BW2 :: the bitwise supplement

Visual Studio Flex IDE - Amethyst Developments

Huw Collingbourne — 2009-01-06T13:55:16Z

As regular readers will know, my ‘day job' (when not writing for Bitwise) is developing Visual Studio IDEs for Ruby On Rails and Adobe Flex.
My company, SapphireSteel Software, announced our new Flex IDE, ‘Amethyst', about a month ago when we released the first beta. This beta concentrates on editing and project management functionality. Shortly, we will released beta 2 which will add IntelliSense ‘code completion'. In a few weeks we will release a (...)

Dreamweaver CS4 review

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-12-28T14:10:31Z

Dreamweaver CS4 review (from $399/ upgrade: $199)
Adobe
http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/
There comes a point in a software product's life when users may, on the whole, be pretty satisfied with the existing features and there really is no compelling reason to update.
In my view, Dreamweaver hit that point maybe two versions ago. The last release, CS3, introduced a few neat tools (most of which I've never used) and the latest version, CS4, adds a few more tools and (...)

Wikipedia Censorship Removed (kind of)

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-12-10T11:32:38Z

I note that the British Internet censors, the Internet Watch Foundation, have reversed their decision to block access to a Wikipedia article as reported here on the blog a couple of days ago.
Initially they banned a page about an album by heavy metal band, The Scorpions, on the basis that an album cover that was produced back in the ‘70s was a "potentially illegal child sexual abuse image".
Following much adverse publicity relating to this decision, the Foundation has now decided to (...)

Amethyst, Adobe Flex IDE beta released today

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-12-08T18:02:37Z

As I mentioned a few days ago, my company, SapphireSteel Software, is working on a new IDE called ‘Amethyst' for developing Adobe Flex and AIR applications right inside Microsoft Visual Studio. Adobe Flex is a framework for programming web browser and (via the AIR runtime) desktop applications using the ActionScript language. Typically, the user interfaces of Flex and AIR applications are rendered using Flash graphics.
The version of Amethyst which we have released today is (...)

Wikipedia Censored in the UK

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-12-08T12:34:28Z

China is often criticised in the UK for restricting the access of its citizens to selected areas of the Internet. Even some pages on the esteemed BBC web site are blocked in China.
Here in the UK, of course, we have full, unfettered access to the Internet. After all, we value and uphold freedom of expression and that includes the freedom of British citizens to have the same access to the internet as the people of France, Germany, Italy, Australia and America. Or, at least, so I had (...)

Free Adobe Flex IDE For Visual Studio

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-12-01T18:22:37Z

My company, SapphireSteel Software, has just announced a new Visual Studio IDE, Amethyst, for developing Adobe Flex and AIR applications.
Go To Amethyst Announcement
We'll be releasing the first public beta of Amethyst Personal next week. This is free now and will remain free after the launch of the final product. If you haven't got a copy of Visual Studio, you can even use our All-In-One installer to install a free copy of the Visual Studio ‘Shell' edition.
The (...)

Alien Skin Lens Plug-in - coming soon

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-11-21T13:43:51Z

Alien Skin will be launching a new lens simulation plug-in for Photoshop - just in time for Christmas!
I've just got some advance news of the new Alien Skin ‘Bokeh' Lens Simulation Plug-in. No, I didn't know what Bokeh meant either. I am told that it is the Japanese word for ‘blur'....
Anyway, The Bokeh plug-in is said to do accurate lens simulation to manipulate focus and depth of field in a photograph. For example, it will let you select the subject in (...)

Turbo Pascal - Quarter of a Century Later

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-11-19T12:02:42Z

CodeGear's David Intersimone wrote to me today to remind me of a very important anniversary - 25 years since Turbo Pascal 1.0 shipped!
If that had never happened, I wonder what I'd be doing now? Probably not publishing Bitwise and running a software company.
Turbo Pascal really did change the course of my life. I can't claim that I started using it right after it was released. At that time, I wouldn't have known one end of a computer from the other. I was reasonably (...)

Ruby Rage

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-11-18T17:37:25Z

Some people get almost patriotically attached to their favourite programming languages. All I can say is: I don't. My relative detachment sometimes causes offence - when, for example, I mention something I don't like in a language or think is done better in some other language, some people seem to take it as a personal attack, akin to an act of sabotage or betrayal.
This is especially true of Ruby. Look, I like Ruby, I spend hours of most days programming in Ruby, heck! I run a (...)

Fireworks CS4 Review

Huw Collingbourne — 2008-11-13T12:37:26Z

Adobe recently released new versions of most of its major software products including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. We'll be taking a look at some of these over the weeks ahead - starting with Fireworks...
Fireworks CS4
Fireworks is Adobe's image editing application for web designers. While many of its features duplicate those in Adobe's Photoshop, there are significant differences between the two applications. Photoshop is principally aimed at (...)