iWork vs. Office

Macworld just wrote a great series comparing Apple’s iWork ’08 to Microsoft Office 2008, trying to discern whether or not Apple’s entry into the world of office suites could replace the reigning king.

For my part, I use both. For word processing, it’s Pages all the way. (If I’m doing a lot of sharing, then I’ll switch over to Word. But I create all my word processing docs in Pages to begin.)

Ditto for presentations and Keynote. This is the one app where I think Apple is far superior.

However, its the spreadsheet work that keeps me hanging on to the Microsoft product. If I’m just working on something for me (or something that needs only to be shared via pdf), then I use Numbers. For what I do, it has a far superior interface.

That said, if I’m sharing with other Office users, I use Excel. The exporting to Excel format in Numbers does not translate into useable Excel documents.

Here’s the Macworld series:

• Pages vs. Word
• Numbers vs. Excel
• Keynote vs. PowerPoint
• iWork vs. Office: Can they get along?

In the last one, several people comment about Export vs. Save As. For me, I don’t mind the Export function. It better fits my workflow. But I see how others might not like it as well.

Journler is my ‘killer app’

There is no short supply of blog posts and online articles either looking for or claiming to have found “the killer app” for a Mac.

In truth, when it comes to using a Mac, I agree with posters at this ArsTechnica forum thread that say it is the entire experience of using a Mac that is the “killer app”, not just a single application.

But were I to choose that one app that is most pivotal to my workflow, it would have to be Journler, by developer Philip Dow.

Journler has been part of my workflow system since shortly after I switched back to using Macs in 2004. Prior to the switch, I was using Microsoft’s OneNote as a PIM, and I really enjoyed it. But the lack of a Mac version sent me in search of the application that would be my heart-and-soul on the computer.

After dual trials with Notebook by Circus Ponies and NoteTaker by AquaMinds, I settled on Notebook. It is an extraordinary app that more than met my needs. But the interface never felt intuitive enough to the way I worked. I always felt as if I struggled to get things out of it the way I should.

So my search continued, and I settled on Journler. I’ve never left.

For those like me who enjoy seeing how others use their favorite software, what follows is an overview of how I use Journler in my daily work.

Journler in brief

On his Web site, developer Philip Dow describes Journler this way:

Journler is a daily notebook and entry based information manager. Scholars, teachers, students, professors, scientists, thinkers, the business minded and writers of every persuasion use it on a daily basis to connect the written word with the media most important to them.

Journler is different from most PIMs in that it is organized according to date and not topic. But do not let that paradigm disturb you. With tags and smart folders, you can quickly and easily have a topic-based drawer from which to pull all your needed information. Furthermore, Journler allows arranging posts according to projects, which gives it a more familiar approach to managing information.

But it is the ability to integrate with the rest of your Mac applications that makes Journler so powerful. You can add contacts from Address Book, photos from iPhoto and save Web Archives by dragging sites straight from Safari. Too, you can add video, audio and still photography directly into Journler entries.

If you import a photo file created in Pixelmator or a text file created in TextMate, Journler will either display the file in its interface or allow you to open it in its original program with one simple click.

Plus, Journler is fully searchable. Users can search entries, tags, projects and most files stored in the database. It makes it great as an archival system for email or invoices. Add to it the power of a ScanSnap scanner, and you can begin the migration to a paperless life.

Research assistant

Journler makes a great research assistant, whether your project is large or small. When I begin working on a blog post, I start a new entry in Journler. Then I switch to Safari and begin my research, dragging Web sites I’ll either cite or use in my post into Journler. If I just need a snippet, simply highlight the text and use the Services menu to clip to the entry you have active.

If I am using external (paper) documents, I’ll scan them, save them onto my desktop and then import them into the entry (I delete the original file after importing it).

Once my research is complete, I select all of my bookmarked sites from the side drawer and open them in Safari. That allows me to flip through tabs and collect any information I need. If I have pdf documents, I open them in a separate Journler window for use as well.

Then, all that is left to do is write. (I use TextMate to apply Markdown and upload my post.)

Project management

When I start a new project, I create a new project category in Journler. Then, I create a smart folder that finds all entries with that project name.

Next, I outline a few generic tags that I know I will use in the project. For instance, if I’m customizing a Web site for someone, I know I’ll use tags such as “site_ideas”, “content_needs” and “issues”. Then, I create nested smart folders that find each one of those tags.

