Fabrizio Giordano

I consider Sublime Text 2 to be the spiritual successor to TextMate – particularly when the likelihood of TextMate 2 coming to fruition becomes bleaker and bleaker. When Duke Nukem Forever is released before TextMate 2, you know you’re in trouble! But that’s okay, because Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible editors to come out in a long time! I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

Sublime Text 2 is currently available for all major platforms: OS X, Linux and Windows.

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1 – Get a Better Icon

In its defense, Sublime Text 2 is still in a beta state. The official icon will likely/hopefully change with the official release. Until then, Nate Beaty created an excellent substitute.

To integrate it, you need to replace the existing “Sublime Text 2.icns” file with this new one. On a Mac, browse to Sublime 2 in your Applications/ folder, then right-click and “View Package Contents.” Lastly, browse to Contents/Resources/, and drag the new icon in, overwriting the existing one.

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2 – Bleeding Edge Versions

Sublime is in active development. If, like me, you want to use the latest possible version of the app, you can download the dev build. You’ll find that new (auto) updates are available every other day or so.

Download a dev build of Sublime 2 here.

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3 – Access the Command Palette

Similar to TextMate, we can use Sublime’s command palette by accessing the Tools menu, or by pressing Shift + Command + P, on the Mac. Whether you need to visit a Preferences page, or paste in a snippet, all of that can be accomplished here.

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4 – Lightning-Fast File Switching

Press Control or Command + P, type in the name of the file you wish to access (fuzzy finder), and, without even pressing Enter, you’ll instantly be transported to that file. While Vim and apps like PeepOpen offer a similar functionality, they’re not nearly as fast as Sublime’s implementation.

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5 – How Did We Survive Before Multi-Selection?

Editors like TextMate have long offered vertical selection, which is quite neat. But, with multi-selection, you can have multiple cursors on the page. This can drastically reduce the need for using regular expressions, and advanced search and replace queries. Perhaps a quick visual demonstration is in order…

To enable multi-selection, you have two options:

• Press Alt or Command and then click in each region where you require a cursor.
• Select a block of lines, and then press Shift + Command + L.

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6 – Indent Guides

It’s such a small feature, but I’ve always loved how Notepad++ on Windows displays indent guides; it makes the page much easier to navigate and format. Sublime Text 2 offers this ability, via a plugin created by Nikolaus Wittenstein.

To integrate this plugin:

• Download it
• Rename the folder to “Indent Guides” and drag it into the Packages folder. On a Mac, this path would be Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages

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7 – Package Control

The steps outlined in the previous tip (#6) are a bit tedious, aren’t they? Instead, we can install the excellent Sublime Package Control, which streamlines the entire process.

To install “Package Control,” open Sublime and press Control + `. Next, paste the following snippet into the console.

 import urllib2,os;pf='Package Control.sublime-package';ipp=sublime.installed_packages_path();os.makedirs(ipp) if not os.path.exists(ipp) else None;open(os.path.join(ipp,pf),'wb').write(urllib2.urlopen('http://sublime.wbond.net/'+pf.replace(' ','%20')).read())

Don’t worry if you don’t understand the code above; just copy and paste!

Lastly, restart Sublime Text, and browse to Preferences -> Package Settings. If the installation was successful, you’ll now see a Package Control item in that list.

With Package Control installed, the process of adding new plugins and functionality becomes incredibly simple!

For a usage example, refer to the next item in this list.

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8 – Alignment

If you’re the type who prefers to line up your equal signs – for example, in your JavaScript…

// Before
var joe = 'joe';
var johnny = 'johnny';
var quaid = 'quaid';

// After
var joe    = 'joe';
var johnny = 'johnny';
var quaid  = 'quaid';

…this process can be automated, via the Sublime Alignment plugin. Rather than downloading and installing it manually, let’s instead use Package Control (outlined in #7).

• Press Shift + Command + P
• Type “install,” to bring up the “Package Control: Install Package” option, and press Enter
• Look for “Alignment,” and press Enter to install it.
• You’re done; so easy! Type Shift + Command + A to auto-align.

This process can be repeated for all of the typical plugins we install, such as Zen Coding.

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9 – Vim Fanatic

I’m a huge fan of Vim. The amount of power it provides is insane. The fact that I’ve switched over to Sublime Text 2 should speak volumes then!

If you’re using a dev build of Sublime Text (see #2 in this list), you can enable Vintage mode, which provides support for the Vi commands that we know and love — okay…some of us love. The rest of you hate it!

