As I mentioned in my recent "My Top 10 Web Design Tools" post, I have started using Axure RP Pro for creating highly interactive prototypes, wireframes, site maps , flow charts and specifications. It is a fantastic application with a lot of depth that can create very complex prototypes.

Axure also has a growing community around it and, in recent months, several people and organizations have started to create libraries of reusable components that ease the effort of creating simple or complex interactive widgets from scratch in Axure. A list of the best of these resources recently has been published on A Clean Design's site and can be found here: http://www.acleandesign.com/2008/11/the-top-10-axure-resources/

One of those resources is the open source Axlib project who's aim is "to create a robust design library of common interaction patterns for use with Axure RP". Axlib is both a Google Group as well as a Google Code repository for the latest version of the librairy. The reason I mention Axlib specifically is that there's a great conversation going on now in the Google group about how those open-source Axure librairies should be standardized both in terms of how they are created and documented and anyone involved in UXD that is using Axure or is interested in using it at some point should participate. Some of the issues under discussion include:

• Width of widgets (assumed page width, perhaps)
• General look and feel, perhaps a simple color palette
• Level of fidelity
• Level of interactivity
• Use and documentation of Variables
• Use and documentation of Raised Events
• Fonts and font size

If you are an Axure user, give this and other librairies a try and get involved in the community!

Today, MindJet has released two new products: MindManager 8 for Windows and MindManager Web.

I've blogged about MindManager before as it is one of the main tools in my creative arsenal. If you haven't tried MindManager before or have been curious about it, now is the best time to try it and dive into mind mapping. Here's a few of the main new features in the new version.

What's New in MindManager 8

Maps sharing: One of the main limitations of using MindManager before was that it was diffiult to share those maps with people who did not have it. Exporting to Word and other formats could only go so far and, for me at least, my MindManager maps did not create good client deliverables even if they were very useful to me internally.

With MindManager 8, we can now export maps directly to PDF with embedded interactive maps (a Flash movie from the map is embedded in the PDF). This is huge for me. We now can share our maps in a self contained and secure file format and email them to anyone or make them easily downloadable from any Web site. Secondly, MindManager 8  also export directly to Flash itself so we can add interactive maps to our Web sites. You can check out how that feels by looking at the map on the MindManager 8 product page on MindJet's Web site.

Integrated Microsoft Office File Editing & Embedded Web Browser: MindManager 8 can now display Web pages or edit MS Office documents right from within MindManager's interface. For me this is a very welcome addition as I often want to add links to Web pages to map topics. Now I don't have to copy paste as there's an "Add to Map" button right in the embedded browser.

Integrated Content & services: It is now possible to add search topics, RSS feeds or connections to databases directly in maps by using what MindJet calls "Map Parts" that connect to search engines and other services or data stores. That way, topics in map can be kept fresh and relevant with updated data instead of being static.

Web services Map Parts included in MindManager 8 include Google, Yahoo and Windows Live (Search); MySpace and Facebook (social networking) and Amazon, eBay and StrikeIron D&B (eCommerce). Database linkers include Access, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, Excel and text files.

These are just a few of the new features included in MindManager 8. I will post again on why you would want to use an application like MindManager but, in the meantime, you can read my previous posts on mind mapping from last year when I started using MindManager 7:

• My Search for Mind Mapping Software
  
• Mind Mapping as a Creative and Project Management Tool
• Another Piece of the Mind Mapping for Project Management Puzzle

There is a meme popping on Twitter and the blogosphere where some Web professionals are wondering if it is a good thing to listen to music while working or not. I had been reflecting on that very thing recently so this comes at a timely moment for me.

Of course, to a point this comes down to personal preferences but it seems that, musicians like me respond to music in a different way than non-musicians which makes it harder for us to concentrate on the work at hand when listening to music. For example, look at the quote from Mark W. Shead in the “Should we listen to music while working?” post on Designer Daily. Thanks to Mirko Humbert on Twitter for the heads up on that article. He makes the point that if background noise is needed, the sound of waves or rain or something equally neutral is better than music as he states that he simply cannot perform tasks requiring high levels of concentration while listening to music.

