Claris Home Page Replacement Progress
After reading KompoZer 0.7.7:
Getting Closer to a Replacement for Claris Home Page, Jay
Lichtenauer says:
Thanks for keeping an eye on this topic. I think it was by you
(but certainly through Low End Mac) that I discovered SeaMonkey. I used
CHP [Claris Home Page] right up to just a few months ago. I had
tried Nvu years ago and found it to be awful. I reported the first
few bugs I found but quickly found there were too many to bother
with and threw it away. SeaMonkey has at least been stable and has
enough advantages over CHP to have finally allowed me to switch to
it exclusively. It would be nice if I didn't have to do a cmd-E and
then mouse back to close a browser window every time I try to edit
a page, but SeaMonkey has been perfectly stable.
I'll give KompoZer a test
drive. You might want to compare it directly to SeaMonkey for
advantages/disadvantages, since some of us like you are using
SeaMonkey now for months.
It just seems that someone could have made themselves a
millionaire had they just made a reasonable OS X CHP
replacement and updated for some new Web standards. I have neither
the talent nor time for it myself, but someone out there should
have, you would think. Coffee
Cup Software announced they were coming out with a WYSIWYG
editor for Mac years ago, and then they just removed that text from
their site and nothing came of it.
Funny how some things actually become worse and seem to never
get better. I go back to the Macintosh
XL as my first Mac experience when I moved from my Commodore 64
to a Mac. I have some romantic attachments to some of the user
simplicity that has been forgotten. But things of course are
overall much better than then. I also have a brand new HP Vista PC
next to me, and that's about the worst user experience I've ever
seen. XP was like Monk as it
obsessed over things like my unused icons on the desktop. Vista is
more like a witchcraft practicing high-maintenance paranoid
neurotic mother-in-law.
- Jay Lichtenauer, MacinMind
Software, Inc.
Jay,
Thanks for writing. KompoZer seems to have
everything Nvu and SeaMonkey's Composer module have, so I had no
problem replacing both programs with it. I was tired of using
SeaMonkey, which was more stable, for some projects but always
having to go to Nvu to apply CSS styles. KompoZer gives me
SeaMonkey's stability with Nvu's CSS support. The only loss
compared with SeaMonkey is that I don't have a browser window in
the same program.
I would gladly pay for a good WYSIWYG program that
is as easy to use as Home Page and KompoZer, produces compliant
code, has an excellent site manager with the kind of FTP support
Home Page has always offered, supports Services such as Tidy HTML,
has great editing tools (I'd love tools to change selected text to
ALL CAPS, all lower case, Title Caps, and Sentence, for instance),
and sells for no more than US$100.
I had high hopes for iWeb and bought the iLife 06
family pack specifically so I could try what should have been the
perfect Home Page replacement. Boy was I wrong! With programs like
iWeb, Pages, and Numbers, Apple has developed powerful creative
tools but lost the elegant simplicity of Claris Home Page and
AppleWorks.
As the late Tera Patricks of Mac 360 often said,
"Nothing improves without change." Alas, not all change brings
improvement. Vista is widely reviled, and a fair number of Windows
users prefer Windows 2000 to XP. Mac OS X was a real learning
curve for longtime Mac users, and there are still features we once
had that OS X doesn't give us.
That said, there are still some great programs out
there that don't try to do too much. They have a tight focus on
useful features and avoid feature bloat. TextWrangler, SuperDuper,
iPhoto, iCal, and GyazMail, all of which I use regularly, come to
mind.
Until something better comes along, I'll keep
experimenting with KompoZer and continue using a workflow that
includes TextSoap, Home Page, KompoZer, TextWrangler, and Photoshop
Elements.
Dan
The Macard Project
Sibley writes:
We were having a little discussion over at 68Kmla.net and wondered if you had
considered this . . . seems like it might work:
While it would be a dream, as
Dan Knight points out, someone would would need to write
drivers for it, and I'm afraid anything less than a System 6 would
not get much attention.
However, I have routinely used IDE to SCSI
converters so I could use smaller, cheaper IDE drives on an old
SCSI internal bus. Since there are ATA/IDE Flash drive
interfaces, this may well be a solution with the right
connectors. No special drivers, just connect your flash drive
through the IDE to SCSI adapter and plug into your SCSI bus.
Depending on the flash drive you may need a special application to
format it before you can see it on a very old System (like with my
Zip 100 drive), but once formatted it might work on any old System
just like my Zip does.
Sibley,
Thanks for writing. I'd like to avoid the expense
and complexity of stacking an IDE-to-SCSI interface along with an
IDE-to-Compact Flash device. (Acard also makes some nice
IDE-to-SCSI converters. Their
AEC-7720U uses the traditional internal SCSI connector found in
Macs for ages, but it's also $69.) I guess I'm not ready to spend
over $100 so I can run a vintage Mac or PowerBook from flash.
