Apple releases iOS 4.2.1 GM, still no public release of iOS 4.2 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Android 2.3 Gingerbread available to Nexus One users "in the next few days" originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Nov 2010 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Adobe Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool now in demo stage

Adobe Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool now in demo stage originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Canadian Brad Turcotte, AKA Brad Sucks, makes music. In fact, he makes open source music, and he lets people download the source files of his songs for free and remix them into all sorts of weird creations.

Given his open source musical model, it should come as no surprise to you that Brad is a nerd. And as a nerd, he scratched his own itch and created the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store.

The store is aimed mainly at selling digital goods, and it relies on existing solutions for storage and billing. That means an Amazon S3 account is recommended (but not required), and a PayPal account is required. The store generates expiring URLs for downloading your content, and it gives buyers instant access to your content once they've paid up.

One feature that's missing is a "pay as much as you want" option, a la Bandcamp. That's not a bad idea, and it's one that I hope to see Brad implementing in the future.

And while you're at Brad's site, go check out his upcoming album, Guess Who's a Mess. Not all of the tracks are ready, but you can already listen to some full-length tunes.

Brad Sucks Digital Download Store is a free, easy-to-install Web storefront originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the first things you learn about writing for the Web is that you have an incredibly short amount of time to make a first impression; it's usually said to be around three seconds. So, if you've grabbed your visitor's interest or managed to get your message across within those three seconds, you did a good job.

But how do you know if you did? Clue is a new Web app from the fine folks at Zurb that can help you find out. It works like a memory game: feed it with a URL, and Clue generates a "memory page."

When you send someone a link to that "memory page," they're shown a screenshot of your site for a few seconds (I didn't actually count, it may be more than three), and then they're asked to name five things that are memorable about the Web page. These are just five keywords.

After answering, the user is taken to a results page where they can see what everyone else answered. That's right - the page is wide-open. Of course, you can see the results, but everyone else can, too. Another catch is that the test only works for 24 hours.

Still, this is a fantastic tool, and it's one that I plan to keep in mind the next time I need some feedback on a Web design.

Clue helps you find out what's memorable about your page originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I'm a big fan of Komodo Edit for editing PHP, HTML and other code. And now, Komodo Edit 6 is officially out!

Komodo Edit 6 has been in Beta for quite some time, and I've been using the Beta versions for months. This release means Edit's older brother, Komodo IDE, also made it to version 6.

Some of what version 6 brings to the table:

• Faster performance, since it's based on Firefox 3.5 -- It's still a hefty beast, and takes a long time to load on my system. But it does feel somewhat faster.
• A new Places system for managing FTP access -- It's better than it used to be, but still isn't up to par with jEdit's FTP plug-in if you ask me.
• HTML5 and CSS3 auto-completion -- That's just Komodo keeping up pace with the world, but it's still very useful.
• Improvements to the Toolbox -- One of the things I like best about Komodo is that it's really extensible - it doesn't use jEdit's annoying Beanshell language, but two different industry-standard languages, Python and JavaScript. And now it's even better, thanks to a new Invoke Tool command which pops up a quick-search prompt with all of your macros and tools.

I did come across a bug when trying to copy a file remotely using FTP access with the new Places feature, but the Komodo team tell me that's getting fixed in a coming update. All in all, if you use Komodo or are in the market for a great free editor, you should definitely take Komodo Edit 6 for a spin.

Komodo Edit 6 is now out, based on Firefox 3.5 sources originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Intel working on ARM-to-x86 tool to bring iOS apps to Atom-powered MeeGo phones originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Slick, sexy and suave are just some of the adjectives that came to mind when I was testing Fillerati. This beautiful little toy is a testament to what one developer can do with modern Web technologies in just 48 hours.

Functionally, it's very simple. Instead of generating Lorem Ipsum text for testing your new website or software, it lets you use excerpts from the works of famous (and long-dead) authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells, and others.

After you specify an author, you can specify which specific work you'd like to draw the text from. Some authors have just a single work available, but Burroughs has two, so I suspect that this one feature was added strictly in his honor (or maybe Fillerati's creator plans to add more works, although I doubt it).

