All in all, KDE application support for OS X and Windows is a great thing. New software to tinker with on platforms that most people are more accustomed to is absolutely fantastic. We’ve had cross-platform support for GIMP via GTK+, so it’s about time that we’re given access to apps like Amarok and Konqueror via Qt/Mac and Qt/Windows.

But here’s the problem with KDE on OS X. I can’t see replacing any programs I currently use on my Mac with their KDE equivalents. For one, the download for “everything” is currently 2.45GB. That’s a pretty massive download just to run a couple of small programs. Secondly, there is not a single KDE app that is better or more useful than native Mac apps. KMail is not going to replace Mail.app any time soon. KOffice, while a good substitute for NeoOffice and a no brainer for people using OpenOffice, is not a replacement for those of us who own iWork. Amarok is great for those who don’t own an iPod–but it won’t replace iTunes for the vast majority of users. Also, the KDE apps lack the integration with each other that many native Mac apps have. It’s so handy to load photos into iPhoto and use them later in Mail, Pages, or dozens of other programs.

On the flip side of the coin, KDE for Windows is where the action’s going to be. Amarok is a great option for those looking to escape from Windows Media Player while KOffice is certainly a fantastic option for those who don’t want to load up the bloated software that is OpenOffice. Kate instead of Notepad++ is wholly a personal decision, as is Dolphin instead of Explorer. As for Konqueror–everyone should stick with Firefox instead. Yes, as long as the developers can get the bugs out, there are plenty of good reasons to use KDE apps on Windows.

One interesting question is whether or not KDE support for Mac and Windows will detract people from switching to Linux. I think the opposite will be true. Just like how Firefox opened many people’s eyes to the power and possibilities that are inherent to open source software, KDE on OS X and Windows will open their eyes to just far open source software has come. With that knowledge, they may find they want to see what a fully open source operating system is like, first by dual booting Linux and then switching entirely. No, KDE on operating systems people already know and love is definitely a good thing for the open source community as a whole.

I’m looking forward to see how far this broad support for KDE goes by the time KDE 4.1 is released. There have been some excellent steps made in the right direction, and I can assume that the project will only get bigger, better, and more polished as time goes on.

As far as web browsers are concerned, Safari and Opera were the the two “safest” browsers with only 14 security flaws each. Firefox had the most bugs, with a total of 64 while Internet Explorer had 43 bugs. Now if only Microsoft would concentrate as much effort on making their browser standards compliant. On a positive note, however, Mozilla’s Firefox team was able to release security updates and bug patches much more rapidly than Microsoft. Patches for Firefox were released in as less than a week on average. Patches for IE, on the other hand, were released much later and much less frequently.

The review also went on to evaluate the number of vulnerabilities found in popular anti-virus and other security related programs. Symantec, makers of Norton anti-virus, was one of the leaders, not surprisingly. We’ve all known their products are garbage for some years now. While it may be easy to blame the widespread use of Symantec’s products for the plethora of vulnerabilities, Secunia declared that quite a few vulnerabilities can be attributed to “highly critical flaws” in their code.

So does this study really show that Microsoft’s products are better from a security standpoint? Not at the least. The amount of bugs is only the first part of the problem. What we should really be looking at is the speed at which those bugs are patched–and Microsoft is far beyond the crowd. Letting zero-day exploits last longer than a week, like Microsoft does, is simply ridiculous. You end up with a product that does not have as many bugs, but the ones it does have never get fully patched, making for less secure software. I, for one, would much rather use a program that is patched more frequently–even if it is full of flaws.

Read the full article here.

But all that changed today with the release of KDE 4.0, the newest desktop environment from the guys on the K Desktop Environment team. We finally have a desktop environment for Linux that not only works efficiently, but looks good doing it. I finally have a reason to try out KDE again after forsaking it for several years.

