December 09, 2001
I spent some time this weekend trying to install LinuxPPC on my Mac again. After a number of failed attempts and a bit of research, I determined that although it's possible to install it alongside MacOS9 and OS X, it's more trouble than it's worth right now. I've got another box to put it on. To make up for it, though, I found a few cool things coming this week:
- The next MacGimp CD is shipping. The Gimp on OS X? Yum.
- Apple's shipping their updated development tools on CD. A CD came with OS X, but not with the 10.1 upgrade. They were available as a download only, which sucks for those of us without a broadband connection. Now I can get the CD and start compiling software again. And I should really get back into using Java. OS X is a great platform for Java development.
- Fog Creek's released CityDesk, desktop web content management software for Windows. I have high hopes for this at work, where we've been facing the fact that we just need something better. Dreamweaver is an excellent tool but is a bit too much in the hands of the people who handle our 30+ department web sites. They shouldn't have to worry about things like web standards, accessibility, image optimizing, and so on. It's far more work than it should be for people who have other things to do in their jobs. We've been looking at browser-based content management systems (using, say, either Zope or ColdFusion), but I'm no longer convinced that's the best thing for us. Since most of the site content originates in Microsoft Office products, I'm inclined to use something like HTML Transit, which converts Office docs and manages the site. Sorta. Thing is, the version of Transit we own is getting old and is a real pain to work with. So I want to at least look at CityDesk. I have great faith in Joel Spolsky and company to produce top-notch software.