I myself generally like to listen to music while working but whether I do or not depends directly on the kind of task I am working on at that moment and how I feel on that particular day. If I’m more tired for example I’ll have a harder time concentrating to begin with so I may prefer the silence. Furthermore, my music listening habits have evolved over time and as my circumstances changed. When I was still a student living with my parents, I used to need to put some music on at a reasonably low volume to “shield” myself from the noises in the rest of the house. That “wall of sound” effect permitted me to reach incredible levels of concentration. When I was in the “zone” like that, a train could have passed in my room and I would not have noticed. I’m not exaggerating. As a teenager I could reach levels of concentration that I simply cannot attain anymore which makes me very jealous of my teenage self…

Nowadays, I’m a full time freelancer working from home in a very quiet environment. I need no shielding from ambient noises but I still need the music a lot of the times for different reasons not the least of which is that it can get lonely working alone in complete silence. But what I listen to is directly related to what I’m doing. For example, when I’m doing simple administrative tasks or anything around the office not requiring great concentration I’ll listen to either my MP3 player on shuffle (very varied stuff in there) or to XM Radio (I particularly love XM Café and the alternative channels). But if I’m in developer mode writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript or ColdFusion code, I usually switch to mostly non-vocal music and for that I really love the XM Radio Chill channel. The fact that I do not know a lot of the music helps me “ignore” it better. Like I said before, I’ll often just turn off the music if I don’t feel it is helping at a particular moment.

When I’m in design mode, I usually like more upbeat or heavier music. I rarely design in silence. The musical stimulus really helps idea generation. The style here is very varied and depends a lot more on my own mood than the type of project I’m working on. Again here, I often turn to XM or to my MP3 player but with a more focused genre depending on the day.

So, what about you? Is music part of your work process too or do you need complete silence to be able to work?

I had already started working on a blog post with my top 10 most useful Web design tools but, like many other things these days, I had continually postponed finishing it in favor of "more important things". Like client work... ;-)

But I saw a post today on the Visualrinse blog that tackled the same topic so it prompted me to finish mine.

As mentioned in the above blog post, we all have our own favorite working methods, tricks and tools for completing projects and, as I have already mentioned here before, I have really tried to refine my process in the last year or so and find the tools that really help me get my work done, especially since I am a one man shop and need to tackle both the design and development aspects of my projects as well as managing them and my clients. Now that I am freelancing full time, I have really started to develop a process that works for me. So here are the tools I could not live without in my Web design and development work.

1. Mindjet MindManager Pro / JCV Gantt Pro. I stated using MindManager in the summer of 2007 and it has quickly become one of my most useful tools. I use it for several things like brainstorming ideas, creating projetc management documents like a projet's creative brief, work breadown structure or tasks, site maps and more. Each project gets a "dashboard" map that links to all the other project related maps, documents or folders. From the tasks map I move to the JCV Gantt Pro addin to create the project schedule and determine the cost of the project. MindManager is the best "knowledge repository" application I've ever tried and I now wonder what I did without it before I found it.
   
