Sites of the week

Microsoft has spent considerable time distancing themselves from the horrors of FrontPage. Part of that effort is Expression Web, the replacement and much-improved web design application. While I don’t use Expression Web, all of us at the office have recently installed SuperPreview for Windows Internet Explorer, a really nice tool in these days of multiple browser versions.

SuperPreview is all about comparison. Choose IE6, your current version of IE (If you are using IE8 you can opt for Compatibility Mode), or an image – even a Photoshop PSD file. Select any two and display them next to, above and below, even overlaid on each other. Simultaneously scroll both panes and zoom in to 500% for pixel-perfect analysis. Box Highliting will select the same item on both panes, and select it in the DOM if you choose to view it. You can change the rendered browser size, and more.

Expression Web has a more complete version, including the ability to add other installed browsers like Firefox or Safari. But, then, it’s $300, and SuperPreview is free. It doens’t work every time (on my machine msnbc.com will not render under IE6) but it’s better than wandering off to the computer with IE6 still installed.

• Pick up SuperPreview from Microsoft

Choosing a development environment can be a challenge, but I’ve been happy with Coda from Panic Software. Coda offers most every tool I need in a single application. Targeted to web development, Coda offers syntax highlighting for over twenty languages & formats, searchable online manuals, and live preview using Safari’s WebKit. Sometimes the simplest things are nice, and the Sites pane with a thumbnail view of each site makes managing and finding dozens of sites a snap at work. Even though my office is a Microsoft shop, I use Coda as my primary coding system.

I keep finding new uses for Coda, too. Yesterday I was saved by the token-based find-and-replace, which let me perform complex actions without the effort of building regular expressions. I’ve used the Subversion support for pulling source code or projects in which I am interested; I’ve used the Publish function to unify local and remote directories over FTP without worrying about skipping or replacing files.

Coda isn’t free, but I depend on it every day, and gladly recommend it. They’re at version 1.6.3 and it just keeps getting better.

• See Coda at Panic.com