We first started hearing about MacRabbit's Espresso back in September; six months, a public beta and countless cups of coffee later, Espresso 1.0 is finally ready for sipping!

MacRabbit, makers of the award-winning CSSEdit, parlayed the idea of an HTMLEdit companion app into an all around web development app. Right now, Espresso supports HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript and PHP -- but utilizing plugins (Sugars), Espresso can support more languages and platforms.

Similar to Panic's Coda (another TUAW favorite), you can also directly publish from the app, using FTP, SFTP, FTP/SSL and Amazon S3.

Espresso shares many interface similarities with CSSEdit and the presentation is very, very polished. If you're comfortable with CSSEdit, Espresso will likely fit comfortably into your workflow.

We'll be reviewing Espresso in-depth soon and doing some head-to-head action to see how it stacks up against Coda and TextMate.

Espresso is 59.95€ (about $80 US) and 49.95€ ($68 US) for existing CSSEdit 2 customers. You can try Espresso without limitations for 15 days. Espresso requires OS X 10.5 Leopard or higher.


Thanks Nik!

Along with the other changes to iLife '09, iWeb was quietly upgraded to version 3. While the changes aren't as dramatic as those seen in iPhoto and iMovie, they do move iWeb further down the path to being a good web design tool for beginning to intermediate users.

I'm in the process of writing a new edition of an iWeb book, and I took a month to go through iWeb in detail during my research. Click the Read More link below to see what's new in iWeb '09.

If we've said it once, we've said it 1000 times: TUAW loves RapidWeaver. One of RapidWeaver's strengths is that it has an easy-to-use interface, but you can do some really, really powerful stuff with the program. Plus, the third-party network of plugins and themes is really, really top notch.

YourHead Software, which makes some of my favorite RapidWeaver add-ons, has just released a new plugin called Stacks, which ups the ante on what you can do with RapidWeaver, without even having to mess with any code.

Think of Stacks as a souped-up version of one of YourHead's other plugins, Blocks. Mat reviewed Blocks a couple of years ago and it remains one of the best RapidWeaver plugins around. Stacks takes the WYSIWYG drag-and-drop layout approach of Blocks, but adds support for fluid layouts (even if your theme has a variable width), nested objects, stacks within stacks, and more.

I've been using the Stacks beta for the last couple of weeks and I have to say that it has opened my eyes to some possibilities with RapidWeaver that I hadn't even considered before. Traditionally, creating a different layout for each page is time consuming unless you rely on snippets or go with basic designs. Because I like to use RapidWeaver to rapidly prototype sites, being able to build out various layouts extremely quickly saves me time.

As a demonstration, I created this page in about five minutes using Stacks, some graphics and Elixir's Twitter plugin for Stacks. That's another feature I like about Stacks -- there's an API -- so not only can advantageous users look at building their own elements for use in Stacks, RapidWeaver plugin and theme developers can look at using it too. Stacks can also use Loghound's excellent PlusKit so that you can embed Google Docs, other page types or elements and do lightboxing with your photos, all within Stacks.

Stacks is $19.95 and it requires RapidWeaver 4.2.1 or newer to work. You can try the demo (direct link to DMG) for free and access all the features; you're just limited to a certain number of items on each page.

Espresso, the highly-anticipated web design and development platform from MacRabbit (creators of CSSEdit), has been released as a public beta (originally predicted for late November). It's not finished (that's why it's called beta, silly), but it's far more complete than what we've seen thus far. The auto-completion capabilities of the editor are well-developed, support for HTML, XML, CSS and Javascript is included, and the live preview is working nicely. The array of available Sugars, as the extension packages are called, is frequently being added to by users, and support for additional languages is already available. A few themes, some ported from TextMate, can also be found on the wiki.

Web developers who have used CSSEdit are familiar with the simple interface which belies many powerful features. You can expect the same from Espresso. Coda users will be interested as well; when Espresso is feature-complete, you can expect a TUAW-style head-to-head comparison of the two. Personally, I'm a die-hard TextMate user, which any of the TUAW crew can attest to. I always have trouble getting into new editors, no matter how rich their feature set may be. I stopped editing CSS in TextMate when CSSEdit came out, though; there's just no comparison. Knowing CSSEdit the way I do, Espresso may be the platform which finally pulls some of my TextMate loyalty away ... at least for web design.

You can grab the time-limited (30 days) beta from MacRabbit's site. If you're a developer, make sure you check out the wiki. For me, the most appealing aspect of Espresso is its extensibility, and a look through the SDK should pique the interest of any code-sligner.

Word is out ... there's a new contender for the do-it-all web design and development title belt. Espresso has been announced by the creators of CSSEdit, and it looks like major competition for a TUAW favorite, Coda.

Espresso looks like it's going to be a solid editing platform, with an advanced XHTML editor (with spell checking in non-code contexts), live preview (even for database driven applications), advanced search with regular expressions, tabbed interface and sidebar tools and, of course, the things we love about CSSEdit throughout the interface. Espresso will ship with support for HTML, XML, CSS and JavaScript, but here's the really impressive part: it -- not unlike TextMate -- is going to be very extensible. Using XML-based "Sugars," you can add new languages, CodeSense support and more. An SDK will be available for those who wish to earn the title "Sugar Daddy."

I'm looking forward to this release with great anticipation, and the chatter around TUAW indicates I'm not alone. You can sign up for updates on the Espresso page at MacRabbit.

Softpress Systems has released Freeway 5.2, which includes new tools for building web pages for iPhone and iPod touch. Freeway is WYSIWYG website creation software that features a traditional, page-layout approach and omits the need to write any code (unless, you know, you really want to handcraft your HTML).