2. Axure RP Pro. Axure is the most recent addition to my toolset. It takes off where MindManager leaves off for me. As great as MindManager is for my own internal processes I realized it did not create great deliverables for clients. Axure is the best tool I found to create site maps and flow charts but its main purpose is wireframes, functional interactive prototypes and documentation and it really excels at it. I'm working on a appointment/calendar app for a current site project and prototyping it in Axure will save me a lot of coding time later. There's nothing like showing a working, clickable and interactive version of a site feature to a client, even if it is fake, to work out the kinks and nail down expectations.
3. Adobe Fireworks. The mainstay in my toolset for the last 10 years and my most used app along with Dreamweaver. I really could not do my job without Fireworks. It completely replaced Photoshop for me for Web design and layout work over 10 years ago and I have never looked back. Its hybrid raster/vector workflow as well as Web centric focus make it the most efficient design app I have ever used. It's like Photoshop/Illustrator and InDesign all rolled up into one killer app but just for the Web. CS4 will be released soon and it really will be the best version ever.
4. Adobe Dreamweaver. Unlike Fireworks which I pretty much adopted immediately after trying version 2.0, it took me a long time to warm up to Dreamweaver. I had been using HomeSite which was a great code editor for a long time but I had to use a separate FTP application to upload sites and was looking for ways to automate some of the repetitive work. Around the release of Dreamweaver 4 but especially the next one, Dreamweaver MX (6.0), the application had evolved in such a way that it basically replaced HomeSite for me. Now it is a full fledged Web authoring environment I couldn't live without anymore. It has the right balance of code centric features, visual editing and a lot of other features around those that just make it a true powerhouse. The new CS4 version which is in public beta right now adds very cool new features that are already making my life easier.
5. ColdFusion. I am more of a designer and front end developer than a backend developer but I still have to wear that hat. I have tried Perl and used ASP in the past and although it was OK it got tedious for me after a while. I also tried PHP as it's very popular but I really don't like it at all for some reason. It really didn't click with me and I strongly dislike the syntax. When I started working with ColdFusion it's like a light bulb was turned on for me. The syntax made sense and it could do more in fewer lines of code than ASP (and most other server-side scripting languages) ever could. In the last few years, ColdFusion has kept evolving into one of the most powerful server-side development solutions around with many buit-in features you need plugins for in other platforms. It really rocks my world and has empowered me to build better Web sites.
6. Web Developer Toolbar. Although Firefox is not my main browser (Opera is... and Google Chrome is gainning ground), no Web designer/developer should be without this utility.
7. Firebug. Another amazing Firefox extension that probably needs no introduction. The Inspect functionality alone makes this an absolute must-have. If you're not sure what CSS rule affect a misbehaving element, you'll find it with Firebug's Inspect. Not far behind is Opera's new Dragonfly feature which is still in alpha. Similar to Firebug but built right into Opera 9.5+.
8. Genopal. Going back to designer tools, Genopal is one of those rare finds you wonder how you did without before discovering it. Genopal is a small application used to create color schemes. Nothing earth shattering here but, it does it in a very unique way that I had never seen before. This is the most intuitive color tool I have ever used and I urge anyone struggling with creating good color schemes to try it. I use the desktop Pro version but there's also an online version on the site. This one is a true little gem.
9. Studiometry. What would I do without this amazing application? Studiometry is the administrative center of my world. Projects, clients details, contacts, timers, invoicing, reports and more, Studiometry tracks every detail of my professional work and helps me keep organized.
10. jQuery. This "little" JavaScript framework has rocked my world. Like ColdFusion but on the front end, it has empowered me to create complex interactivity faster and easier than I ever could before. I have tried others but jQuery just clicked for me and I keep being amazed at what I can accomplish with it.

So the above are my own must-haves. The list is not complete though so here's a few honorable mentions for other applications that are central to my work :

One is Outlook 2007 for keeping up with not only email but client contacts, calendar and categorized tasks lists  (following the GTD principles). It's the first app I launch in the morning and the last one I ckeck at night.

Another is FeedDemon, the incredible RSS feeds aggregator from Nick Bradbury and NewsGator. In our field, fighting information overload has become a real issue, at least it has for me. FeedDemon helps me keep informed by following the myriad of sites I am interested in but also through keyword feeds that gather information about specific topics I'm interested in.

Lastly, I need to mention Twitter and the TweetDeck client. I've been a very late Twitter adopter as I didn't "see" the use and thought it would be a waste of time. But now that I work on my own full time, I enjoy the connection to the people I follow. Like FeedDemon, TweetDeck enables me to separate my Twitter "stream" into groups. But furthermore, it enables me to keep watch on particular topics in the "public stream" by letting me add colomns based on specific keyword searches. It took me a long time to get on Twitter but now, TweetDeck is always running on my laptop while I work on my main machine.

Well that's it for me at this time. What are your own preferred tools that you just cannot live without?

Although the new version of Fireworks has been in public beta for a while now, I haven't talked much about it here yet. Not because it's not an exciting release, quite the opposite, but only because until a month ago I was basically working 2 full time jobs and since I turned a full time freelancer, I've worked hard at setting up my new business, rebranding its image and getting into my freelance groove. I'll talk about all that later but I'm just saying that I just did not have the time to write anything meaningful about Fireworks CS4. This post is just a start.

Anyone who's read this blog before or had to "endure" some of my long winded tirades about Fireworks's development and direction in the last few years knows that I just haven't been happy at all about a lot of what happened and a lot of the decisions that have been made during the development of the last 3 versions. On one hand, I have been a long time evangelist of the product but, on the other hand, one of its harshests critics as well. That's because I care about it... a lot. Fireworks is one of the reasons I was able to build a nice Web design business for myself on the side while working a full time job in the printing industry. It enabled me to work faster and get ideas into concrete form easier than with any other graphic application I've used before or since. So it has long been a key part of my toolset and now that I do this full time, it's becoming even more important to me.