Once you select where to draw the text from, you can specify what HTML elements you'd like the tool to produce. You can create paragraphs, headings (anything from h1 to h6), unordered list items, or just plain text.

You then move your mouse along the slider to decide how much text you'd like to create. The one thing I don't like about this design is the fixed location of the bubble showing how much text you've created. Still, there is a nice little indicator on the slider that shows your current position. Once you're set, click once, and your clipboard will be populated with the test text that you've generated.

If only all Web tools were this graceful!

Fillerati is a wonderful generator for filler text originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Formatting text for the Web is an ongoing quest. HTML has a fairly steep learning curve, but people still need to blog, comment, and somehow format text.

Personally, I'm a huge Markdown fan. In my opinion, if you're trying to write a blog post with formatting that can't be expressed in Markdown you're putting too much emphasis on the formatting.

Still, not everyone likes Markdown, and sometimes circumstances call for a rich, visual content editing control. There are a ton of such controls floating around (with CKEditor being the best-known one), but elRTE seems like a worthy contender.

One of the things I like about it is that you get a bottom bar that shows you exactly where you are in the document hierarchy (i.e., "div > table > tbody > tr > td"). Also, all of the dialogs (for adding tables, images, etc.) are comprehensive, and each provides a ton of options.

Again, I don't think it's a control that I would personally use, because it's huge (some might even say "bloated"). But if some of your users require a visual editor, while others require fine-grained control over the HTML that they create, elRTE might provide a reasonable compromise.

elRTE is a comprehensive, free rich text editor for the Web originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

HTML5 is here, which means Web developers now have a whole bunch of new tags and elements to play with. The Periodic Table of the Elements is an effective visual map of what the "new HTML" looks like. It's a comprehensive table, too; it contains both existing elements (such as the hyperlink tag, a) and elements that were just introduced in HTML5.

Elements are sorted by their function (root elements, metadata and scripting, text-level elements, forms, etc.), and when you hover over an element, you get a short description and a couple of links to further reference material (W3C Developer's Guide and W3Schools).

The whole thing feels very slick and is indeed implemented as an HTML table. One awesome feature is the How are they used? box. For example, you can punch in reddit.com and get a colorized map that shows exactly what HTML5 elements Reddit currently employs. It's not just a binary thing, either (uses/doesn't use). The more an element is used, the brighter it shines on the table. There's even a small instance count when you hover over it; I can tell you that Reddit uses seven input tags and 192 span elements on its main page. That's pretty slick!

Periodic Table of the Elements is a quick, slick HTML5 cheat sheet originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Google Chrome Frame leaves beta, brings HTML5 to legacy browsers

Google Chrome Frame leaves beta, brings HTML5 to legacy browsers originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Direct3D 10 and 11 API now natively supported by Linux via Gallium3D originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Finally, someone has gone and done it: EtherCodes is a mashup of EtherPad and Skywriter (formerly known as Bespin). In simple terms, it's a collaborative, real-time, Web-based code editor, with syntax highlighting for C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, Python, JavaScript, Ruby (yay!), and HTML.

It's currently in alpha, but I've played around with it, and it feels quite solid. It really feels like a hybrid. The familiar EtherPad interface surrounds a text area that is actually Skywriter. And Skywriter has its own command line, which lets you do all sorts of things to your code (convert all tabs to spaces, for example).

You don't get code completion, though, which is a shame. Also, for some reason, EtherCodes won't play nice with Opera -- it wants you to use Firefox 3.5+, Chrome 2.0+, or Safari 4.0+. I'm not really sure why, because Opera has a blazing-fast JavaScript engine. But all in all, I really like this mashup. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, it takes two established technologies and pairs them elegantly.

The mind behind EtherCodes is Gary Yao, who co-authored CKEditor (a well-regarded Rich Text editor for Web applications). I can only hope that EtherCodes will have the same kind of success. It is a much needed product, indeed.

EtherCodes is an interesting code editor for real-time collaboration originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CodeBurner is a neat tool for rapidly checking a ton of CSS and HTML reference information, including compatibility, functionality, and more. It's available as a Firefox add-on or a Firebug plug-in, and as an Adobe AIR application, OS X Dashboard Widget, or Opera add-on.

