Everyone loves GitHub but the CLI can be a little intimating for newcomers. A couple of days ago GitHub released a client for OS X. The setup walks you through the process of creating a GitHub account (if you don’t have one), uploading repositories and provides a slick little interface for cloning, browsing and managing repos.

If you are on Mac, be sure to download the app and give if a whirl. Salesforce.com is using GitHub more and more so starting getting up to speed on it.

The Force.com Utility Belt is a Google Chrome Extension that I wrote to make my life easier. While developing on the Force.com platform I consistently need access to Salesforce documents, message boards, code snippets, etc. and opening PDFs, searching documentation and looking up Visualforce component signatures becomes tedious. The extension evolved out my necessity to make myself more productive. I hope you find it useful as well. Please send me any ideas for enhancements that you have to make the tool better. Virtually anything you can do in Javascript is possible.

You can install the Force.com Utility Belt from the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery

Extension Interface

When first activated, the extension display the interface above with the following features and functions:

• Defaults to the Quick Reference Topics interface
• Displays links in the upper right for access to the main functionality of the extension (Quick Reference Topics, Search for Stuff and ID Converter)
• Displays links to open developer.force.com and the Force.com documentation page in a new tab
• Displays the latest feed content from the Force.com blog in the bottom

Quick Reference Topics

The following sections are loaded into the extension with short cuts to topics that I frequently use allowing me quick access to stuff that I typically forget. The sections include:

• Apex
• Visualforce
• Visualforce Components
• SOQL
• AJAX Toolkit
• Web Services API

Once you choose a section you can drill down into a specific topic, view it in the extension and even open the actual page in a new browser tab.

Search for Stuff

Since the Quick Reference Topics don’t include access to every topic in the Salesforce documentation, you need a convenient way to search for stuff. The search interface allows you to select a scope and perform a keyword search against the specific site. The results are displayed in a new browser tab. Due to popular demand, the following sites are searchable.

ID Converter

The ID Converter is from my original extension so I rolled it into this one for convenience. It allows you to quickly create an 18 digit Salesforce ID from a 15 digit ID. Based upon some feedback I made a small change so that the extension tries to find a 15 digit ID from the tab’s current URL and pre-populate the conversion form field.

Please send me your feedback and suggestions for improvements.

Just received a tweet from Ryan Marples about a new video he posted last week. The video is targeted for .NET developers but it is applicable to anyone that wants to better understand the advantages of cloud computing from a technical perspective.

Very informative and very well done.

I’ve been messing around with Groovy for a few months and am beginning to really like it’s structure and syntax. If you haven’t looked at Groovy yet, here’s a good article on why you should.

The ASP.NET MVC RC is now available and I am so excited that I can hardly stand it! At work we do alot of .NET development but I cannot stand the ViewState and Postback paradigm. I’m been tinkering around with with ASP.NET MVC for quite awhile and have a couple of prototypes under my belt. According to the post, the 1.0 version should be released sometime in Febraury.

I’ve been seeing alot of posts on non-.NET sites with positive feedback. I think ASP.NET MVC may make it easier for Java developers to switch to the “dark side.”