To enable Vintage mode, browse to Preferences/Global Settings - Default. Once this file opens, browse to the very bottom, and change "ignored_packages": ["Vintage"] to "ignored_packages": []. Next, restart Sublime, press the Escape key, and, tada: command mode!

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10 – Distraction Free Editing

Sometimes, we need to filter out all of the additional fluff that gets in the way of our coding. Use “Distraction Free Mode” to take this idea as far as possible. This option is available, via the View menu. Select “Enter Distraction Free Mode,” or use the Mac keyboard shortcut, Control + Shift + Command + F.

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11 – You Can Still Use TextMate Bundles

TextMate snippets and themes port over nicely to Sublime Text. You only need to drop them in the Packages folder — .tmbundle extension intact, and Sublime will recognize the files. This means that the entire catalog of TextMate themes will work in Sublime!

For example, I’ve been working with the (fantastic) Slim templating engine a good bit lately, and needed better syntax highlighting. Fred Wu created a bundle for TextMate, but, tada, it works perfectly in Sublime Text as well! If you’re interested, you can download the Slim bundle here; it includes both snippets and syntax highlighting.

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12 – Custom Themes

The default theme for Sublime Text is excellent, but I much prefer a custom light and dark theme, Soda, created by Ian Hill.

Installation

As taken from the Github page…

“If you are a git user, the best way to install the theme and keep up to date is to clone the repo directly into your Packages directory in the Sublime Text 2 application settings area.”

Using Git

Go to your Sublime Text 2 Packages directory and clone the theme repository using the command below:

 git clone https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ "Theme - Soda"

Download Manually

• Download the files using the GitHub .zip download option.
• Unzip the files and rename the folder to Theme – Soda
• Copy the folder to your Sublime Text 2 Packages directory

Activating the Theme

To configure Sublime Text 2 to use the theme:

• Open your Sublime Text 2 User Global Preferences file: Sublime Text 2 -> Preferences -> User Global Settings
• Add (or update) your theme entry to be “theme”: “Soda Light.sublime-theme” or “theme”: “Soda Dark.sublime-theme”

Example User Global Settings

{
    "theme": "Soda Light.sublime-theme"
}

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Conclusion

The more I work with Sublime Text 2, the more I realize how incredible it is. But all of this would mean nothing if not for the fact that it’s an insanely fast editor, and, even better, it’s not finished!

After a steady stream of information in June, all has been quiet on the Facebook Project Spartan front in recent weeks. Originally, at least some thought the plan was to unveil Spartan in July — but that obviously came and went. It’s certainly possible we won’t hear anything until f8 in late September now. But one new bit of information has come to our attention that could be related. Say hello to BoltJS.

BoltJS is a UI framework that’s being built by Facebook for the purpose “helping developers build fantastic mobile web applications in HTML5 and Javascript,” as you can read for yourself here. It is written entirely in JavaScript and runs in the browser, meaning no backend processing is required. And guess where the focus of the project lies right now: mobile WebKit browsers — just like Project Spartan.

Here’s the description in developer Shane O’Sullivan’s own words from the project’s GitHub page:

BoltJS is a UI framework designed by Facebook to be compact, fast and powerful. It is written entirely in JavaScript and runs in the browser, needing no server backend. While BoltJS can be used in a progressive enhancement approach, it is primarily designed for UIs that are built mostly, if not completely, in the browser.

While it is the aim of the BoltJS project to support as many modern browsers as sensible, it is currently focused on supporting mobile WebKit browsers, with the intention of being the best possible development platform for mobile sites and HTML5 apps.

O’Sullivan is a software engineer at Facebook on the Client UI team. The other authors of the project are Will Bailey, Vlad Kolesnikov, and Tom Occhino.

BoltJS is built on top of Javelin, and plays nicely with Facebook’s current code, O’Sullivan notes. It also features modules that use the CommonJS standard. For all the other technical details, check out the GitHub docs page.

But here are a few other interesting things about the project. First, Facebook doesn’t seem to want to say a word about it. I asked them about it several hours ago after a back and forth about something else. So far, nada in response to this. That’s not surprising given what I’ve been told about BoltJS — namely that it’s still meant to be a secret.

While the documentation does reside on GitHub, the source code hasn’t been released to the public yet. The links on this page to the zip and tar source files don’t work. But I’m told that BoltJS is already being licensed secretly to third parties who are preparing apps to show off using the platform. At least one of those third parties is a major player in the consumer web space. Again, this sounds a lot like Spartan.

