If you are in need of a text editor and cost is a factor then I recommend the program Smultron. Smultron is a free text editor written in Cocoa by Peter Borg.

On the surface Smultron is a very basic editor but after you open it up and tweak it to fit your needs it can become very powerful. From Smultron’s site:

Some of its features are line numbers, support for syntax colouring for many different languages, functions list, support for text encodings, snippets, a toolbar, a status bar, HTML preview, split window, multi-document find and replace with regular expressions, possibility to show invisible characters, tabs, authenticated open and saves, command-line utility, .Mac synchronisation, full screen editing and running commands from within Smultron.

I currently use Smultron for my web development coding PHP, XHTML and CSS all inside the editor with no problems. If you are looking for a full featured IDE Smultron is not for you but if all you need is an extensible editor Smultron is worth the look.

I haven’t used all of the additional functions of Smultron as of yet so I cannot report on their usefulness.

Visit Smultron’s web site to download as well as view a detailed listing of features.

I recently discussed and gave an introduction to Automator a built-in workflow utility on Mac OSX. In this post I will demonstrate the steps I use to resize any number of images using Automator and Photoshop CS2, I will provide appropriate links to download the packages needed as well as provide my workflow as a download so that you can modify it to fit your own needs.

What you will need for this workflow:

• Basic understanding of Automator (found in my Introductory article)
• Photoshop Automator Actions v3.0 (found here) - my current install is v2.2 so if you have that you are fine - install this after download
• Photoshop CS or CS2
• photos or other graphics you’d like to resize
• some spare time

The Photoshop Automator Actions come wtih a large number of actions for use with Photoshop and Automator. A handy instruction document is also provided which will explain each action in further detail as well as the options that they provide.

To begin we first need to set the Color Settings in Photoshop so that the Automator doesn’t stop mid-process. This is a stumbling block I initially hit as I generally have Photoshop prompt me to convert each file I open to the working color space if it currently is not in that working space. Every time I ran the workflow I would have to accept the change to the working color space which made the automation process seem redundant considering I had to sit at my computer and select OK every time a picture was opened up. To remedy this make sure the check box for Ask When Opening under Profile Mismatches is unchecked when you want to run the workflow (I have provided a screenshot of my Color Settings below).

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I know I’m a day late on this one but can I really consider this an Apple site if I didn’t mention the new ads.

In case you didn’t know, three new ads were released under the Get A Mac campaign which features the slogan “I’m A Mac” and thus the name of this site.

Head over to Apple now and check them out.

Mac OSX comes with a very useful utility by the name of Automator. With this utility you are able to create workflows which will ease the process of repetitive tasks. The default Automator setup comes complete with the ability to create workflows for the majority of built-in applications and utilities of OSX.

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Currently we’re looking for incoming and outgoing links to help spread the word of I’m A Mac.com.

If you would like to link to us feel free. Let us know so we know what is going on.

If you would like to be featured under “They’re Macs” or “They Want To Be” simply fill out the contact form with your web site name, address and which category you want to be listed under. For “They’re Macs” you simply need to use a Mac as you’re primary computer, for “They Want To Be” a PC is your primary computer. The links can go to any site you wish, a blog, a news site, a podcast or your business site. The site must be yours however.

Get those links moving.