I tested the Firebug variant, because I use Firebug for all of my Web debugging needs. And indeed, CodeBurner adds a nice, comprehensive reference layer. I click any page element (or search for an element), and get a list showing the selected element and telling me about it, showing what are the attributes defined for this element, what other attributes may be defined for it (i.e, are valid but aren't specified in the site markup), and what styles and selectors apply to this element.

Next to each of these, I can see browser compatibility information for select browsers. For example, I had no idea the "text-align" style is considered "buggy" under IE7 - now I know.

Each style and attribute gets just a single line of text, but if you want more information, just click the more link. You will then be taken to SitePoint's reference section for the selected attribute - here's color for example. The reference page contains a verbose description, an example, and complete compatibility information. If all of this sounds a bit too comprehensive, you can always dial it down a bit and filter your search so that it only returns HTML Elements, for example.

CodeBurner puts Web language reference information at your fingertips originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

New cloud computing algorithm successfully computes two-quadrillionth digit of pi originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 18 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If there's one thing that I dislike about other people's CSS, it's how messy it can be. Seriously... Some people just do whatever they feel like! There's no order or convention.

If you feel the same way, ProCSSor may come in handy the next time you have to tweak someone else's layout. It may be someone who doesn't take the same meticulous care that you do to align all the braces just so and sort all of the attributes alphabetically.

As you can see in the screenshot, ProCSSor looks quite nice (it slides down and everything - we're living in the future now), and it provides you with a plethora of options on where to start new lines, what to do with the selectors, and even how you want the braces handled. In fact, you get to pick one of seven different brace styles. One possible choice is the exotic sounding Horstmann. I can hear it now - "Sorry, I don't touch a stylesheet unless it's Horstmann-formatted. Fix it first, come back to me when it's Horstmann."

One disappointing hiccup arose when I fed it with a URL; it wasn't smart enough to extract the CSS from the linked file, and it just choked and died with an uninformative error message. It was quite sad to watch, really. But as long as you're careful and feed it with just CSS, you should be fine.

Bottom line: ProCSSor looks like it could become a major tool in the discerning CSS connoisseur's toolbox.

ProCSSor is a slick, powerful CSS beautifier originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This one's for the Web developers in the audience. ColorPicker is a very powerful JavaScript ... color picker. Okay, so maybe the name isn't very original (or searchable, for that matter), but it is very descriptive.

In the demo shown on the page, ColorPicker pops up as you click a text field that needs to be filled with a color value (think #ff00ff format). But what you get feels like a full-fledged application; you can populate multiple swatches, specify your color using hue/saturation/brightness (HSB), RGB, CMYK or HEX number, drag the window around, select it using a swatch spot or a hue slider, and that's just one possible look for the control!

As the screenshots on top of the page show, the control is incredibly configurable. You can add and remove UI elements, change its size, skin it, etc. And it's compatible with pretty much everything from IE 5.5 all the way to the newest Chrome and Opera (Firefox included, of course).

One interesting note is that this thing is totally self-sufficient; it doesn't use MooTools or prototype or anything like that. It's all "native code," as they say on the page. I'm not sure that's a plus, but it certainly makes deploying it easier. It's definitely an impressive piece of code!

ColorPicker is a powerhouse JavaScript control for working with color originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Adobe Illustrator HTML5 add-on pack released, lets you export CSS3, SVG and HTML directly originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected." So, that explains the fiasco where apps were being rejected for mentioning that they also had Android versions available. I guess dual-platform developers will have to be more careful how they advertise.

"Apps that use location-based APIs for automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other devices will be rejected." Um, wow. This one makes an enormous amount of sense, but the fact that it's included suggests some App Store MacGyver actually tried to do this. As Steve Jobs would say, "Boom!"

Continue reading Reading Apple's App Store Guidelines - Just the Juicy Parts!

Reading Apple's App Store Guidelines - Just the Juicy Parts! originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple reverses its stance on iOS third-party developer tools; Unity games and Flash apps incoming originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.