As someone who works with web design and code on a semi-regular basis, I’m on the hunt for the best tools to produce the finest webpages. After using many different applications, I’ve found my favorite coding environment in Coda. The creators of Transmit, Panic Software, have created a stellar piece web-development software.

Taking from their popular and successful FTP application, Panic incorporated the basics of Transmit into the sidebar of Coda. The sidebar has two tabs – ‘Local’ and ‘Remote’, for connecting and finding files easily on either the server or your machine. Also similar to Transmit, Coda can store and connect to ‘Favorites’, or ‘Sites’ as they’re called in Coda.

‘Sites’ represents one of the five views in Coda, the others are ‘Edit’, ‘Preview’, ‘CSS’, ‘Terminal’, and ‘Books’. The ‘Edit’ view is what you’d assume it to be – a code and text editor. Within this view it is possible to edit in an abundance of computing languages, such as HTML, CSS, Objective-J, Perl, Ruby, XML, Javascript, ActionScript, and many others. The editor can also display line numbers, share and edit documents using Bonjour, insert a variety of built-in and user-created clips, and display coding hints.

The second view in Coda is ‘Preview’, for previewing documents while editing. ‘CSS’, the third view is a full-featured CSS editor. Unfortunately, colors have to be entered using Mac OS X’s universal color selection panel, and the ability to enter hex codes is missing. For connecting to servers, Coda includes a built-in ‘Terminal’ panel. The sixth and final view within Coda is ‘Books’, which are four reference books for the HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP computing languages.

Coda includes many other useful features, including the ability to have multiple panes open in a single window, the capability to quickly open files, and search. Recently, Panic has opened up Coda to developers for the creation of plugins.

For a single application, Coda is able to pack many powerful features into a slick and elegant workspace. It’s definitely worth a shot for anybody who deals with coding on a regular basis. You can see more and download a free trial from Panic’s website. The full license costs $99, or $85 if you already have a copy of Transmit.

One of the most popular, and most easily recognized, applications for Mac OS X is a FTP application from Panic Software known as Transmit. At version 3.6, Transmit is a slam-dunk Mac app and a must-have for anybody who uses FTP. Transmit has been in existence since the days of Mac OS 9, when the iconic dump truck icon was first introduced. Ever since, a the icon has been replicated and reused by various companies.

Yet, what’s most important in the application is functionality, and Transmit packs many powerful features in a clean and simple interface. At its core, Transmit functions as a fine FTP application for uploading and downloading files. However, it can also connect to WebDAV servers, Amazon’s S3 service, and supports SFTP, SSL, and TLS.

Similar to other applications of the FTP genre, Transmit supports the ability to store and organize favorites for quick access. For even faster uploading, Transmit can upload files by simply dragging them to either a dock icon or dashboard widget. In fact, you can even monitor uploads using the growl support and dock status icon.

For more power, users can take advantage of the built-in Automator actions and Apple Script support. Transmit also integrates your “Favorites” into Spotlight, the system-wide search function built into Mac OS X. Transmit also includes a Quick-Look type feature in which you can preview files, without downloading them. For users with multiple macs, Transmit can sync favorites using MobileMe.

The guys over at Panic have also included the ability for tabbed browsing, so that you can open multiple connections at once. Transmit can also search, set auto-permissions, batch download, and create drag and droplets.

No matter if you’re a budding iWeb user, or advanced coding guru, Transmit is a superb FTP application that is available for $29.95.

Along with iLife ’09, Apple released iWork ’09 at this past Macworld. While it wasn’t a significant update, I snapped up this newest rendition of the office-style productivity suite. I’m a first time user, and I’ve been using the slew of apps exclusively ever since the week it came out.

Pages
Pages has been my most-used of the suite, and I’ve been really impressed. I hated how bogged-down, heavy, and complicated Microsoft Word is, and had switched to using stripped-down, simple text editors like Bean and Apple’s built-in TextEdit for a few months. Pages has definitely given me the perfect mix of power and simplicity. For most people, this app will most definitely suffice for all word processing needs. I’m still going to keep my copy of Word on one of my machines, in case I need to check formatting, but I’m going to stick with Pages for everything else. I’ve also been taking advantage of the full screen and outline views quite a bit, and they work very well.

Keynote
I’ve been so impressed with Keynote ’09, and how easy it is to make a slick looking presentation very quickly. The transitions, animation, and styles are all really great, and simple to implement. I’ve been able to throw together some presentations in a matter of minutes for miscellaneous tasks – something that would have taken hours to do in Powerpoint.

Numbers
Numbers is the youngest, and my least used and least favorite of the iWork Suite. I like Numbers because it, like the other iWork apps, is designed to make your documents, and spreadsheets, look nicer. While it can definitely put together slick spreadsheets, I’ve got a few qualms. First off, Numbers has an infinite white screen. This seems absurd, because the main promotion of this app is that you can create stunning spreadsheets for print and distribution. Because Numbers doesn’t default to print view, I’ve gone through some stress trying to re-format and size down my spreadsheets. That being said, you can switch to a print-view, but it isn’t defaulted like the other iWork apps. The only other thing that I’ve found quirky is that in order to modify the title of individual spreadsheets on the canvas, you have to go into the sidebar, and this gave me a few minutes of strife, but I quickly figured it out. Other than that, I’ve been impressed and satisfied with Numbers, I just wish some of these things could be changed.