Right now, I’m managing a Supreme Court campaign. I’ve got a project in Journler for it, with several smart folders nested under that project. I track everything from phone calls and meetings to messaging and fund-raising within Journler. Since this is a relatively new project, I only have a few entries. By the time election day arrives, I’ll have hundreds, if not thousands, of entries.

Once a project is completed, I simply delete the smart folders. The entries remain, and I can always search them later if I need to reference something for whatever reason.

Journal and archival

One thing I started this year was to write a daily journal. There is nothing scientific about this. It’s a free-flow of thoughts. At times its personal, sometimes its about a project on which I’m working and sometimes its more of an outline of things that I want to do. That’s the simplest use of this program.

In addition to a written journal, I keep an archive of invoices, home files, tax documents and just about any other type of written correspondence that needs filing for future use. I simply scan the documents and save them to Journler. If I must keep the hard copies — say tax documents — then my wife files them away. If I don’t need the hard copies, I shred them and move along toward a paperless life.

If I purchase something online, I either save the receipt page as a webarchive or print the page to a pdf and save it in Journler.

Adding tags to all of these entries allows me to sort them according to my needs. So when tax time rolls around, I can easily sort my archives by business deductions or health care deductions or whatever I need.

Conclusion

Journler is an Everyapp. Its usefulness is limited only by the user’s imagination. It is scriptable, and you can find a plethora of scripts for various tasks. Furthermore, Journler is backed by an active community of users.

Journler’s pricing structure has evolved over the years. It started as freeware, then moved to freeware for personal use and shareware for non-personal use. Today, Journler is fully shareware with a price tag of $34.95. (Dow struggled with this decision, which you can read about here.)

For me, there is not a more important program on my MacBook Pro. Without it, my entire workflow would be thrown into chaos.

And the winner is… Safari.

For more than a month now, I’ve been testing Firefox 3 in various beta forms. It was the first version of the popular browser that really kept me coming back for more. As I said previously, usually my tests with Firefox ended in frustration.

This time, however, was different. But in the end, I’m returning to Safari. Why? Most of the reasons were best expressed by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball. In the end, though, Safari just works better with my workflow.

If I had to give the top reasons, there would be two:

1. Services Menu. Firefox does not work with the Services Menu. I work heavily in Journler, and I use the Services Menu more than I realized.

2. Syncing with iPhone. Because my iPhone syncs with it, as does .Mac, it makes my life easier with Safari.

So, there it is. Short and sweet for me.

If you want more thoughts on the subject, check out Gruber’s addenda to his original post, a response by Mike Belzner (a Mozilla developer) and an overview at Monday By Noon.

MacWorld’s browser round-up

MacWorld has put together another browser comparison. It’s fairly lengthy and in-depth, and I’d recommend it for those of you who, like me, enjoy testing different software to see if you find something you like better.

That said, it would have been nice if MacWorld had waited just a bit. Firefox 3 is light years ahead of Firefox 2, and as I stated earlier, it’s replaced Safari as my browser of choice.

Of the others covered by MacWorld, the only one I’ve used with any real enjoyment is OmniWeb. I paid or it a couple of years ago. However, I can’t justify paying for it today.

Firefox 3 versus Safari 3.1

My adventures with Firefox have generally ended badly. I’ve always found it to be sluggish and bloated. Start time and page renderings frustrated me, and after a few days of what I said would be a weeklong test I would give in and return to my browser of choice: Safari.

Nonetheless, with every new improvement, I download a Firefox update and toy around with it, trying to figure out what the fuss is all about. (I’ve done the same with OmniWeb and Camino, but never have I developed the love-hate relationship I have with Firefox.)

Then came Firefox 3, specifically FF3 Beta 2. FF3 was going to be more “Mac like”, and that intrigued me. Of course, the theme was still an add-on, but I could live with that.

The address bar was improved, bookmarks had tagging ability, the memory leak problem had been fixed and it was faster! The early reviews were intriguing, but I knew what was going to happen. What always happens was going to happen. I would download it, play with it a few days and then close it in disgust and violently rip it from my dock (well, as violently as you can rip a program from your dock.)