New in version 5.2 is the ability to create iPhone home screen icons and custom links to iPhone applications like Mail, Phone, Maps, and YouTube. Also, Freeway helps prepare QuickTime videos for playback on iPhone under a variety of network conditions.

Additionally, Softpress has published a best practices document for publishing web sites for the iPhone and iPod touch. The "Building websites for the iPhone with Freeway" document can be found on the Softpress website.

The update is free for registered users of Freeway 5 or higher. For new users, it's available in two flavors: Freeway 5 Express ($79) and Freeway 5 Pro ($249). The differences between the two versions are available here.

I'm a heavy user of the IconFactory's xScope, a great universal tool for designers which we've covered several times. For those of us with a need for it, it's worth every cent. I happened upon a freeware application today, though, which provides a subset of xScope's very useful features: omnidea Rulers.

This free app does a great job of providing on-screen guides, allowing the insertion of horizontal, vertical and intersection rules. It also gives you Photoshop-style rulers at the top and side of your screen for positioning. A HUD provides mouse coordinates and a magnifying glass, with two minimal views and one that shows all of the data at once.

Rulers provides screenshot capabilities. More useful than that, though, it also has an auto-measure tool similar to xScope's "Dimensions" mode. This is infinitely useful for quickly determining the pixel size of any on-screen area of which it can discern the edges. When Rulers is in the foreground, pressing Command-A will instantly show cross-hairs and a measurement for the area surrounding the mouse cursor.

Rulers is pretty darn useful, especially for web designers, and it's free. Pick up a copy from omnidea and enjoy.

This isn't earth-shattering, nor is it breaking news but sometimes you just have to step back and enjoy the little things in life. I was watching a few of the iLife '08 and iWork '08 tutorials (posted about here and here) to get a feel for some of the new features. I clicked on a movie, watched it, and then clicked on another. Pretty straightforward, but then I noticed a little check mark had appeared next to the tutorials I had already watched.

Nice touch, Apple web ninjas!

Fresh from receiving an Apple Design Award at WWDC '07 (runner up for "Best Mac OS X User Experience"), the folks at Karelia have released Sandvox 1.2.2 (we've written about Sandvox before). If you're unfamiliar, it's a WYSIWYG web editor that features drag-and-drop ease, iLife integration, simple publishing and several attractive templates.

Speaking of templates, they've all been tweaked in version 1.2.2 to look great on an iPhone. Other changes include squashed bugs and localization improvements.

Sandvox requires Mac OS 10.4 or later, is universal and comes in both pro ($79US) and "regular" ($49US) versions. Version 1.2.2 is a free upgrade for registered users.

Realmac Software today has released the much-anticipated new version of RapidWeaver, their powerful WYSIWYG software that does a great job of filling the gap between iWeb and Dreamweaver. This new v3.6 ushers in a significant list of new features, such as:

• Themes Styles - no more digging in HTML and CSS to customize your theme (unless you really want to)
• 6 completely new themes
• Snippets - manage chunks of frequently used code instead of copy/pasting or constantly re-typing
• New Flash Slideshow - completely rewritten and can now pull images from a Flickr feed
• Improved blog, including tags and inline comment support
• Easy creation of Lists
• Detailed Publishing
• And much, much more

Also, due to RapidWeaver's "skyrocketing" popularity, RealMac Software introduced a redesigned website today that includes a full-featured add-ons section where users can browse themes, plug-ins and code snippets, which of course also means 3rd parties nowhave one central RapidWeaver community where the can highlight their products.

With everything involved, I can completely understand Realmac Software's decision to make v3.6 a paid upgrade - current users (including MacHeist owners) can purchase a v3.6 license for $25, while a full license costs $49. A demo is of course available, so head over to the shiny new Realmac Software site to see everything RapidWeaver has to offer.

RapidWeaver, arguably the 800 lb. gorilla of the WYSIWYG web design space on the Mac, is being sold for $27.97 on MacZOT - a 30% discount off its retail price of $39.95. The debate around sites like MacZOT aside, I view this simply as a killer sale on a rockin' app.

Now I honestly haven't checked in on a MacZOT deal in a while, but it appears RapidWeaver is up on the block only through tonight and tomorrow, so act fast.

Safari users and web designers who aren't entirely happy with the browser's performance, especially under extended use, have another tool for their belts to optimize and tweak its performance. SafariSpeed 2.0 has been able to turn off favicons and Safari's 1 second page loading delay in the past, but this recent 2.0 upgrade includes new features like:

• disable cache (ideal for web designers testing sites)
• enable/disable the debug menu
• toggle PDF support (either downloading the PDF or displaying it in-line)
• swap between the on-its-last-legs brushed metal and Aqua

While I've seen some of these functions offered in various plugins, SafariSpeed's 5-license price of $8 sounds reasonable to get them all in one place. The demo can be run 11 times, and registering also has the added benefit of netting you priority support.

The Mac Observer is reporting that Adobe announced at Adobe Live that the company is giving the axe to GoLive and Freehand for CS3, due out spring of 2007. Before the Adobe-Macromedia merger, GoLive was Adobe's Dreamweaver (and a far superior product, might I add), and Freehand was Macromedia's Illustrator (here's hoping Adobe means every word of their comment that "Dreamweaver will get a new interface"). I'm sure that since this decision was made some time ago, Adobe has had extra development hands to spend on making an Intel-native Creative Suite other projects.

If this announcement disappoints you, just remember something John Gruber said in his translation of Adobe's PR announcement and FAQs of the merger: "Competition is overrated - it only benefits customers".