However, despite the major strides made by the KDE team, it is not the be all and end all of Linux desktop environments. While the new style is a step in the right direction from KDE 3.5, it still lacks the finishing touches that you would expect to find on a commercial operating system (Windows XP aside) or application. There are a lot of major design elements here that have been lifted from the likes of OS X and Vista. And that’s not a bad thing, as every designer needs to start with inspiration from something. Hopefully we will see KDE continue to evolve to a point where they start making user interfaces that trump what the commercial designers are doing.

KDE 4 is not just about flashy new looks, though. There are quite a few improvements all around. Default programs have been completely changed or tweaked here and there to make them more useful, more attractive, or more efficient. There are new frameworks everywhere. A new (thank God) default file manager. And new OS X and Windows support for supposedly easier porting of programs from KDE to the two commercial operating systems.

Not the Most Popular BT Client - But It Should Be

I’m not much of a torrenter, but every now and then I stumble on a file that is much more quickly downloaded via the BitTorrent network than it can be through a website. Case in point, OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice, as you can see in my screenshots. When I need to use BitTorrent, there are plenty of choices out there. From Azureus, easily the most popular, to Transmission - the subject of today’s review.

When it comes to my Mac, I like to stick with as many Cocoa applications as I can. They run faster, they work better. So it’s only natural that I gravitated to Transmission as the first BitTorrent client I tried on my MacBook. And after a few months of using it, I’ve been very glad that I chose to use it first - because it really is a great program. The developer’s tagline (below) really fits the program and I find that Transmission is a pleasure to use.

Lightweight. Open Source. Free.

So what is there to like about this little BitTorrent client for the Mac? For starters, Transmission is quick and responsive. It starts like a laser, downloads files at a fast pace, and I can move through the menus with no lag time at all. The only time I’ve ever gotten Transmission to slow down is when I’m deleting a 300 MB to 1 GB file that has yet to download. Usually I’m suck with two to five seconds of dead time (depending on the file size) before Transmission springs back to life.

One of the coolest features built into Transmission is a Dock based transfer tracker so I don’t have to open the program to see how fast my downloads and uploads are going. Transmission also integrates nicely with Growl, so I’m alerted with a simple chime and a Growl notification whenever a download is complete. Finally, Transmission has a great setting to let the program automatically delete my .torrent files. A real time saver. There’s even a nice speed limit button built in which will immediately slow down your downloading.

I’ve heard of problems with Transmission and Demonoid.com not playing nicely with each other in the past, so I decided to test it out for this review. After partially downloading 20 random, Mac related, .torrent files from the tracker, I started them all up to see if there would be any problems. All 20 worked out just fine, so it looks like the Transmission crew fixed any issues they had with files from Demonoid or I just got lucky and picked 20 files that worked great with Transmission.

After using this program for months, I can safely say that I love it. Transmission will continue to be the BitTorrent client I use on my Mac and I highly recommend that you use it for all of your torrenting needs as well. I’ve yet to use it on Linux, but I’m sure it’s just as good.

Click here to check out Transmission.

- Eric Norton

It’s Like Dreamweaver - But Free. How Could That Be Bad?

I’m a big fan of free programs. Thanks to open source software and developers who just want to give back to the community, I’ve been seeing more and more free programs released that are actually extremely useful and well designed. This is a review of Nvu/KompoZer, one of those free programs that is very well designed and a great option for those looking to avoid the costs of Adobe’s web designer, Dreamweaver [review].

As a WYSIWYG web design program, Nvu is great. It has a fairly intuitive interface, works quickly thanks to Mozilla’s Gecko engine, and is perfect for web designers of all skill levels. From basic HTML to CSS to JavaScript to various other web coding languages, Nvu can support a multitude of formats. And it does so with ease. The program is responsive, accurate, and does exactly what I want it to - help me code a website on a tight budget.