Dan
LOL, oh I hear ya! I often have to make that decision when
looking at vintage Mac stuff on eBay! However, I have to wonder
what that Macard add-on of yours will retail for . . .
but then it will do a lot more, eh? ;-)
Thanks also for the additional info on SCSI/IDE. And if you have
a 128/512Ke w/Dove card or Plus, you'll need an additional
converter, too . . . ah the price of Vintage Mac-ing.
Cheers!
More Reasons to Keep My G3 iMac
John Hatchett writes:
1. After doing a clean reinstall of Tiger, the old sage beast has a new life. Okay,
every once in a while I get the spinning beach ball of death, but
. . . not very often. Applications launch faster,
Internet surfing is quicker, and life is good.
2. Tragic news - for iSub owners.
I took my iSub to work (my 60s collection need the bass), and it
would not work with the new Intel iMac Dual Core I use. Horrors! My
subwoofer/work of art has lost it's relevancy. I trundled it home
and reconnected it to my sage G3. Now, if I can only find a pair of
iSticks on eBay....
John Hatchett
John,
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I'm assuming
you've got a lot more RAM in your 450 MHz iMac than the 64 MB it
came with. How much RAM did it take to unleash Tiger?
Sorry to hear your iSub won't work with
Intel-based Macs. It was a pretty awesome addition to the Mac realm
circa 2000.
Dan
Possible G3 All-in-One Solution
Joe Leo responds to G3
All-in-One Problem:
Dear Dan,
I think I might know what that guy who wrote in about his
G3 All-in-One, could have as far as
a problem.
Bad video board.
My educational model All-in-One (the big old beige box) started
doing that after two years, and I took it in to a Mac repair center
(not Apple Authorized) locally, and that was their diagnosis and
solution.
Though the clicking noise was from the monitor/screen, not the
power supply.
Joe Leo, Columnist
PBCentral.com
Joe,
Thanks for writing. I'm forwarding your email to
Brian Bettenhausen.
Dan
2007 iMac Value: Don't Forget iLife 08
Chris says:
You forgot one important thing when comparing the old versus the
new . . . iLife
The old ones comes with iLife 06. The new ones come with
iLife 08. So when I
factor that into whether it is worth it to get a refurb or a new
one, that pushes it over to the new one.
Otherwise, looks good!
Chris,
Thanks for writing. I guess I'm happy enough with
iLife 06, but for anyone who works with video, the new iMovie plus
the ability to post movies on .mac could swing things to the new
iMac.
Dan
Problem Printing to a LaserWriter over
AirPort
Hi Dan,
I have an old LaserWriter 12/640 (that I got for $9), which
works great on my wired network. However I use an old graphite
AirPort Base Station for my wireless network, and I can't print
over the wireless network. I suspect it is due to the base station
rather than the compatibility of the printer. If I switch to the
new AirPort Extreme will that enable me to print over the wireless
network? I know it is supposed to support USB printer sharing, but
what about old ethernet printers like the LaserWriters?
Thanks,
John
John,
I suspect the problem is that your AirPort Base
Station isn't configured to handle AppleTalk traffic - or your Mac
isn't set up to process the AppleTalk protocol over AirPort. Make
sure both the computer and the base station are set up for
AppleTalk and your problems may be over.
Dan
That was the first thing I tried, but it just doesn't work.
After checking around some more, I found that I'm not the only one
with the problem. See:
MacBook: Possible workaround for printing via Graphite AirPort Base
Station and
MacBook: Update on AppleTalk over AirPort problem.
Oh well, at least I know that upgrading to APX seems to fix the
problem.
John,
I use a Netgear hub with my WiFi network, as it
handles AppleTalk. Important when you use old hardware.
Dan
Command Line Mac Website
Hey Dan,
My name is Keith Winston, and I just started a new Mac related
site called Command Line
Mac. I recently migrated from desktop Linux, and my site is
focused on how to do Unixy things, scripts, utilities, databases,
etc. at the command line.
I have written frequently for NewsForge.com and Linux.com, and I
founded LinuxBoxAdmin.com (though it is now under new management).
I enjoy Low End Mac, and considered making an offer to write for
your site. However, you already have a long list of accomplished
writers, and plenty of good content. Even so, I wanted to introduce
myself and say thanks for a great resource.
Best Regards,
Keith
Keith,
Thanks for writing. I think the hardest computing
transition I ever made was from command line DOS to the Mac circa
1990. Of course, with the Classic Mac OS, there were no command
line instructions hiding beneath the interface. With OS X,
there's all of Unix (Leopard is even certified as Unix).
Welcome to the Mac side. A fair number of Mac
users have discovered Linux as a good option for older hardware
that won't run OS X decently, yet they want a modern OS so
they can use up-to-date browsers such as Firefox.
Dan
Downloading Files for a Power Mac G3
B&W
Hi LEM,
Do you know if there is a way to get updates and downloads for a
Power Mac G3 B&W on it using a
different computer? I been having some trouble with that since I
don't use the Mac as my primary Internet spot. Thank you
. . . your site is the most help I can ever get .
- Christian
Hi Christian,
Yes, you can download updates and other software
from any computer connected to the Internet. You could burn the
files to a CD or save them to a flash drive or external hard drive
to move them to your Power Mac.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
