Many developers often face the tedious task of collecting difficult or complex code sequences in some sort of library or list. Most development environments already feature the one or other snippet function to allow for including this task into the workflow. This doesn’t work out though if you work with several programs or even do things via ssh in VI or Emacs on remote systems.
Enter Code Collector: An application focused on the sole task of collecting, keeping and sorting your snippets, functions or code sequences. It nicely integrates into OS X to help in collecting code from different applications as well as inserting it:

Code Collector Pro looks after all your code snippets, letting you quickly reference them whenever you want. With support for Smart Groups, Tagging, TextMate Bundles and much more Code Collector Pro is the best way to store, organise and share code snippets on the Mac

Find the App here

We wrote about CPU architecture optimized Firefox builds before. Now with the advent of Firefox 3, new builds of Firefox for G5 and Intel processors arrived (due to legal issues they’re not called Firefox but Minefield though).

Normaly software is build so it runs on all kinds of different processors, so speed / memory footprint is, in a way, the lowest common detominator (keep in mind that I’m oversimplifying things here, to explain the benefits of optimized builds). However, if a software is optimized for just one archicture, one can throw in all kinds of extra features, that architecture has to offer (like for example SSE or MMX). This, of course, enhances the speed of the whole software.

So without further ado, here you can find the optimized Firefox (erm Minefield) builds. My first tests showed a strong enhancement in startup and scrolling speed.

Oh and btw. these builds use the beautiful MacOSXified Firefox-Icon from Adam Betts which I’ve been used myself for years by manually applying it to Firefox after installing. This icon fits into OSX way better than the original Firefox-Icon (imho, that is).

Ok, mind you, the title of this post is not entirely true, I sort bend the information so it sounded more interesting, but nevertheless:

One thing which always bugged me under Mac OS X was that I needed to have 3 Mediaplayers installed in order to play all the kinds of videofiles which are available out there: Quicktime, Videolan(VLC) and Windows Media Player
Now, thanks to those kind people from Microsoft, Windows Media Player files can be played in quicktime via Flip4Mac. But one still needs VLC in order to play most of the other formats which Quicktime doesn’t handle very well (I always have problems with Mpeg2 files in Quicktime).

And here’s a solution to the above problem: FFusion is a version of the libavcodec library (that’s the library which contains most of VLC’s media support codecs) which has been compiled so it can be used as a Quicktime Component. This enables you to play even more Videofiles with Quicktime, no need to switch to VLC (although VLC is a really good software, it’s just an added burden to start VLC after realizing that Quicktime once again couldn’t play a file). And apart from that it makes all those Videos Frontrow compatible, too! (at least that’s what I think, my Frontrow experiences are.. limited).

You can download the package at the official FFusion page. http://aldorandenet.free.fr/codecs/, however, those are a tad outdated, a newer version can be found on “Dr. Feelgood’s” (couldn’t find his real name) page: http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~feelgood/ (somewhere around the middle of the page)

Darwine is a Wine version which runs under Mac OS X. Wine is a compatibility for running Windows programs, it allows for example to use Internet Explorer or Photoshop under Linux. Previous Darwine versions were compiled for PPC but the fact that Windows apps are compiled for X86 constrained the Darwine usage to only PPC-Compiled apps (which are little to none).

Now with Mac OS X for Intel processors, Darwine can finally run X86 Applications, which means: All those Windows Apps and Games which run under Wine for Linux, should soon work under Mac OS X too (Halflife anyone?)

Here’s a screenshot from someone running Winzip:

OSx86 Project – WINE Arrives for Intel Macs
Mac OS X, Wine, Windows, Core Duo, Darwine, Internet Explorer

I just tried this application recently (they offer a downloadable trial). It’s awesome, offers great usability and, if you’re a bit comfortable with 3D / game stuff, allows to create games in a blaze.

http://otee.dk/