Web Dillies

SourceGear offers their 3-way Diff/Merge tool for free. DiffMerge is an application to visually compare and merge files for Windows, Mac OS X and Unix.

Product Features (from their Website):

• Diff. Graphically shows the changes between two files. Includes intra-line highlighting and full support for editing.
• Merge. Graphically shows the changes between 3 files. Allows automatic merging (when safe to do so) and full control over editing the resulting file.
• Folder Diff. Performs a side-by-side comparison of 2 folders, showing which files are only present in one file or the other, as well as file pairs which are identical or different.
• Configurable. Rulesets and options provide for customized appearance and behavior.
• International. Compatible with 42 different character encodings.
• FREE. Full featured. Not a demo!

A few days ago, i received an invitation for Demofuse. Demofuse is a tool to author annotated website tours right in your browser. All you need to get started ist to include two lines of code into every page you want to have Demofuse-enabled. Then, you have to go to the Demofuse website and create a new tour. This will open your website with a nice little control panel on the bottom containing everything you need to create the show.

The concept of Demofuse is slide based. You can create a number of slides, each showing a certain web page. To guide your audience and to explain what’s going on, you have a toolbox with the following tools in place:

• A floating window contains explaining text about the current page. It also contains navigation elements to give the user control over the show.
• Highlights are used to mark an area of the screen. You can use regular highlighting in a color of your choice or you can use inverse highlighting. The latter dims your screen except of the area of interest.
• Arrows can be used to point to a certain elemnt on teh page. You can determine the arrow direction (left or right) an wether the arrow should be animated or not. Unfortunately i haven’t found a way to select the arrows color.
• To visualize mouse clicks, Demofuse offers the “Curso Click” tool. It marks the place where the user have to click in real live with a red dot.

Working with Demofuse smells a little bit like doing a series of screenshots but in real, Demofuse is using the life website and injects script code to create the web tour experience.

When you’re done, you can save you tour and Demofuse will provide you script snippets and a nice button that can be used to integrate the tour in your site. You have the choice between code that starts the tour using a link and code that start the tour using script. The latter doesn’t need to refresh the page which is the best choice whenever the user has already fille a form or something like that. Just click on the “Sample Tour” button to see a demo tour.

If you are interested in trying out Demofuse yourself, feel free to Sign Up. Because Demofuse is not yet completely public, you have to provide the following invitation code: 731125

See also: TechCrunch

Wow, heute ist wohl Einladungstag. Kurz nacheinander haben sie mich endlich bei reinvigorate und Popfly zum Testen reingelassen. Wurde ja auch Zeit.

Reinvigorate liefert Web- Statistike a la Google Analytics, hat aber im Vergleich ein deutlich gefälligeres User Interface. Durch die kürzlich erfolgte Renovierung des Analytics UI konnte Google den Abstand allerdings deutlich verringern.

Das für mich größte Plus für reinvigorate ist die Echtzeit Verarbeitung der Daten. Jeder Besucher taucht umgehend in den Statistiken auf und auch die Navigationspfade der einzelnen Besucher lassen sich nachvollziehen.

Popfly ist Microsofts Antwort auf Yahoos Pipes und kommt mit einer mega-stylishen Ajax Oberfläche daher. Auf einem Design Surface, das im Hintergrund ein Preview der gerade bearbeiteten Applikation zeigt, operiert man mit animierten Boxen, die verschiedene Dienste darstellen. Zur Verfügung stehen derzeit ca. 140 Dienste, teils sind dies externe wie Flickr, Digg oder Twitter, teils interne wie z.B. Konvertierungen, Berechungen oder Komponenten zur Darstellung von Daten im User Interface. Es macht auf jeden Fall Spass ein wenig in Popfly herumzuklicken. Teilweise wird die Applikation etwas zäh. Es stellt sich dann die Frage, ob beim Zusammenbauen der Applikation diese unbedingt schon im Hintergrund angezeigt werden muss oder ob der ganze Schnickschnack wirklich auf dem Design Surface herumwabbern und rein- und raus-sliden muss. Wie gesagt, Spaß machts allemal.

…for Microsoft developers. Microsoft understood that it is'nt such a good idea to keep the Expression Applications back from the developers. Finally, they decided to include Expression Web and Expression Blend within the MSDN Premium subscription. Expression Web is available since yesterday and Blend will be available as soon as it is RTM (expected in Q2/2007).

DevBiz is the producer of Teamplain, a web based cross-browser frontend for Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS). And the best of it all: You don't have to pay for Teamplain any longer. Starting today, it's a free download for legal users of TFS. Great news!