BTW…

I thought I was a maker, but I guess I’m really a manager?

Currently, it extracts only 6 digit hex codes, but I’m planning to add 3 digit hex (#1A3), color words (blue, red, yellow, etc), and possibly RGB at some point.

This tool does two things that I really like, first, it provides a colorized chart showing all colors found from the input text. This is similar to the Hex Extractor tool I discussed earlier.

My favorite feature though is that it colorizes the input text itself. This is useful for matching up the definition of a color with where it is used. For instance to more easily identify a color definition in a CSS file.

Color Hound – by Zak Anderson

Use a Single Editor Well

The editor should be an extension of your hand; make sure your editor is configurable, extensible, and programmable.

-  The Pragmatic Programmer

I’m starting a project in Ruby on Rails and I’ve found that most documentation, books, and webcasts use the TextMate editor available only for Macintosh computers.  As a longtime user of IDM’s UltraEdit software I’ve configured this editor to work with highlighting similar to style of the themes for TextMate.  Specifically, the idleFingers theme.  I haven’t created an exact match, but it’s pretty close.  I like this theme since it’s easy to see the different syntax elements, while remaining on the soft/natural side in terms of intensity.

Note that I’ve built this configuration and guide based on my current copy of UltraEdit, v11.20b.  Newer or older versions will behave differently, but hopefully similarly enough that this guide is still useful.

Without further ado:

Instructions for making UltraEdit look similar to TextMate for editing Ruby/Ruby on Rails as seen in the Creating a weblog in 15 minutes with Rails 2 screencast which uses the idleFingers TextMate theme and the Bitstream Vera Sans Mono font.

Theme: Based on idleFingers

Download

You can find instructions for importing this file into UltraEdit from this forum post from a similar project for a different theme.

Note that this file is for UltrEdit versions prior to v15.  With version 15+ color schemes are stored in the WordFiles.

This file assumes that Ruby is your 15th language in the WordFile (ie, /L15″Ruby” …).  You should change the number in the first line to match your WordFile.

Font, and an alternative:

• Bitstream Vera Sans Mono (10pt, bold)
• Dina Programming Font (10pt regular)

Afer installing the font in Windows, in Ultra-Edit go to View -> Set Font

Ruby Wordfile:

• From IDM/UltraEdit website
• My customized Ruby wordfile with additional indentation keywords and removed highlighting of any word starting with a capital letter.

1. Instructions for installing a wordfile on UltraEdit v15 or higher
2. Instructions for installing a wordfile on UltraEdit prior to V15

Sample using the Dina font

Sample with BitStream font

View Source Chart/View Rendered Source is a FireFox plugin, and I’ve used it extensively in the past.  This plugin allows you to get a much better view of the source html of a webpage than most standard browser offerings.  The html is reformatted into blocks that reflect the html nesting of the source, which is often a chore to pick out.  The individual blocks of code are colored and outlined to be easier to distinguish, and you can click on a block of code to minimize or restore it so that you can focus on just what you want to see.

This plugin became a paid download awhile back, but it looks like the current version, 2.7, is free again.

I checked today 4/15 and it appears that 2.7 is now $10 for 9 copies, but v2.5.0503 which works with FireFox 3.08 is available for free.

The author’s page (With the current version available for download)

View Source Chart (The FireFox extensions site, hosting an old version of the plugin)

- View Source Chart by Jennifer Madden

Here’s a nice tool that will extract color information from a stylesheet.  In my case, I had a 500 line CSS file and I needed to get a good idea of what colors I had available to use in a new stylesheet based on the existing one.  Using the following utility, I was able to create a user friendly palette to work with.

http://www.hextractor.com/

- Hextractor by Kenn Wilson

Define your corner style in the CSS document for a class, then apply that style to the html element.  The JavaScript will do the rest.  It uses built-in corner rendering for browsers that support it, and uses the JavaScript for other browsers.

Curvy Corners

- Curvy Corners by Cameron Cooke

Today, Sexy Buttons, a handy tutorial with examples of how to implement HTML form submit buttons with better support for customized style using images.

- Sexy Buttons by Alex Griffioen

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