October 26, 2017

Selenium IDE – The Long Kiss Goodnight

Several months ago, we were tasked with creating tests using Selenium. That came in the guise of the IDE. At first, it was an uphill struggle, as the documentation was pretty poor. But, once I found the right places to look and the right questions to ask, it began to come together. Since then, I’ve been able to create dozens of functional tests and validate large sections of code in a short amount of time. I’m no expert with the IDE, but I can put things together pretty quickly these days. And with the use of SelBlocks, decisions making and loops made the scripts pretty powerful. But with the change to plugins in Firefox, the IDE is all but dead. It came to a screeching halt in v55 and it doesn’t look like anyone will take up the mantle of updating it. And that’s a pity because it’s been a real beneficial tool. Now the question comes, what’s the replacement? […]

October 18, 2017

Protect your privacy in Windows 10 – Free

I just received this from O&O Software and it’s just one of the many reasons I feel it necessary to steer clear of Windows and Microsoft. The all-new Windows 10 Fall Creators Update brings a lot of new features, and aims to make your daily work as easy and hassle-free as possible. This enhanced comfort is to be taken with a grain of salt though: Windows 10 quite freely shares your personal data with Microsoft and certain apps. An operating system that spies on you and needs 3rd party tools to stop it sending information back home isn’t worth having. O&O ShutUp 10

October 17, 2017

A professional writer using Word?

I just saw this tagline and it made me cringe. “I’m a professional writer and I use Word 2016.” Ironically, the article was about making Word faster by turning off a slew of features and UI elements. I won’t question someone being a professional writer, but I will call using Word an amateur decision. The fact you spent big money on a high end piece of software and then need to turn things off proves to me you have chosen poorly. Word is a terrible tool for writers. It’s bloated with features people don’t use. The design is clunky and cumbersome with an emphasis on formatting rather than generating useful content. The interface is a game of hide-and-seek and the underlying text is riddled with hidden formatting code that makes other programs angry. There are far better, far cleaner, far more efficient, and far cheaper alternatives out there. I haven’t used Word in nearly 5 years and I’m the better […]

October 10, 2017

MiniNote Pro for quick note taking

I already have a couple of note taking apps, Notebooks, Outline, but MiniNote Pro is a great scratchpad for those quick and dirty notes I don’t need to keep for very long, like the link to a site or a shell command I need to edit. It sits in the menubar and pops up with a click or with a keyboard command. From there I can add as many notes as I like or search through what I’ve written. If I want my notes available on another machine, there is a sync function. The options are simple, but that’s the beauty of it. MiniNote gives me a convenient place to store items until I decide what needs to be done with them. In most cases, they stick around for a few minutes and then I don’t need the anymore. But it’s extremely handy. MiniNote Pro on the App Store

October 5, 2017

An handy little windows organizer called Magnet

As I get my feet wet with the Mac, or rather, start to building a library of hand utilities, I came across a good one for organizing the app windows. When using DisplayFusion, there are hotkeys for snapping the window to a certain position. This is handy to putting two applications side by side or stacked on top of each other. The task will now be handled by a little app called Magnet that I found on sale for $0.99 in the App Store. It’s normally $9.99, which would still make it pretty handy for the price, but less than a dollar is amazing. I grabbed a copy, have it running and can already see the benefit. It comes preconfigured with hot keys to move a window to the left, right or center, as well as maximize, or set it 2/3 of the window. Pretty handy. Magnet window manager

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