But there is a lot to be happy about in the new CS4 version. It still misses some long requested features but it has finally started moving in the right direction again and actually made a huge leap forward.

If you do not want to download and install beta software and are not interested in reading lenghty new features descriptions, please just take a few minutes to watch this video on Adobe TV that features Alan Musselman (who is an application architect from the Fireworks team) demonstrating some of the key new features and improvements in Fireworks 4.

It's been a very long time since I've been this excited about a new Fireworks release but this one really is a fantastic and worthwhile upgrade. Beyond the UI changes, most of the new features go to workflow efficiency and ease of use which have been Fireworks' main strenghts from the beginning. With this release, it's really starting to shape up like the creative powerhouse application it was always promised to become. I can't wait to see how much further Fireworks will jump with the CS5 version...

I've been reading a few more comments about Google Chrome last night and this morning and have kept using it for browsing since yesterday. Here's a few more points :

• My comments from yesterday and today take into account that Chrome is a first beta. People have to remember that this is not yet a replacement for anyone's regular browser. Many comments say that it doesn't support extensions like Firefox, IE or Opera (they may call it diffferent things but you get my gist). It also has some annoying rendering bugs that seem to be due to Webkit and misses basic functionality like a way to turn off scripts which is a very good point that a commenter to my previous post brought up. All valid points but remember that this is a FIRST beta. Chrome will evolve.
• I saw a comment today on Jeffrey Zeldman's site that summed up my first impression of it : "At  present this seems like a solution waiting for a problem". The more I think about it, the more I think that's true. Did we "really" need a new browser in the market?
• The above ties in with some of Zeldman's comments as well as Tantek Celik who commented on the same post. Both say the same thing which is that, in order to compete, a new browser must offer something that others do not. They then discuss ways a browser may differentiate itself and Tantek brings up the point that, with a similar feature set, a browser may win market share by bringing better performance. So far, this seems to be the main thing Chrome brings to the table. But is it enough? 
• While Chrome is certainly much faster than Firefox, even Firefox 3 which improved its prdecessor's very sluggish performance, is it really much faster than Opera 9.5? Not in my experience. On some pages, Opera is actually still faster than Chrome. So again, is it enough?

Like I said yesterday, only time will tell what impact Chrome will have when it reaches gold status and reaches a wider audience outside Web professionals and hard core tech geeks. Will people be willing to swicth? Personally, I have my doubts, especially if Chrome's differentiation factors are not more visible than just speed. That may be enough for some people but most IT departments will probably keep using IE and those who moved to Firefox, Opera or Safari may choose to stay with the devil they know...

I just downloaded and installed Google Chrome after reading the comic book that explains the details of the project. I had been hearing rumors about it last week but I didn't pay much attention to them. In the last couple days there had seemed to be much anticipation (and over-hype) about its release and what it means. I must say I was prepared to be underwhelmed... and, as a Web designer, thinking, who needs yet another new browser to test sites into? But after using it for a little bit, I must admit I like what I see.

My initial hesitation came mostly from the fact that, aside from its search engine technology, I haven't been impressed by much of what Google has released in the past. I don't use GMail and I don't use Google Documents for the same basic reason. So far, I still much prefer desktop applications for email and office type tasks and my communications and organizational activities are pretty much centered in Outlook 2007. It works very well for me and my data is on my own machine where I want it. I never liked Web based email to begin with.

But Chrome is different because it is a desktop application and the foundations and ideas on which it was built are very interesting. As many noted and despite a lot of over-hype (what else is new in the tech world...), Chrome has a lot of things that were already in other browsers. My main browser is Opera 9.5 and I really have not seen any other that is as fast or feature-rich. But Chrome is fast too... damn fast actually, especially with JavaScript and I really like the minimal interface. This is a first beta and can only improve with time. Also, so far all my sites I looked at with Chrome display correctly and pretty much the same as Safari, FF 3 or IE7. Its text rendering seems identical to Safari which is normal since both are based on the WebKit rendering engine.

So, in summary, Google Chrome seems like a solid entry in the crowded browser world and will only get better. But, I would take the premature previsions of some pundits that Chrome will cause the demise of MSIE with a huge grain of salt... Haven't we heard that one before?