Also found on GitHub is a demo app built using BoltJS called “Weather App“. If it looks familiar, it’s because you own an iPhone. It is essentially the Weather app re-created using the JavaScript framework. Still think Facebook doesn’t intend to battle with Apple in mobile down the road?…

That’s all for now. More as we get it.

Update: As Holger Eilhard notes on Twitter, Google’s cache catches several other BoltJS examples that are no longer live. Among them: a few maze games.

Webmaster level: All

For the past few months, you might have used +1 buttons to help visitors recommend your content on Google Search and on their Google Profiles. We’ve just announced a few changes that make +1 even more useful.

First, the +1 button now lets visitors share links to your pages on Google+. If someone wants to start a conversation about your content, it’s easy for them to do so. Second, you can use +Snippets to customize the name, image and description that appear when your content is shared. Finally, new inline annotations help increase engagement after users see a friend’s recommendation right on your page.

Here are a couple of tips to help you take full advantage of these improvements:

+Snippets

The +1 button opens up your site to a valuable new source of traffic with sharing on Google+. +Snippets let you put your best face forward by customizing exactly what appears when your content is shared.

For example, if you’re running a movie review site, you might want visitors to share posts containing the title, movie poster, and a brief synopsis:

You may already be using this markup to build rich annotations for your pages on Google Search. If not, marking up your pages is simple. Just add the correct schema.org attributes to the data already present on your pages. You’ll set a name, image, and description in your code:

<body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">

<h1 itemprop="name">This is the article name</h1>

<img itemprop="image" src="thumbnail.jpg" />

<p itemprop="description">This is the description of the article.</p>

</body>

For more details on alternate markup types, please see our technical documentation.

Inline annotations

Now, when a person visits a page that someone they know has +1’d, they can see a name and face reminding them to pay special attention to your content. Here’s how it looks:

To add inline annotations, you need to update your +1 button code. Visit the configuration tool, select ‘inline’ from the ‘Annotation’ menu, and grab a new snippet of code.

Both sharing from +1 and inline annotations are rolling out fully over the next few days. To test these improvements right now, join our Platform Preview group.

Update later the same day, August 24, 2011: If you have any thoughts or feedback you’d like to share, continue the conversation on Google+.

Posted by Daniel Dulitz, Group Product Manager

ModoPayments’ simple and comprehensive solution for providing mobile payments is interesting and what’s more, its offer-based approach may have finally cracked the code for monetizing check-ins. This is something that mobile location-based service providers (LBSs) like Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla and ShopKick have, no doubt, been laboring over since their inceptions. And while ModoPayments is, at present, a non-NFC mobile payments platform, they plan to integrate with NFC too, when NFC reaches retail maturity.

Based in Dallas, Texas and led by CEO Bruce Parker, ModoPayments is a startup with a goal to do exactly what their tagline says – “convert redemptions to payments and make payments mobile”. What exactly does that mean? First, know that ModoPayments definitely has a payments piece and I’ll come to that in a moment, but a supremely important part of their business plan is creating and tying value offers to the purchases they enable in order to enhance and promote their mobile payments solution. They create monetary savings that users can cash in on if they transact with ModoPayments instead of another tender.

It has often been stated that mobile payments are a solution searching for a problem. Indeed, what is the big deal about pulling a card out of your wallet vs. pulling your phone out of your pocket, to transact? Where is the value to drive the mobile payment other than convenience?

Modo thinks it has to do with offers and they have integrated a framework for redeeming merchant offers with their payments platform. This makes sense to me. If I had to choose between paying with my Visa card in my wallet or my Visa on my phone (that also happens to give me a big discount on the purchase) I think the choice is obvious. So right out of the gate, ModoPayments has tied a distinct consumer value proposition to their service in order to drive usage (they hope). Google Wallet has a similar concept. It will definitely be a motivator.

The platform makes it possible to, in the words of Bruce, “generate a mobile payment transaction at any location that accepts either Visa or MasterCard with no change to POS and no change to the phone that uses ModoPayments.” It can exist as an SMS or native app solution; customers can choose either touchpoint.

I’ve heard this one before, but their scenario is really simple and honestly sounds like it might work.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

First, a customer creates an account at the ModoPayments website and registers a credit card with that account. When it later comes time to pay for something at a participating location, the customer texts “VISIT” to the Modo short code or else they check-in with the Modo native app. (In the text scenario, Modo will try to triangulate on a customer’s network location. If they can’t locate them, ultimately they will just ask the customer via text—‘are you at X location’ and via process of elimination, locate them).