But a funny thing happened. I actually liked it. It felt good to use. Some of the features that I loved about it seemed to work better. It had advantages to Safari that made me not want to go back. And while I did go back and I largely skipped Beta 3, I’ve returned for Beta 4 and am giving Firefox the long-deserved test run it deserves.

Why? Several reasons.

Speed and rendering

Finally Firefox gives me the speed I need in a browser. Make no mistake, overall Safari is faster. Still, the difference in speed is not that noticeable. And on some sites, Firefox wins. I’m good with this new speed improvement.

The other big drawback, until now, was the way Firefox rendered pages. No other browser has ever done what Safari does with fonts. Reading pages in Safari is easy. Your eyes don’t strain. It’s a beautiful rendition of the text. Firefox 2 was abysmal. Not readable. Horribly ugly.

In Firefox 3, things are much improved. No need for Vi-sine as your browse. (See MacWorld for a quick comparison of text rendering — and a better review of FF3.)

Bookmarks

I admit that I hate bookmarks. They are wildly useful but hard to tame. I have hundreds upon hundreds of bookmarks that I routinely have to go and trim ever so often.

And bookmark functionality has never been well done. A single keyboard shortcut (usually Command-D) was about the extent of usefulness in bookmark implementation in Safari. Not being able to sort bookmarks alphabetically within folders (which can be done now, but it must be all bookmarks at once) is a nuisance.

But my biggest problem was organization. Del.icio.us answered the question with tags for bookmarks. The ability to sort and search by tags and then see what else was out there based on those tags revolutionized the way people browse with bookmarks.

Still, I hated having to use del.icio.us just to access bookmarks that I may not use every day but use frequently enough for the extra steps to be a nuisance. So I engaged Quicksilver to do the work for me, and that bit of functionality works well. (I’m a Quicksilver disciple.) I can search my del.icio.us tags and bookmarks from Quicksilver and launch what I need into my browser.

In the end, though, I want my core bookmarks native to my browser. I want to search by tags so that I do not worry about hierarchal filing of every last little site I bookmark.

Voila. Firefox 3 addresses my need, and it does so well. First, it adds tags to bookmarks. This is nice, but not revolutionary. Also, it defaults your bookmarks to an “Unfiled” folder so you can come back and clean up at your leisure.

Furthermore, it adds a set of Smart Bookmarks to your bookmarks bar. These show you recently bookmarked sites, recently used tags and the sites you visit the most.

One bit of functionality that is not native that should be is a menu item inside bookmark bar folders that allows you to add a bookmark to that particular folder. You can get this through an add-on.

Address bar functionality

Firefox 3 has a more intuitive address bar. When you begin typing the Web address, it provides you with smarter lists of addresses than does Safari. Instead of just a list of addresses, you get page titles with the addresses below it. But that’s just the beginning.

You can type a part of the page title or the address (say “store” for Apple Store or store.apple.com) and Firefox will find it and throw it toward the top of your list.

You can also search your bookmarks by tags in the address bar. For instance, typing in “research” will bring up a list of my sites that are tagged with “research”, complete with a tag icon that lets you know an address was found based on a tag and not on either page title or address.

RSS feeds

I’ve never used an add-on or a browser’s native RSS reading functionality for very long. The plug-ins in Firefox were never given a good shot based on my quick frustration with the program in the past. And neither Safari nor Firefox has good enough implementation of RSS reading at this time, though I’m hoping one eventually does.

Instead, I use Google Reader. Why? I’ll tell you later, but if you do not use it then I encourage you to give it a try.

That said, Firefox allows (and has since Firefox 2) a user to add feeds to Google Reader just as you would add a feed to Firefox itself or to a standalone application. Safari allows only adding the feed to Safari or to a standalone app. This lack of functionality is a real hinder to my workflow when I have to copy a feed address, open Google Reader and manually add the feed.

With Firefox, it’s a 1-2-3 step process that is seamless from feed to reader.

Zoom, zoom, zoom

Another improved functionality of Firefox 3 is its zoom capabilities. I use two monitors that are both set back on my desk. From time to time, my tired eyes demand larger print.

Until now, zooming in on a Web page more than about two times destroyed the page. The reason: Graphic elements were left alone, causing them to crowd into growing text. It was sloppy, first-generation implementation in second- and third-generation Web browsers.