Won't tech commentators ever learn that "regular" people are creatures of habit and are unlikely to change browsers just because a new player's in town? Don't they get that Microsoft is entrenched in the business world for the foreseeable future? Those who should be worried by this are the other smaller players IMO, like Opera and Firefox and maybe even Safari which seems to be as entrenched on the Mac as MSIE is on PCs... for now.

Anyway, only time will tell how Chrome will affect the browser wars but it is a good piece of software that brings welcome competition and innovation. And did I say it was fast! I'm writing this blog post in it through TinyMCE now which unfortunately doesn't work in Opera yet. Good going with this one Google!

3 days ago, I started my new career as a full time Web design professional freelancer...

Well, it's actually not a new career because I've been doing it for over 12 years now. But for a while in the mid 90's, it did play second fiddle to music and working a production job in a screen printing company. But as it became clear I would not succeed professionally playing in my band, I put more and more time into working and learning the Web design craft. When the band ended in early 2000, I put all my "free" time into the Web work and built my clients base and kept on learning new skills.

In 2001, I got promoted at the screen printing job into a multi tasking position. I worked as a Customer Representative but also worked in the design and drawing of membrane switch keyboard circuits. I spent a lot of time in Illustrator which I'd started learning in 1996. I will keep doing that on a contract basis for the foreseeable future. I'm now realizing how much the customer rep work taught me even if it was truly challenging for me. I learned how to interact with clients, be there for them and support them and realized how much easier it is in a service industry like Web and new media design than it is in a commodities B2B market like industrial screen printing.

I've been getting a lot of positive feedback on my service and attitude from my Web design clients and it makes me happy I didn't rush into going into it full time until now. My basic work skills never worried me but I feel like it's not until recently I developed the business skills that now makes interacting with my clients easy and fun.

I feel very excited about this new chapter of my life that is just starting and, although I'm the kind of guy that tends to worry about a lot of stuff, this decision and move just feel right and I have very little worries about the future. For now, I have a lot of work on my plate for clients I love to deal with and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I feel like I just took back control of my life and it feels very empowering...

You can now find the Fireworks team's new blog here : http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks That's a great thing for improving Fireworks' visibility and hopefully it will be updated regularly.

On the other hand, I wonder why Adobe is not using a ColdFusion based solution for blogging. I really think they should be using their own platforms as much as possible. They could be using an existing blogging application like BlogCFC which I'm using here or build their own (which they could sell or give away, integrate into Dreamweaver, etc). The possibilities are mind boggling and I wonder why the primary Web building software supplier is still not helping their customers build blogs using their own platforms and software?

But I digress... ;-)  Do check out the Fireworks teams's blog!

It's been a week since I signed up on Twitter now and, in spite of my expectaions I must say I'm loving it. There are a lot of very helpful people there and it makes me feel like I'm more part of the community.

As I said before, the experience is made a lot more enjoyable by using a good Twitter client instead on the Web interface. I still use Twhirl which I mentionned in my last post and it works great for me. Seems popular too. But the one thing that is really annoying is the limits Twitter puts on the number of "API requests" such clients make. For some reasons, this number is set to 20/hour these days (usually around 70) so I can't get as frequent updates as I did last week.

Twitter's infrastructure seems quite fragile and is frequently overloaded which is too bad because the service is great and far more useful than I expected (more on that later). So it seems I'm there to stay...

I resisted for a long time as I didn't see the usefulness but I am now on Twitter and posting once in a while. My Twitter page is http://twitter.com/pixelyzed

I would have given up almost right away if i'd had to do it through the Web interface but I found a great Twitter client called Twhirl based on Adobe Air which makes the experience a lot more fun for me.

I'm planning a design refresh of this site (as well as my professional freelance site) and I may add the Twitter thing to it then but I'll see.

In any case, Twitter turns out to be far more interesting than I expected so I'll stick to it for now.

I've started to use jQuery on the current project I'm working on and I really love it so far. It's a lot easier to grasp than I expected and is very lightweight for such a powerful framework.

When the site is done I'll post a link to it. I've used jQuery for tabbed forms, form data manipulation and updating of page text and more. There's one thing I didn't find out how to do with it or if even a plugin exists for it and it's a specific kind of tooltips implementation. jQuery does have tooltip plugins but none I found can easily take the text from ANY element in a page and show it in the tooltip when mousing over another element.

