who didn't understand this bleeding-edge feature.

And a small note before finishing. Eclipse has another web development toolkit available for everyone: The Web Tools Platform, which is an alternative and a choice. I discovered both recently and I personally prefer Aptana, but having a choice is nice. Feel free to try both, no matter if you're Windows, Linux or Mac. The Open-Source Web Development Environment is here.

Home page
...and common download options.

Blog
Stay up-to-date about Aptana.

Downloads
Detailed download page with additional options.

Screenshots
A good place to have a quick glance ot the main features.

Screencasts
Here you can get a more detailed view at it before downloading. Watch videos to see what it's like to use it.

And that's all. Enjoy it!

Wouldn't the title be "Is there a similar application for Linux?"

No, you read it right. Being now more than a month using Ubuntu full time, I have been experiencing several open source applications. Some of them are new to me, some were already in my stock, but now they are even better, definitely ready for my desktop.

These are the highlights of what I've been using.

Tradition endures

• OpenOffice.org
  
• Gimp
  
• Gaim
  
• Eclipse IDE
  
• Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird
  
• Opera
  

All of these above are available for Windows too, and I have used them for a while now in both platforms. They are must-have applications for me.

The new kids on the block

I have found in the last weeks several applications that make my life easier, all of them just as handy as "sudo apt-get install".

• Beagle, Desktop search.
  
• F-Spot, Photo management.
  
• Banshee, Music player.
  
• Tomboy, Note-taking.
  

These are Mono-based. They prove how mature this project has become.

I also started using the dict utility, GnomeBaker instead of K3b, Firestarter as my firewall, nessus to keep my systems free of vulnerabilities, and Thoggen to rip my DVDs.

I remember myself months ago searching for applications in Linux to substitute my Windows applications of choice. Now is the other way around in many cases. I'd like a firewall for windows as configurable and easy-to-use as Firestarter, a photo manager as rich in features as F-Spot, and a desktop search system as clean and fast as Beagle.

For the first time since I've been using Linux (for about 8 years now) I feel 100% comfortable with a distribution, and that is Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I've used Mandrake and Red Hat initially, and SuSE, Debian and the previous Ubuntu in more recent times.

I am a spoiled power user

I have to say that I consider my self a power user, not afraid of the CLI but very thankful of aiding graphical interfaces for some tasks. I prefer Gnome-Baker or K3b over cdrecord, for instance. But I also prefer to get my hands dirty with Perl to automate boring repetitive tasks, and I even enjoy reading man pages. I am no newbie Windows-like user, but I could use some visual aid.

Therefore Windows gets too stupid-proof for me, without even actually being stupid-proof in the end. Linux, on the other hand, was always a powerful tool. It always allowed you to go under the hood to see what was going on, and was also slowly creating an environment for those not willing to go there so often. But there was always something wrong. And I am talking beyond hardware support.

Broken expectations

In SuSE 10, for instance, USB sticks were automatically detected, but the unmount feature when right-clicking it showed some error stating that only root was allowed to do that. And this was the best experience I have always had with flash memory sticks in Linux.

Ubuntu to the rescue

I never really dumped Linux for these minor annoyances, but I always found my self needing Windows every once in a while. And I was never really able to fully convince my point-and-click relatives and friends that they were going to feel comfortable with Linux.

Ubuntu Breezy was like the promised land but it fell short of being it. The RootSudo thing (rightfully praised as wonderful and intuitive) never worked for me, don't ask me why. But the rest of it seemed tasty and I expected the next release with anxiety.

And waiting gave the expected results

Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS answered many questions and covered nearly every expectation I had. Everything worked seamlessly and I can even recommend it without having to bring myself to ease the installation process, because installation is the easiest and seamlessly I've ever tasted ever, not only with Linux. Who said Windows was an easy install?

Ubuntu starts as a Live CD, so you can taste it before you embrace it. Once on the desktop and you'll love it. Gnome 2.14 comes out shining from end to end. The Human theme makes XP's Luna and KDE's Plastik look like amateur.

The initial and reduced set of applications pre-installed is very well chosen and covers a great spectrum of most common tasks. Gimp for graphics manipulation; OpenOffice.org as the office suite; gedit for simple text editing; Rythmbox, Serpentine and the Sound Juicer on the media side, Firefox for web browsing and Evolution as the mail client, are all excellent choices.

And a simple icon on the Live CD desktop triggers the installation process. You may need to make room for Ubuntu in your hard drive, and this might be the hardest part, but not that hard. Gparted is also available at this stage so you can comfortably resize some windows partition graphically without loosing your data (although backing up some data is not a bad idea though). I expect them to incorporate the partitioning stage of installation into the wizard for the next Ubuntu release.

Up and running!


Once installed, the RootSudo thing work and the available set of applications is enormous, provided you enable the proper software repositories. The documentation in this respect is wonderful, so an in-depth coverage of the details here is not necessary.

(Here you have another great source of information about Dapper Drake.)

I just have to say that Ubuntu 6.06 is amazing and you should give it a try. In the true Linux and Debian spirit, Ubuntu is freely available (both as in beer and as in speech), downloadable directly from the web or obtainable by ordering free installation CDs.

Two posts ago I was enjoying my new Linux system, but I had complains about the lack of a good PHP development environment. I have just a few requirements of such an environment, the most important of which are auto-completion of tag names and attributes, auto-insertion of tag closings and syntax coloring. I don't even need the hardest-to-implement feature of all: WYSIWYG designer like Dreamweaver has. I always code absolutely everything by hand-typing it.

After looking for alternative editors and IDEs available for Linux, I found out that Java's greatest IDE, Eclipse, has a plugin to convert it into a great PHP IDE. I downloaded the last Eclipse version and the last PHP-eclipse plugin version, and as I'm typing this post, I have it running. I just couldn't wait to come and tell about it here.

So if you're a PHP developer that likes a reasonably comfortable environment, and you haven't dropped down Windows because of Dreamweaver, here you have a solution. I should also alert you that you'll need a reasonably modern hardware, because Eclipse needs some resources (Dreamweaver needs them too).