Firefox 3 gets it right. When you zoom, now your images are zoomed proportionately as well. While you will see some natural degeneration of your images, you see a proportional Web page that is easier to read. Terrific!

Add-ons and plug-ins

Firefox 3 gets add-ons right for those of us who do not want to bloat our browser but still like a few frills.

With Firefox 2 on a Mac, every new add-on seemed to slow my browser by a fraction of a second. Given that Safari was (and still remains) the faster browser, slowing down was a big strike against Firefox 2.

However, now I can add-on my favorite frills and not be set back any real speed. Too, restarting Firefox is much quicker, so I don’t get “buyers remorse” waiting on the program to reload with my new toy attached.

To note: Some add-ons still do not work with Firefox 3. This includes some mighty important ones, like del.icio.us buttons, will not be available until the next version of the bookmarking network is launched.

Tab selections

I love being able to select tabs with the command key. Command-1 gives me my first tab, Command-2 my second tab, Command-3 my third tab and so on and so forth.

For someone who continually has multiple tabs going at once, usually for research or Web development, being able to quickly choose my tabs via my keyboard without having to flip through them is an absolute must.

This is not new in Firefox 3, but it is one of the reasons that Firefox has always been ahead of Safari, which selects bookmarks when using the Command key in conjunction with a number key. (This is also wildly useful, but I mimic this behavior with a Quicksilver trigger with my targets being Command-Option-Number.)

Style

Ironically, it’s Firefox 3’s overall look and style that keeps me coming back for more. Under Tiger, Safari was downright ugly. I used Saft to get an Aqua look, which made it bearable. Still, it was ugly.

Under Leopard, the unified look helps. Still, it has no pizzazz. It lacks the simple elegance that most Apple products have. Instead, it’s just simple.

On the flip side, Firefox 2 looked too cartoonish for me. I hate a bunch of toolbars and gaudy colored buttons. And the Mac themes of old were little better than Safari.

So the developers over at Mozilla put a bit of time into the “look and feel” of Firefox 3. They knew Mac users are a picky lot (and we are). So with substance, they wanted to add style.

Thankfully, they finally got it right. On a Mac, you get a native theme that feels like a Mac application. It is far more attractive than Safari. My only knock could be that the top tool bar is just a little deep, eating up a bit more screen real estate than it has too. Still, it is not enough to really matter.

Style may not be important to you, but it is to me. And enjoying the look and feel of the app I use as much as anything else on my computer is an absolute must!

Shortcomings

Firefox 3 is not without its shortcomings. The main one is the way it handles pdf’s. If you encounter a pdf with FF3, it downloads it to your desktop and leaves clutter. That’s a HUGE no-no for someone like me, who 90 percent of the time has a beautiful, black desktop with absolutely NOTHING on it.

To get around this, you can use the PDF Download add-on, but it doesn’t fully fix your problem. With the right settings, it will open your pdf in your default reader without downloading it, but the title is replaced with html naming conventions, which makes it difficult to rename if you decide to save the pdf. (This may work better with an Acrobat Reader plug-in. I’ve not tried it since I don’t have Reader installed.)

The other pdf-related functionality that Safari beats Firefox on is printing. Firefox 3 lacks the ability to natively export a page as a pdf. Instead, you have to print it and use Leopard’s built-in pdf drivers. However, the pdf that is rendered does not look like the page you viewed.

If you just need the nuts and bolts of the page, this will suffice. If you need a representational pdf of the page and its full contents, you’ll have to switch over to Safari for your pdf print needs.

I get around this by using Journler and dropping the FF3 page into it. That creates an archive of the page, which I can then print as a pdf in almost perfect form. (Journler, by the way, is a great piece of software. I’ll share with you my workflow in it later.)

Taking her for a spin

It was a few weeks ago when I killed off FF3b2. What got me was the pdf and no Web Archives. I’ve learned to live with the lack of great pdf functionality, and I’ve figured out a great workaround with Journler for my Web archives.

But even before doing so with FF3b4, I found myself remembering fondly my last interlude with the browser. It was a love-hate affair that finally found love. And so far, now a full week into using Firefox 3, I may have finally settled in with a new browser of choice.

Remember, this is still beta software, but it is thought to be about one or two steps away from its final form. Either way, it is a stable version that I have used with no real problems.