The contents of my tooltips was long and needed to be formatted so I placed it in hidden divs with a class named "descriptions" and those divs are hidden by the script so available as linked references if JS is off. I'm really surpised I couldn't find a similar implementation for jQuery. The tooltips script I used is the one from Walter Zorn. If anyone knows of one that works similarly (needs to load content from any ID'd element on the page) then please share! :-) The one thing I do not like about Zorn's script is that it relies on the onmouseover and onmouseout attributes and I would like to keep the code cleaner.

Fireworks is finally getting some long overdue exposure. A beta of the next CS4 version has been posted on Adobe Labs today. I will blog about this in more details later this week. Long story short is that there is a lot to love in this new version and Fireworks is finally gainning some maturity and sophistication.  There are still many areas that need work like, for example, its desperately archaic color management features as well as not having any way to maintain links to external assets (just to name these two) but a LOT of progress has been made in this release...

Check it out !

Wow! I was going through  my new items in FeedDemon when I came upon Jeff Veen's blog. It seems that WebMonkey is back. Now that brings up memories! I cut my teeth on the Web design stuff around the time WebMonkey, HotWired, Talk.com and others were born in 1996. I learned a lot of the my early Web design skills from WebMonkey articles and tutorials. They were pretty much the only quality reference we had back then and it's very good to see them back!

For the last few weeks, I've been having a lot of issues with my font management software. For a Web or graphic designer, a good font management program is very important so I've been scrambling to find solutions.

I had been using Extensis Suitcase for a long time but the Windows version doesn't have a proper search feature and that is something that can really help when you are looking for fonts for a project. That's why I had been experimenting with other apps. One of those apps was Proxima Software's FontExpert. But the thing is, both have pros and cons and I basically used one for a while and the other for a while then back again. Want examples of things one does well while the other doesn't? here it goes:

Suitcase Pros:

• It is a mature app with a polish that is hard to beat
• It has a very streamlined and easy to use UI
• It comes with automatic font activation plugins for both Illustrator and InDesign and, coupled with is FontSense technology, they work very well.

Suitcase Cons:

• It lacks a search feature in the Windows version
• It is harder on resources than FontExpert as it uses a resident service that start with every Windows boot.
• It's activation process depends on the infamous "Bonjour Service" (more on that later).

FontExpert Pros

• It has a very extensisve feature set that includes tagging and categorizing fonts and searching them.
• It offers access to detailed information for each font.
• It is very light on resources

FontExpert Cons

• Its interface can be confusing, especially its implementation of Groups and Worklists and what each is used for. Suitcase is a lot easier to deal with in that regard.
• Documentation is lacking
• It has an auto activation plugin only for InDesign and the CS3 version is flaky. It was preventing InDesign to load for me so I had to uninstall the plugin.

Up to a few weeks ago, I was using Suitcase because, even without search, its operation was more trouble free and it really worked well with InDesign and Illustrator when I openend a filed that used fonts that were uninstalled. But one day, it stopped loading on Windows startup or manually. After a bit of detective work I realized that the issue was tied to the "Bonjour Service". No matter what I try, I cannot get that stupid service to start and Suitcase depends on it being started to start itself.

I tried downloading the latest version of Bonjour from Apple but that won't start either. I have made no change purposefuly to my machine that could explain this. Maybe some kind of Windows update is preventing Bonjour to start but I have no idea why and no amount of Googling has given me a solution. Extensis are no help.

I had no choice but to uninstall Suitcase and install FontExpert. But I started having problems with that too. Fonts would not display correctly within the app nor within applications using them even if they were activated. They defaulted to a basic sans-serif that looked nothing like the typeface I was using. So I was screwed and I needed to find another font management application. I'm starting a new project these days and it includes the creation of a logo  so I need to look at a lot of fonts...

After a bit of research I found Hi-Logic MainType. It looks a bit like FontExpert but more streamlined and its Group features is directly linked to folders on your machine which is a lot closer to how Suitcase worked. All fonts display correctly in it and it has a "filter" feature that helps find fonts based on several criteria and it seems to work quite well. I'll see how it works for me over time.

In the meantime, if any of you that read this blog have experienced problems with the Bonjour Service failing to start or have heard of a solution to that problem then please, post a comment here. Suitcase is not the only app depending on it and I would love to fix this issue on this machine.