After Modo have verified that the location matches up with a supporting offer, they will create a randomized credit account number for that location which is good for one transaction only. They then load it with money that the merchant or other 3rd party has set aside for the specific offer.

Next, they will grab the difference still needed to complete the sale from the customers registered credit card. In essence, they are creating pre-paid card numbers that will only work for a limited time and that are loaded with money from both the offer provider and the customer.

Then, they send half of the account number to the merchant and half of the number to the customer. The two sides combine their numbers to create the actionable account number to complete the transaction. (The merchant half of the number may or may not be static and therefore might not even need to be sent).

Pretty tricky. So here they have tied a distinct merchant value proposition to their service—no costly POS change required plus a mobile marketing channel.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Logistically, that is how they are enabling the mobile payment but another concept they are focused on is information sharing. Using the ModoPayments framework, users can track their entire purchase history, merchants can see anonymized purchasing trends to track/create effective offers and the location element will act as a security feature and help bolster the ability to relax chargeback percentages in order to turn those into profit.

For example, normally for “card-not-present” credit transactions (like Modo’s) an extra percentage is taken from the merchant who accepts these card-less numbers as protection against fraudulent purchases in case there is a chargeback.

Because ModoPayments has these sophisticated technologies that can prove exactly where a transaction is happening and by whom, and because they also control the randomized account numbers they can potentially minimize chargeback risk. This will allow them to work out acquirer relationships in such a way that they keep that usual 1% markup and turn it into profit. I am not sure how they are going to pull that off, but it’s a great idea.

MONETIZE CHECK-IN

I think the payments piece alone is cool and the info sharing piece is borderline scary but what I really zeroed in on is what this could mean as a payments solution that benefits the check-in concept. Customers can check-in with ModoPayments via text or native app, but Bruce said that other LBSs could also own the check-in part if they want. Modo is open to that.

So here’s the thing…if pulled off correctly, this service could finally monetize check-in in a way that hasn’t happened before. Modo could provide the framework for the offer and mechanism for transacting, while the location service could act as the visible marketing channel. That extra 1% could be sliced up a few ways so everyone could get a piece of the action. Then, it just becomes a volume game.

For example, a merchant has an offer and advertises that either directly though ModoPayments or within say, Foursquare. If the Foursquare check-in helps drive the offer redemption through ModoPayments, then they get a piece of that transaction, affiliate-style. It would therefore behoove Foursquare to help advertise it. This could be the part of their puzzle that has been missing and could be very attractive to the major LBSs while at the same time could help to drive ModoPayments adoption.

WHAT ABOUT NFC?

I’m rather pessimistic about NFC’s short term viability for completing mobile payments in the retail space. No doubt it will be a useful mechanism once the merchant value proposition is defined. As it stands, that has yet to be clarified for me, in toto.

Sure, consumers want it, but is that enough of a reason to validate merchant expense incurred purchasing and installing the hardware needed, just so a small percentage of early adopter consumers can leave their wallets at home? Consumer desire is one thing but there needs to be a clear, strategic and financial value for the merchant too, especially if they are footing the bill for NFC enablement (e.g. buying hardware).

It’s a big, credible expense and there are just too many unanswered questions in my mind to think that NFC payments are as close as the Google Wallet announcement would lead some to believe. Forrester’s Charles S. Golvin and Thomas Husson have said that

“Relying on an installed base of phones that is today indistinguishable from zero, a single payment system, a single card issuer, and a modest network of merchants capable of accepting these phone-based payments means that the near-term impact will be negligible.”

That’s why the POS-less concept ModoPayments has put together is a great interim step.

Don’t get me wrong, I think eventually NFC will embed and payments solutions will have to incorporate with it and account for it. It’s definitely one way to solve for the physical proximity needs of a mobile transaction. It’s still a couple of years away though. That’s just my opinion.

And really, I’m not sure consumers care if their mobile payments solution incorporates NFC, 2D barcodes or a freakin’ chip in their butt…they just want an easy way to purchase that matches the evolving mobile lifestyle of traveling light, planning on the fly and managing on the go. It’s just how people are staring to do things. We all know this.

Ok, they might actually care about a chip in their butt. You get my point though.

WHAT’S NEXT
ModoPayments has a few pilots scheduled to launch in Dallas in the coming weeks, so we’ll hopefully be able to get a look at how this concept is playing out in the real world. I will definitely be watching for when and how those pilots work out. They will also be presenting at Finovate 2011, in New York later in September. Until then, check out their light and clever little video at modopayments.com.