Visor is an extension of the Mac Terminal.app that allows you to define a hot-key for quickly toggle a terminal window. The terminal has focus and is always at the same place. You can define where this place should be. All settings of a standard terminal like fonts, colors, opacity are applicable. You can use tabs but window groups don’t work. The installation is straight forward. Give it a try!
Jun 19
A couple of days ago I bought a MacBookPro and so I switched from Ubuntu to MacOS. Unfortunately Apple did not ship their unix-version with a package-manager. After a google search I found two alternatives. MacPorts and Homebrew. The press for MacPorts seems not as good as for Homebrew, so I gave Homebrew a try.
For both you need Xcode to be installed:(
UPDATE: At least for Homebrew this is no longer true – see Homebrew without Xcode – save 1.5 GB
sudo curl -L http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tarball/master | sudo tar xz --strip 1 -C /usr/local
Done! This commands will download homebrew and extract it into /usr/local. Some advise you to change the owner of /usr/local. I don’t and add a sudo when I install something. Time to demonstrate it:
sudo brew install maven
Maven is installed. Try mvn --version. If you want to know what is extracted and installed use the verbose mode:
sudo brew -v install maven
The most common things you will need are available: maven, gradle, git, groovy, all there. If s.th. is missing the support reacts quiet fast. Check the so called formulas if your required package is available.
Next, I tried to uninstall a package. Works as it should.
So far I’m happy and recommend it.
Jun 08
A German software developer should think about using a US keyboard because:
- IDE shortcuts are based on a US keyboard layout, so that some shortcuts can’t be used. E.g. Ctrl-Shift-/ won’t work because / is Shift-7 on are German keyboard
- Important characters like {,},[,],@,=,? are easily reachable
- Only the alphabet letters z and y are switched
- There are ways to type German umlaute more easily than on a German keyboard (cont. reading!).
Mac
Developer who can call a Mac their own should use the modified US keyboard from Jan Borchers. It allows you to press option-a instead of option-u-a for the letter รค. I think this is even better then the layout on a German keyboard. The installation is done quickly:
- download
- unzip
move Roman.bundle to /Library/Keyboard Layouts- move USGerman.icns and USGerman.keylayout from within Roman.bundle to /Library/Keyboard Layouts
- restart your mac
- add and select keyboard “U.S. With Umlauts via Option Key”
For a detailed instruction visit the above link.
Linux and Windows
Bernd Schoeller has created similar layouts for Linux and Windows
Update
If you are using CoRD to connect to windows machines you have the problem that the keyboard layout is automatically mapped to romanian. To fix this you need to open
/Applications/CoRD.app/Contents/Resources/windows_keymap_table.txt
and change the key Romanian to – in my case english: Romanian=0×409
Update
When you move the Roman.bundle to /Library/Keyboard Layout it could happen that suddenly the layout stop working. This might effect some accounts only. To prevent you from that you need to copy the *.icns and *.keyboard file into /Library/Keyboard Layout and restart your mac.
Mar 16
Do you use Mac OS X Leopard or above? Do you know the shortcut Apple-? (Command-?)
Give it a try. It will increase your productivity for sure.
Currently I’m using a windows system at work and think about switching to a Mac. Some peers are using Macs already. In a pair programming session I stumbled about the fact, that you can not navigate directly to the menu entries. Pressing Ctrl-F2 and then using the cursor keys or start typing isn’t to best choice. I remembered that Neal Ford told me (The Productive Programmer) that you can reach any menu entry by pressing Apple-?. Next start typing the name (or parts) of the entry you are looking for. Select the one you’re looking for. Press Enter and you’re done.
Screenshots will follow after I bought me a Mac:)
Sep 13
Before I have found this little cool tool, my process of creating a screen-shot was very annoying. I used the Windows print key, opened MS Paint, inserted my screen-shot, selected the desired region, selected the “save as” dialog, chose the jpeg format, named the file and yes, process finished.
With Greenshot it is really just a key stroke. Greenshot is a tool that concentrates on making screen-shots easy.
Greenshot is a perfect utility. Installation is as easy as copying the files into a folder and running Greenshot. No Admin rights necessary. It hooks itself at the print key. After you configured it, you only need to remember to press the print key. No intrusive application windows, just an tray icon. Here are the combination you have to learn:
- print: Left-click and drag to define your screen-shot region
- alt+print: Screen-shot of the active window
- ctrl+print: Fullscreen screen-shot
I like it. What tool do you like?
Sep 13
When you work with Windows XP there are some tweaks that can increase your productivity a lot. In a little series I will talk about them:
- Total Commander – Get productive on the file system
- Launchy – Get immediately what you want
- Outlook – The IDE for emails
- Greenshot – A picture is worth a thousand words
- and more
