
Mac Open Web - mrzool
https://macopenweb.com/
======
hilyen
I feel like Visual Studio Code deserves a spot. Its open source, and free.
Unlike a lot of the listed editors.

~~~
sansnomme
Indeed, most people seem to forget the dark ages before VS Code. When you were
forced to choose between either slow heavy weights like Visual Studio/Intellij
(and its relatives PyCharm et alia)/Eclipse that took forever to start up
without a SSD drive or fast featureless editors like Sublime Text, Gedit,
Notepad++, Vim/Emacs etc. The latter requires tons of plugins and config to
get anywhere near the featureset of the former while the former often seem to
have way too many knobs hidden behind collapsible panels on the side. Sure,
greybeards may dismiss this as "entitled thinking" when in the Good Ol' Days
when people only needed ACME with no syntax highlighting or simply Ed. Sure,
but you cannot deny the productivity boost of zero-config Intellisense
autocompletion that works out of the box. Language Servers that get installed
automatically with all it's dependencies etc. when the parent editor plugin is
installed. Configuring Emacs was a special kind of hell that required fiddling
with PATH variables, jumping between FSF's poorly formatted documentation and
the target language tooling. Do not mention its interaction with Python
Virtualenvs; it still gives me nightmares. Getting Sublime Text working with
stuff like Clojure etc. required tons of fiddling and watching YouTube videos
that all differs slightly in methods. Many days were wasted editing Sublime
Plugin configs and JSON files. VS Code forced editors like Atom etc. to up
their game in performance, features, speed etc. Zero-config language setup and
automatic prompting for installing plugins are now the norm thanks to the
efforts of the wonderful VS Code team. The Vim plugin in VS Code is also
second to none.

Also, a shout-out to Sublime Text for kick-starting the lightweight editor
revolution in the first place, with it's cross-platform TextMate style
interface and its beautiful Monokai UI color scheme. Kudos!

And for Lisp users, Light Table and Nightcode deserves praise for helping to
modernize Lisp and demolishing Emacs' forced monopoly that turned off so many
interested beginners. Well done Chris (and team) and Zach, thank you for
bringing fresh blood and perspectives!

~~~
davesmith1983
This is a rather selective account. Visual Studio 2003-2008 were quite
lightweight (even for their time). Visual Studio 2010 was the last one that
didn't need gigabytes of ram to use and Visual Studio after 2012 is a horror
show. Visual Studio 2003 (though good luck getting it working) is actually a
smaller footprint in memory than other lightweight editors and can normally do
more.

There were editors that were fine before VSCode. There was BluFish, Kate,
Jedit and those are the ones just off the top of my head. Also Notepad++ is
still better than most editors and doesn't need to spawn a node process that
slows a i7 machine to a crawl.

As for getting sublime text working, I never had the problems you describe. So
Works for me I guess.

~~~
flukus
The more Visual Studio gets rewritten in .net the slower and more bloated it
becomes. Even in 2003 though it's acceptable resource usage was a result of
computers improving faster than the VS team could slow things down, in the
late 90's it was a very bloated resource hog, the sort that people would
upgrade their computers to use.

What's amazing is just how much more bloated it is now compared to the feature
set of 20 years ago, there have been very few features added that I care about
day to day and even many of them fall into the category of nice to have but
not particularly resource intensive.

~~~
je42
Note: Visual Studio Code != Visual Studio. Different code bases/projects with
similar names.

------
pcr910303
Open Web != Free software.

I like & try to support Free software (I'm writing this in a Linux laptop with
Firefox & I try to donate to the GNU regularly), but the fact that some apps
are the so-called 'closed-source, proprietary' apps doesn't disqualify them to
contribute to the Open Web.

Open Web (if I understood correctly) is more about lowering the barrier
(skills & time) to participate to the web. Most of the apps qualify IMO.
Things like Postgres.app or Pixelmator are the apps that directly match the
category.

I just don't understand why some 'Free software proponents' see proprietary
apps as 'evil'. :-( Do all indie-programmers have to select between starving
to death or working in a company that one can't enjoy? Can't s?he monetize the
app/service s?he made?

~~~
zaksoup
This is a great point and one of my biggest complaints with the hard-core
FOSS/Copy-left software movement. More indie developers is a good thing, even
if everything they make isn't necessarily all open source/free.

As an aside, did you know that They/Them has been in use for centuries as a
gender-neutral singular pronoun, and often makes your text clearer and more
readable when referring to a single person of unknown or unspecified gender?

~~~
pcr910303
> As an aside, did you know that They/Them has been in use for centuries as a
> gender-neutral singular pronoun, and often makes your text clearer and more
> readable when referring to a single person of unknown or unspecified gender?

Oh, I couldn’t remind of they/them as I am not a native speaker of English.
Thanks for pointing that out!

------
eugeniub
Nothing quiet says "open web" like closed-source, proprietary, expensive
applications like Pixelmator and Sublime Text.

~~~
badsectoracula
Pixelmator is 40 bucks, in what universe where someone who has the money to
buy a Mac considers $40 for a professional application expensive?

~~~
h1d
I thought Pixelmator's audience was general public and I think it does an
excellent job at it.

Perhaps Affinity series are targeted for professional and they're also one
time purchase of something like $50. Great value.

