Maria’s Guides

A great little free text editor.

I thought I’d take a moment to praise the folks at Bare Bones Software for their free text editor, TextWrangler.

TextWrangler is a kind of pared-down version of BBEdit, Bare Bones’s super powerful text editor for programming types. TextWrangler is perfect for editing text files created for Web publishing, including HTML, PHP, and JavaScript files. Unlike other programs capable of saving in “plain text” format (TextEdit and Word come to mind), TextWrangler saves in real plain text that doesn’t include any extraneous codes that a Web browser or other client software might choke on.

TextWrangler also has a number of features that make it excellent for editing text to be used on the Web. For example, TextWrangler has FTP built right in. That means I can open a file on my Web server with TextWrangler via FTP, modify it, and save it — all without launching a separate FTP client. (This has got to be my favorite feature.) TextWrangler has commands for turning smart or curly quotes into straight quotes (or vice versa) or stripping quotes out entirely. It has an extremely powerful Find and Replace feature that supports Grep and pattern matching. The feature list goes on and on.

TextWrangler also has an extensive onscreen support system with detailed Help information and a tutorial. So if you need help figuring out these features — I needed help with Grep — help is there.

Looking for a text editor that leaves TextEdit in the dust? Check out TextWrangler. And if you need even more power, be sure to take the next step and look at BBEdit. I don’t think either program will disappoint you.

Informit.com Article

With my AirPort Express, I’ve figured out a way to get some phenomenal sound from some of that ancient Mac equipment collecting dust in my living room (along with the more modern stuff, of course).

Read all about it in “Extend Your Wireless Network and Play Tunes with AirPort Express”.

Informit.com has published my latest article for them, “Five Funky Finder Features in Mac OS X.”

When I presented these features to a group of long-time Mac users at my Macworld Expo presentation in the Peachpit Press booth, I taught them a thing or two. So check it out and see what new things you might learn.

Informit.com Article

I learned the value of backups the hard way. Follow my example (the good example, not the bad one) and use .Mac Backup to protect the essential information you’re probably not backing up right now.

Read more here: “Save Yourself (And Your Data) with .Mac Backup”.

Looking for additional support for my Quicken books? If so, please read this:

• I do not provide support for any of my Quicken Books on this or any other Web site, or by e-mail, telephone, fax, or any other means. This means I won’t answer your questions about these books, no matter how or where you submit them.
• My Quicken for Windows books are not appropriate for Macintosh users. The two versions of Quicken are very different. If you’re a Mac user, please do not buy my Quicken for Windows book. You will be sorely disappointed.
• I am not currently planning to revise my Quicken for Macintosh book for the current version or a future version of Quicken.
• If you’re looking for the worksheet files referred to in an earlier edition of the Quicken book, you can download them here. PDF reader software is required to open and use them. These files are copyrighted but freely distributable.

There are many reasons why I do not provide additional support for my Quicken books, but I will not list them here. I will say that it was a tough decision to make and that I’m sorry I can’t provide the same level of support for Quicken Official Guide readers as I do for readers of my other books.

Save Yourself (And Your Data) with .Mac Backup

I learned the value of backups the hard way. Read this article and learn how to use .Mac Backup to protect the essential information you’re probably not backing up right now.