Having fiddled with computers since the Tandy 1000 days, I consider myself to be reasonably computer savvy, but the switch from pc to Mac has been a somewhat humbling experience. The two systems don’t really differ that much, but with less than three days under my belt with the Mac Pro I must say that I’ve learned a lot, and discovered how much of my work on pc’s was done without thinking. I knew what to do. I’m learning to appreciate being able to complete tasks on auto-pilot! I should get my feet under me soon enough and will be riding tall in the saddle again.
I’ve installed some browsers (Firefox, Opera, Camino…gotta keep tabs on that cross-browser compatibility!), got my e-mail client setup, and have also installed Photoshop CS4 and some Mac-specific applications like Aperature 2 and iWorks. At this point my challenge is finding a suitable editor for html files and an FTP program to upload them with. I’m particularly leery of most of the html editors that are available for the Mac, as they tend to follow the “what you see is what you get” mode of operation. I much prefer to write the html myself, as I’ve seen first-hand the sort of tangled code that programs like Dreamweaver create. I don’t want a program to write my code, clean up my code, nor do I want one to “synchronize” anything. Is that too much to ask? I’m currently using a program called skEdit, and so far so good. (although it does default to closing tags for me…aghh!) For now I’m going to upload this using “FileZilla” (you’ve gotta love that name!), and if all this goes well I may test these two programs for an extended period. I’m looking forward to having all this transition stuff behind me so that I can get back to the business of TV lamps!