Interesting news out of the Mix ‘07 event that the big MS is hosting. Apparently Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-platform .net plugin is going to support a broad range of programming languages, including Ruby and Python.

This is a surprise because, well, it’s Microsoft: they’re not exactly known for playing well with technologies they don’t rule with an iron fist. Who knows, maybe this is a sign that the open source movement has worked some kind of black magic voodoo on the crew in Redmond, and they’re going to start turning out software that’s a little bit kinder to your average joe developer.

Then again, it probably means they’ll have to develop in IIS rather than Apache, a prospect that shatters the souls of men.

Web Developers have a wide array of tools they can employ to conduct their trade. From industry leading, reliable applications like BBEdit, to cutting edge products with revolutionary functionality like TextMate and even strange contraptions such as Dreamweaver which often does more damage than good. The last couple of weeks have seen a rush of these products: some just released, and some just discovered.

Coda

Darling OSX software developer Panic earns the title of biggest newsmaker, with their release of “Coda” an integrated development environment which they’re billing as “one-window web development”.

Coda is a very cool example the integration OSX is known for: Panic has aggregated many of the key tasks for web development into one tool, meaning the programmer need not bounce back and forth between applications as much as usual. You’ve got a file browser, ftp client, unix terminal, and text editor all rolled into one window with Panic’s impeccable eye for UI.

The one issue I have with Coda is that it feels a little light on the feature side of a text editor. Of course you have syntax coloring, and RegExp searches, but auto detection of what language you’re working with and multi-file searches seem to be missing. If anything I think this might be a symptom of a 1.0 application which is very understandable. None the less, I plan on keeping a close eye on the developments in this new app, as if its feature-set reaches a critical mass, I may have to make the switch! Coda will cost you $99 normally, though for launch Panic is offering a discounted price of $79.

BlogMate
I recently made the switch from the wisend old BBEdit to scrappy upstart TextMate (forgive me my love!). One of the big pulls of TextMate is its support for “bundles”, which serve as a means to customize textmate to certain tasks. BlogMate is a great example of this, as it provides a method to post to a blog directly from the familiar and comfortable environment of your text editor. BlogMate also lets the user edit older posts by fetching them directly from your database and dropping them into a new TextMate window. It’s a great way to make sure your post is right the first time, as all the great TextMate coding shortcuts and validation bundles are made available.

TextMate Wordpress Bundle

Speaking of blogging bundles for TextMate, my fellow developer and generally swell guy over at Tales of a Designer found a TextMate bundle that gives the user shortcuts to common blocks of code used in developing templates for the Wordpress blogging platform. This is a great tool to have in your pocket when building out a Wordpress template, and it can be hard to remember exactly all the options availble to you within the confines of the Wordpress framework. With the handy Wordpess bundle, the user has a drop down that will populate loops, post fetches, and structural elements automatically. The one thing it won’t do is write the blog post for you, so you’ll still have to think up something you want to talk about.

In fact, this very post was written with the wordpress bundle: easy!

Are the days of Firefox being the infallible savior for web browsers coming to a close? This Wired blog post raises the question of whether Firefox is a necessity or a necessary evil. The liberation that Firefox symbolized for people entrenched in the Internet Explorer universe is not to be understated. Here was a lightweight, fast browser with functionality that well exceeded Microsoft’s browser by years. But now that Firefox is all grown up, gaining user acceptance every year and currently in its 2.0 phase, is it time to reevaluate its position as the browser of choice? Wired cites problems such as the size of the program itself, 49.5MB vs. Safari’s 16.8MB, and its tendency to suck down RAM as the primary complaints.

I’m more concerned with the latter. The memory leaks in the program have troubled me for some time. As a spot-check, my Thinkpad has been running for a little over 24 hours and Firefox is currently using 162MB of memory. This seems incredible and while I do have a few add-ons this has been a problem even with basic installs. What do you think, is this a Firefox problem or something larger to do with the evolution of the web?

This recent PC World article claims that of all high definition discs purchased last quarter, 70% were in the Blu-ray format. It’s an interesting development, considering that Blu-ray discs didn’t hit the market until two months after HD-DVDs were available. Ryan and I have been discussing for some time now which camp to throw in with, these conversations usually ending with the decision to wait for dual-format players to become prevalent. Samsung is claiming to have one such player on the way for this holiday season. But with five of the six major movie studios backing Blu-ray, we may see a clear victor at least in the minds of consumers.