Product Reviews
A complete list of all the reviews published on IT Enquirer since January 1, 2008.
Cross-media publishing often involves the use of technologies that can bridge the differences between the different output channels and media, such as print, web, and even dynamic publishing technologies. XML is the technology most often used to bridge these differences. XML itself is a Markup Language, much like HTML is a markup language. Both HTML and XML are sub-technologies with their roots in SGML, Standard Generalized Markup Language.
oXygen XML Editor is an editor that enables you to develop everything needed for publishing XML documents. It is a complete platform-independent solution for creating many types of XML documents, validating them, editing schema, generating HTML documentation, converting one XML type ot another, and much more.
Omni Group these days has a complete set of applications developed to accommodate project management, task management, and the necessary reporting. One of the reporting tools that can be used for illustration purposes in newspapers, magazines, and books, is OmniGraffle Professional. Omni Group has recently released their public beta of OmniGraffle Professional 5, and once again has succeeded in adding useful features, while improving what was already there.
Blitz Tools is well-known for its barcode software. Barcode Generator is hard to beat in terms of powerful features and ease-of-use. One of their latest barcode utilities is Barcode Plugin for Illustrator. If you want to have a tool that is readily available from the toolbar and that creates vector-based barcodes in almost every format, quickly and easily, Barcode Plugin is one of the best choices.
SoundStudio 3 is a sound editor with relatively powerful features, a simple interface and a no-frills approach. If you want to create simple podcasts without much effort and without the addition of video, SoundStudio may prove to be faster to work with than SoundTrack Pro. However, if sophistication is what’s you’re after, Apple SoundTrack Pro may be better suited than SoundStudio. Price wise, SoundStudio can’t be beaten, though.
IconFactory and Artis Software are two innovative developers who have found each other in their common quest for the perfect tool for designers. IconFactory being specialised in design that mainly focusses on what is happening on your computer screen, have brought the design tool xScope to perfection. xScope is a program that lets you measure, draw and check design areas on-screen. It uses pixels as its basic working unit, and it is simply indispensable for everybody who is designing for the screen. Web designers certainly should give this application a thorough look --you will be surprised at how xScope can help with positioning elements on a web page.
Colour management is probably among the most important and least understood technologies designers and publishers have to cope with. Monitor calibration and profiling is no exception. To do it right, you need expensive equipment and arcane software. Not true, says Pantone, which now is an integral part of the X-Rite family. The Huey Pro is a calibration system developed by Pantone to make monitor calibration a breeze. But how accurate is it?
Apple Logic Studio is a complete music creation environment, a virtual music studio. It is an indispensable tool when creating music for video and motion pictures, and even presentations. Logic Studio is a software bundle that includes Logic Pro 8, SoundTrack Pro 2, Apple Sound Loops, and a completely new application for on-stage artists called MainStage. I had the opportunity to test Logic Pro for the first time when Apple had just acquired the application. Back then I found Logic Pro to be extremely powerful, but also extremely difficult to use.
Is there an easy way to create an illustration that shows a timeline like the ones you find in some history books? The most control over what your timeline looks like used to be had with a copy of Adobe Illustrator and a lot of patience. Some 30 minutes for a timeline with a dozen events, to be exact. And then you’ll only end up with a static timeline or one in which the links to Wikipedia or whatever other information source you prefer, must be created using Javascript and SVG.
There could be a faster and smarter way by using a dedicated program. Bee Documents’ Timeline is an example. It took me 10 minutes to create the same timeline in their application. It looked exactly the same and came with effortless links in the high-resolution PDF document that I exported it to.
Ambrosia Software is probably best known for its Mac OS X games, and its professional screeenshot recording utility, Snapz Pro. WireTap Studio used to be called WireTap Pro, but that first shot at audio recording wasn’t too successful, mainly because it offered too little in the area of podcasting capabilities. That has changed dramatically with WireTap Studio, which has everything a podcasting pro may ever need, and more. The only thing I didn’t applaud was the bundling of sound effects: I would have liked to have more of those, but to be honest: the one that comes with the application is of a rare quality (Camel Audio) --almost on par with what Apple cooks up with Logic Studio.
British EasyPress Technologies’ Atomik RoundTrip is an XML to QuarkXPress and vice versa conversion system. It allows you to import XML into QuarkXPress documents and export QuarkXPress documents into XML format. Atomik RoundTrip makes itself known to QuarkXPress 7 users as two palettes with a third that becomes visible when doing some more complex XML coding. We found Atomik RoundTrip to be both extremely powerful and yet easy enough to understand relatively quickly. It is a must-have if you want to integrate QuarkXPress 7 with an existing XML-capable Content Management System, and it can even be more than that.
IconFactory and Panic Software joined forces again, and started developing CandyBar 3 long before Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard hit the streets. And now, a good month after Leopard has been released, CandyBar 3 has too. Much to my surprise, CandyBar 3 is a replacement for CandyBar 2 and for Pixadex. It looks like Panic and IconFactory have another winner on their hand with this icon management/replacement tool. CandyBar 3 doesn’t just look right, it also replaces the Leopard Dock if you so wish.
Color is Apple’s newest addition to the Final Cut “Pro” software suite. Color is a professional video and film grading and manipulation tool. It is an environment with the look and feel of Shake, with different “rooms”. Color can colour correct video and film projects coming from Final Cut Pro or an EDL (Edit Decision List) for another editing environment. Control surfaces from JLCooper and Tangent Devices are compatible with Color.
Colour correcting is not the only trick up Color’s sleeve; you can also create colour effects with a node-based system, pan and scan effects, and apply colour effects to restricted --and if needed, moving-- zones in a project. I tested Color after having tried most of its features a couple of times. Color isn’t easy when you first start using it, but it rapidly grows on you.
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