I’ve used Dreamweaver a lot in the past, so I’m rather used to its interface. Luckily enough, Nvu has taken a few pages from Adobe’s (Macromedia’s) design pages and constructed a somewhat similar layout for this free program’s interface. While there are quite a few buttons and toolbars that are in different locations than in previous versions of Dreamweaver, I was able to get accustomed to the program in mere moments.

When it comes to building extras into Nvu, the designers really took out all the stops. It’s nearly as full featured as Dreamweaver. Inside you’ll find an FTP client, an HTML validator, tabs to keep track of different files, an integrated CSS editor, and a spellchecker that actually works pretty well. I love programs that allow me to do nearly everything from one location - and this accomplishes that task without a hitch.

Of course, free software like this always has problems, and Nvu is no exception. The most major problem is it’s compatibility, or lack thereof. While it works fine under Windows and Linux - it is shackled to PowerPC on the Mac - and it runs slow when it actually gets started. There is no excuse for the Mac version not to run as a Universal Binary since Apple has been using Intel chips now for a year.

Another problem is with the ease of use. Yes, Nvu is easy to use once you learn where all of the tools are located, but it can be argued that Dreamweaver is a far more user-friendly program. Of course, Dreamweaver is also at least four hundred dollars more.

In the end, I do recommend Nvu - but only for those using Windows or Linux. I cannot support a program that is stuck with PPC binaries on the Mac. If you’re looking for a WYSIWYG web design program, this is a great one to try out. There are lots of fantastic features here and it is just as easy to build a site by clicking toolbar buttons as it is to build one with a professional knowledge of HTML using Nvu. It truly is a program for anyone who wants to get into web design but doesn’t have the cash on hand for the programs the pros use.

KompoZer is a community version of Nvu, since Nvu’s development has halted. It features bug fixes and other goodies that Nvu does not contain. Unfortunately KompoZer is not Universal Binary either.

Try Nvu for Yourself.
Try KompoZer for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

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Mac OSX is certainly not short on internet browsers. There must be at least ten or so to choose from. But why? Why would someone need to many different web browsers? Isn’t one, two, or three enough? Even as a web developer you wouldn’t need ten browsers - so why are there so damn many for the Mac? To make matters worse, many of the browsers are simply rehashes of popular rendering engines that have a new GUI to make them look more “Mac-like”. Unfortunately, that is the category that Camino falls into - stylish without any real substantial improvements over Firefox.

But before we get into the big problems with Camino, let’s praise it a bit for some things that it does right. To start with, Camino is attractive - far more so than Firefox [review]. It just looks like it belongs with the Mac. Hell, it looks like it goes with my Apple better than Safari does. The slick interface, the gorgeous icons, everything just exudes style. That’s a far cry from Firefox which is downright ugly in it’s default configuration on the Mac.

Another big benefit for Camino is it’s speed. Snappy and lightweight - the way a browser should be. Tabs open quickly, the bookmarks pane opens in an instant, and I don’t have to worry about it soaking up a ton of resources even with ten, twenty, thirty, or more tabs open at once. Always good to see a program in the world of bloatware that still tries to slim itself down.

Aside from the style and the size, Camino also has a couple of other cool features that are popping up in other browsers. The spell check feature is nice to see, and session saving is a really huge benefit. There have been far too many times that I’ve lost a bunch of open sites thanks to a crash and session saving really pulls through for me. Also, Camino is built on Mozilla’s Gecko layout (rendering) engine, so pages open quickly and look their best. Some other nifty features include pop-up blocking and easy to use RSS subscriptions. Best of all, Camino is also open source.

Now for some of Camino’s problems. There is not a single feature listed above that does not already exist in Firefox - another browser that uses Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine. Now, if both were web browsers that were only designed for the Mac, that wouldn’t be a problem because you’d have people working equally as hard on both products. However, Firefox is multi-platform AND open source - so there are tons of would-be developers working with Firefox in conjunction with Windows, OSX, and Linux. This means that problems get worked out more quickly, I can use the same browser no matter which platform I’m currently putting around on, and there are more add-ons, extensions, and other goodies for Firefox.