All in All
One of the big features of iWork ’09 is the new iWork.com, which is currently in beta. The ideals behind iWork.com is to allow you to share documents online with others, letting them add notes, download it, or just view the document. I’ve been satisfied with the online service, but can certainly say that I wouldn’t pay for this, unless they added online-editing, live updating in the desktop app, iPhone editing and download, or other miscellaneous features. What would be great, is if they implemented this as a part of MobileMe.
Overall, iWork ’09 has been super-impressive, and I love it. If you’re buying a new mac, I would recommend purchasing the $79 iWork instead of the $399 Microsoft Office. If you’ve been frustrated with office, as I’ve been, I’d consider upgrading to iWork as well. Either way, you can give it a try with a 30-day free trial from Apple.

1Password is a tool that I personally couldn’t live without. It helps you to remember, store, and generate secure passwords – so that you never have to bother with creating or remembering passwords! If you’re like me, you were, or still are, using the same password for everything. It’s incredibly insecure, yet there seems to be no way to remember secure passwords. 1Password helps solve this problem.

The main feature of 1Password is the ability to store passwords. Yet, the cool part is how 1Password integrates with your web browser. It integrates smoothly into most web browsers, so that you never have to enter a username or password. By simply pressing a keyboard shortcut, 1Password will automatically fill in and submit your username and password – so that you don’t have to deal with the hassle of remembering and typing a password out.

Sure, remembering passwords is great, but remembering secure passwords is even better. 1Password includes a secure password generator to assist you in creating the most secure password possible. It’s extremely quick and simple. You can set how many characters long you want your password, and if you want to include numbers, letters, characters, or a combination. Then, you simply hit a generate button and a password will be created. You can then copy the password or have 1Password insert it into the webpage for you.

Another strength of 1Password is its ability to remember things other than passwords, such as credit cards, identities, and secure notes. Now, instead of entering your credit card or bank information every time you want to purchase something online, you can simply have 1Password fill in the information for you. The same concept applies to profiles, where you can have 1Password instantly fill out the information on a web form. 1Password will also securely store information for you in a note. This is great for keeping track of important information that you don’t want to leave unsecure.

Now, when you’re entrusting almost all of your personal information in a single application, you want to be sure that it’s safe and secure. With 1Password, you don’t have to worry. All of your information is password protected and stored inside of Mac OS X’s default keychain (unless you opt-in to use the Agile Keychain). In order to access any information, or have 1Password auto-fill anything, you must know a master password. You can have 1Password ask you for the master password everytime you autofill, or open up the application, or you can have it simply remember the master password. There is also security in knowing that 1Password helps protect you from phishing scams, as well as keyloggers. You see, the app matches up passwords to webpages based on URL’s. If a phishing scam is in action, an incorrect URL will be used. So, 1Password won’t auto-fill the form for you and you’ll know that something is wrong.  Also, since the keyboard is not being used to enter secure information, keyloggers aren’t able to track your passwords.

There is also an iPhone version of 1Password – for taking your passwords and data with you. While you can’t autofill passwords in the native Mobile Safari browser, you can have 1Password go to the site and auto-fill within the app. It syncs with the desktop client through the Wi-Fi network. It’s nifty and a nice way to take your data with you. Also, 1Password can sync using MobileMe if you have multiple macs.

You can find 1Password from Agile web solutions at a price of $39.95 for a single user, $69.95 for a family pack, as well as a free demo, and education pricing. Go ahead and give 1Password a try – you won’t regret it!

The menubar, like the dock, is an integral part of Mac OS X. Besides the basic function of providing menus in applications, the Menubar can do a ton. By default, the right side of the menubar displays a clock, the spotlight icon, Airport status, volume, as well as a MobileMe sync status, Time Machine Backup status, and Fast User Switching if you enable them. While this is great, many developers have taken the menubar to the next level. Here’s a look at my essential menubar apps.

Caffiene
Caffiene is extremely simple, but very useful. You simply click it to tell your computer to not go to sleep. This is extremely handy when watching online video, reading a long article, or anything else for that matter. It is a great way to maintain good energy saving preferences, but not be annoyed when your monitor goes to sleep a minute into watching House on Hulu. When you’re done, you simply click the caffiene icon again to turn it off. [Download]

Jumpcut
If you’re like me, you’re always using copy & paste. Jumpcut keeps a record of what you’ve copied, so that you can paste it later – even if you’ve made a new copy. It works really well, and even has a keyboard shortcut that pops up with a bezel – so that you don’t necessarily have to click on the menu bar icon. I’ve gotten it to remember up to 100 items, which is stunning. [Download]

SoundSource
Rouge Amoeba developed a really handy tool for controlling audio input and output on your Mac – straight from the Menubar. You can choose which source you want to play audio to/from, and how loud you want to hear it. It’s a big step up from Apple’s default menubar volume control. You can also use it to quick launch Audio MIDI Setup or Sound Preferences. [Download]

Alarm Clock 2
I’ve begun to use my mac as my default alarm clock, thanks to Alarm Clock 2. It integrates with your iTunes library, so that you can wake up to your favorite music. You can set recurring alarms, and enable features such as “easy wake” and of course the “snooze”. What really makes Alarm Clock 2 superb is that you can also set timers and stopwatches. I can’t tell you how many times I use Alarm Clock 2, it’s just become an automatic part of my day. [Download]

All of these apps were solely designed for the menubar, and best of all – they’re free! There are a ton of really spectacular apps that utilize the menu bar really well such as Evernote, Skitch, LittleSnapper, and so forth but these all have regular app interfaces that go along with them. The apps mentioned above are specifically for the menubar. They’re minimalistic but get the job done well, ad worth a download.