TextMate
The best text editor for Mac just keeps getting better! I just learned today that you can edit any text field in any application using TextMate. This means that when replying on a forum or using a tiny textarea on a poorly designed web page, you can simply type "Ctrl-Cmd-E" and a TextMate window will popup and take over. Once you save, the web page (or mail, or any application that uses Cocoa's NSTextField) will be updated.
Here's how to install the "Edit in TextMate" plugin. From TextMate, click the gear in status bar; there are some fun things listed under the TextMate folder.
Follow the instructions and click the button to create the symbolic link. After installing, Restart Safari and go to any web page with a form, the Contact 1Passwd page is a good example. Place focus the Message textarea, and press CMD-ctrl-E.
Type the message you want to say, and when you save, your document is automatically pasted into the text field:
If this wasn't cool enough for you, you can tell TextMate what syntax colouring should be used for specific sites. This can be set in the preference file:
~/Library/Preferences/com.macromates.edit_in_textmate.plist
I added our forum to the list to use BBCode:
{ URLAssociations = {
'forum.agilewebsolutions.com' = bbcode;
};
}
As always, Firefox doesn't get to participate in these fun and games. Be sure to checkout this post on TextMate and Firefox to see how to do a similar trick in Firefox.