Speaking of extensions, there are none available for Camino. That’s right, all of those cool plug-ins that you and I have gotten so used to on Firefox are totally nonexistent on Camino - and that’s a real shame. To be honest, I would choose Camino over Firefox on my Mac if it had support for all of the Mozilla extensions. But at this point, not having the extensions that I use on a daily basis - like DownThemAll [review] and Mouse Gestures [review], to name a couple, is a huge disappointment to me.

So there you have it, Camino is a fancy looking Firefox without all of the cool features. It’s fast, it looks good, it’s got a couple of handy tools built in - but that’s where it ends. There is no ability to expand on the program, you can’t really make it your own like you can with some of the other browsers out there. I really want to like it - but the developers need to introduce extension support before I will ever be able to recommend Camino.

Try Camino for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

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You may recall that in my review of the GIMP, I mentioned that one of its big problems was that the Mac version required that I install X11. Well, it turns out that there is a version of GIMP that was developed in Cocoa especially for Apple’s OSX - Seashore. However, when I finally sat down to give Seashore a thorough test run, I found that Seashore is really nothing like the GIMP at all. Yes, they both use the GIMP’s technology, and both are able to open the GIMP’s file type - but both image editors are really as different as can be.

According to the Seashore website, the program is designed to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users. I can’t help but wonder if the development team made Seashore a bit too basic though. While there are several tools here, including a clone stamp, a smudge, and a lot of the other basic stuff that you would see on a program like Microsoft Paint, there are no tools available for moderate image editing. Where are the burn and dodge tools? Where is the ability to adjust the brightness and contrast of an image? Although you can achieve the same effect by other means, a quick and easy selection of these tools would have been wonderful.

With those tools absent, I really can’t recommend Seashore as a good program for people, like myself, who do even part time photograph editing. There is no RAW support and no PSD support - but there is read and write ability for a lot of other common image types, which is always nice to see.

Although the photo modifying features are strangely absent from Seashore’s option list, there are quite a few features that would greatly appeal to those of you out there who are interested in making their own graphic designs. Once again, while the Seashore platform is not especially powerful, it does work well, and it is free. Furthermore, there are quite a few blending options (possibly even more than Photoshop) and the support for modifying channels is especially good for a basic image editor.

Unfortunately, when it comes down to it, I really can’t give Seashore a fully positive review. I see what they’re trying to accomplish, but it just feels far too basic for a photographer’s needs. But if you’re into graphic design - Seashore is a different story. The power really comes out when you start creating your own images. As an amateur photographer though, there just weren’t enough tools for me and what was there seemed to be eclipsed by the lack of some really necessary features. As long as development continues as it has been, I do look for Seashore to be an impressive free image editor in the future. Give Seashore a try for yourself and see if it meets your needs.

Try Seashore for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

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I wrote yesterday about Photoshop [review], and those who read it will know that I love it - even though the price is completely unreasonable for the average user. Today brings us to a program that covers that one fault that I had with Photoshop. The GIMP, or GNU Image Manipulation Program, is just the program you need if you are looking for high quality, Photoshopesque, features without that hefty Adobe price tag weighing you down. It’s time to bring out the GIMP for a standalone review without trying compare it to Photoshop too much (that comes later in a battle between the two).

The GIMP has earned quite the repuatation for itself as a so-called Photoshop replacement. And it backs up that claim with a lot of features, most of which are completely useful at some point or another. As I said in my Photoshop review, I spend a lot of time editing pictures. That’s what I use image editing programs for as my primary task, although I do delve into graphic design and web design from time to time when I’m feeling particularly creative (or I have a deluge of free time). So, because my tasks on GIMP are so focused on just one particular portion of the whole art and design spectrum, I tend to rarely use most of the GIMP’s laundry list of features.