------
knd775
This list is honestly kind of embarrassing. Both the inclusions and glaring
exclusions are just odd. How can most of these be considered to be
"promot[ing] the open web"..?

~~~
reaperducer
_Both the inclusions and glaring exclusions are just odd._

He included Panic's Coda, but not Transmit, or Prompt. I'd be hosed without
that trio.

If Panic made a database client, I'd drive to Portland and hand them a fist
full of cash. That bunch of weirdos knows what its doing.

~~~
Cenk
I have been very happy with Sequel Pro
([https://www.sequelpro.com](https://www.sequelpro.com)), and not just because
of the fantastic icon

~~~
h1d
Might want to consider using TablePlus instead as SequelPro has pretty much
stalled development and MySQL 8 support hasn't been out for quite a while and
their nightlies that supports it are too buggy to use. Also TablePlus supports
quite a few number of databases.

~~~
Cenk
I’ve actually been using TablePlus as well, mainly for accessing a MSSQL
database. I find it a bit awkward to use and not as fast as Sequel Pro, but
nonetheless a useful and a good recommendation.

------
seltzered_
Why did the author of the list focus around the Apple ecosystem? How exactly
do design tools like acorn/pixelmator promote the open web?

~~~
pcr910303
> Why did the author of the list focus around the Apple ecosystem?

I believe it's more strange to not believe it shouldn't be focused on Apple,
considering the link title includes 'Mac'?

> How exactly do design tools like acorn/pixelmator promote the open web?

Looks like the author believes that the tools make photo-editing much more
beginner-friendly (and that is true), lowering the barrier and allowing more
people to participate to the web (hence the open web).

~~~
Nullabillity
> I believe it's more strange to not believe it shouldn't be focused on Apple,
> considering the link title includes 'Mac'?

Maybe the name shouldn't include that, then?

> Looks like the author believes that the tools make photo-editing much more
> beginner-friendly (and that is true), lowering the barrier and allowing more
> people to participate to the web (hence the open web).

A $40 application running on a platform that thinks $1100 is appropriate
entry-level pricing isn't lowering anyone's barriers to anything.

~~~
seltzered_
Yes, you're expressing a rawer form of my comments intent. The point was to
provoke thinking about other ecosystems, and possibly have a site that may
shows gaps that may need to be filled, or areas where just a bit of polish
could be done.

Digressing, some of the gaps may be outside of apps/open web and more to do
with infrastructure/pricing (see: [https://catonmat.net/incredible-events-at-
browserling](https://catonmat.net/incredible-events-at-browserling) (india and
whatsapp), and as a slight contrast whatsapp-centrism in brazil:
[https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=1340](https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=1340) ).
Some areas of the world, pragmatically at this point in time, may not be
served better through mere 'open web' evangelism.

In fairness, I make the same mistakes as the original author as someone who
has works within an Apple-centric ecosystem and is in similar first-world
social circles.

------
ryanseys
Maybe these open web apps should be built on the... open web?

------
justinsaccount
yes, help promote the open web by using proprietary tools on a proprietary
platform

~~~
filoleg
> proprietary tools

What do you mean? The tools listed in OP are all open-source, which is the
opposite of proprietary. I googled for the definition of "proprietary" prior
to replying, because I thought I might have had it wrong, but wikipedia
defines it as "closed-source software".[0]

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software)

EDIT: I apologize, I was wrong, and a lot of the tools on the page are not
open-source. I read the name of the website, clicked on a couple of projects,
and they were open-source. So I assumed the rest was as well, given that + the
name of the website.

~~~
rlt
Most of the tools referenced on
[https://macopenweb.com/](https://macopenweb.com/) are _not_ open source.

------
st3fan
Firefox is missing.

------
donatj
It’s borderline creepy how often I find a link and 24 hours later it shows up
on Hacker News.

Yesterday I was organizing some documents in Dropbox, found my ancient license
for NetNewsWire. I wondered if they were still around, and did some Googling.

Their GitHub has a link to macopenweb.com

------
mahesh_rm
Plug: does anybody have anything good to recommend as a free/open source
alternative to the featured:
[https://tumult.com/hype/](https://tumult.com/hype/) and
[https://www.svgator.com/](https://www.svgator.com/) for producing animated
svg/canvas like these:
[https://tumult.com/hype/gallery/HerokuPlatformScale/HerokuPl...](https://tumult.com/hype/gallery/HerokuPlatformScale/HerokuPlatformScale.html)?

~~~
mdaniel
Are you aware of AlternativeTo.net?

[https://alternativeto.net/software/svgator/?license=opensour...](https://alternativeto.net/software/svgator/?license=opensource)

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ernsheong
As people are saying here, what is "promoting the open web"?

Also, web apps basically dilute the list, maybe you should focus on native
macOS/iOS apps to stay niche.

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arvinsim
Anyone here use RSS? Just curious on your setup since I find that using
bookmarks is enough for me.

~~~
yoz-y
I have very few sites that I check regularly in my rss reader (I use Feedly as
aggregator and Reeder app for reading). A few blogs (Daring Fireball, CGP
Grey's Blog, Stratechery, MacRumors) a few webcomic and so on. Some of them I
just skim for headlines, and I put longer articles into Instapaper.

------
duxup
What qualifies as "promote the open web"?