But what I do use the GIMP for, the GIMP works perfectly well. Dodge and burn tools are a must, as are the ability to manipulate layers. Along with brushes, the eraser tool, and a filter or tool to change brightness, contrast, and curves - I really don’t ask for too much from my image editor. And the GIMP has a tool that can accomplish each of those tasks with ease. While I do use other tools from time to time, those are just icing on the cake, so to speak.

Although GIMP does everything that I need it to do, there are a couple of real problems with it. The first is the user interface. The blocky design is not very streamlined and the tool panel tends to take up far too much space, getting in the way of the picture I am editing. This could easily be solved by making only two, maybe three columns of tools instead of the current six. This GUI issue is crippling to those on lower resolution monitors - especially those which are not wide screen.

The other problem is that GIMP is really only native to Linux. If I install it on Windows, I also have to have GTK+, the GIMP Toolkit. Even worse, if I want to install GIMP on Mac OSX, I have to install X11. And what a hassle that is. While I can easily deal with the Windows problem, having to install X11 (and getting GIMP to work with it) is a major pain in the ass. I’d go with no image editor on my Mac before I’d install GIMP. The GIMP does work fantastically on Linux and pretty good on Windows, though.

Do I recommend that you download the GIMP? Yes, if you are using Linux or Windows. Skip it on the Mac. And if you’ve become used to using Photoshop and you’re having a hard time getting used to the interface on GIMP, give Gimpshop a try - its user interface has been changed to look more like that of Adobe’s flagship image editory.

Try The GIMP for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

Read about the latest additions and download it here.

Because of the “huge” popularity of my review of AbiWord, I’ve decided to another review of a word processor. This time, one specifically designed for OSX and written in Cocoa. Now, this is in contrast to AbiWord, a program that was designed for all three major operating systems but has yet to be updated for Intel processors on Macs - making it one of the worst word processors available for OSX.

Anyway, Bean is a very tiny word processor that fits into a niche that I’m not really sure we needed. Think of it as a cross between a full featured word processor with all of the fixings, like Microsoft Word, but with a set of components that are more in line with a traditional Notepad or TextEdit type of program. In other words, it’s the perfect word processor for writing down the small stuff: grocery lists, blog entries, paragraph length school paper, and the like. However, when it comes to the major, heavy duty word processing stuff like Microsoft Word contains, Bean falls a little short.

But that’s not really a problem because Bean is designed to be a very small word processor that replaces your need for the default TextEdit program. And it does a fine job at doing so. There are a few benefits packed into Bean that I simply cannot find on any other free word processors for my Mac.

So what are these features I speak of? What makes this seemingly worthless program actually worth while? The big feature here is something that I absolutely adore from Microsoft Word 2007, a live word count right there on my document. A lot of the work I do involves the need to see how many word’s I’ve written. Essays, web copy, etc. all requires that I stay within a certain word limit, and when I’m flying through an assignment, the last thing I want to do is hunt around for a button or menu item that takes me to a pop up word counter. Nope, I need my word counter right in front of me.

Another big benefit of the latest version of Bean is to set a default save file type. This was a complaint in my review of AbiWord - and Bean comes through by providing this highly useful feature for its users. Splendid! Bean also contains a decent list of file types to choose from.

Aside from those two big guns, Bean also has a couple of other features that are worth looking at, especially for such a small program. For one, Bean can import pictures into documents, making it easy to create quick fliers and the like. Also, Bean’s window and menu items are nicely styled to flow with the whole Mac look, really giving it a friendly and accessible feeling.

So, is Bean as good as some of the other free word processors out there? No. But it does the job it is designed for, has a couple of features that I (and I’m sure some of you) need, and it is so lightweight that I don’t have to worry about it soaking up system resources. It’s one of those programs that I’m really glad I happened across. If you’re looking for that elusive non-Microsoft word processor for your Apple, give Bean a spin.

Hope you enjoy using Bean as much as I do.

Try Bean for Yourself.

- Eric Norton