In the interest of everyone's sanity, for now at least, we're moving the Hammer blog & news updates to its sister product, Forge.

This way, we can focus all of our efforts on one healthy stream of news, updates, previews, profiles, interviews, tips and courses in one place, where you'll know where to find them. We just think it makes more sense this way.

For Hammer customers, Forge is the best place to get fast access to the team looking after all of the products - Forge, Hammer and Anvil. It also happens to be a pretty useful place to deploy your static sites, after you're done pushing up to the more temporary Hammr.co serivce, which is only really meant for development.

Happy coding!!

A whole bunch of people have been asking how our site is so fast. Here's the secret.

Try it for yourself, click around the site - you'll see that our pages load immediately. We're excited to reveal that this behaviour is a feature of our new hosting platform, and latest project, Forge. It's a fantastic new platform, built just for static sites. So now you can build your projects with Hammer, work on them with Anvil, and host them on Forge. The perfect combination!

We'll even be bringing Forge integration to Hammer, so you can deploy your sites to Forge super-easily.

The best part is, Forge makes your sites insanely fast. It also just happens to be the nicest, easiest, and best web hosting platform in the world. It's super easy to use, and we have some great new features in the works. Get your free trial at getforge.com and take your sites static today.

A few of our users have emailed us about supporting Compass in Hammer.

Hey guys,
Love Hammer! Are there any plans for Compass support?

We'd like to explain why Compass support is not something we're working on supporting in Hammer, and why we think that's the right approach for the web industry.

Outdated installation process

The standard way to install Compass is to use a Terminal command:

$ sudo gem install compass

This command tells your computer to install Compass as a "root", or administrator user. Compass uses this to install its libraries and dependences to the very core of your system, with super-user privileges. This creates directories and files deep in your operating system, and relies on access to those files to work.

The Mac App Store and GateKeeper

Apple's new system for installing applications is very forward-thinking. Instead of installing things to the core of your system, applications are required to be "sandboxed" - keeping all of their configuration and settings in expected places. This means that when you uninstall an application, it's gone forever. The benefit of this is that in future, you won't have to reformat and reinstall your operating system to keep things clean and running efficiently. That's the future we want to live in.

Compass is designed to use a whole host of libraries, many of which can't be used with GateKeeper. We don't like this approach, and we don't think it's the right approach for your computer in 2013. We want to make the most Apple-friendly, painless development app ever.

Will we ever support Compass?

Compass is a big, complicated library. Integrating it into Hammer is difficult, because it involves supporting all existing projects, with all possible configurations. Some of those configurations aren't compatible with Hammer's unique, clever workflow.

In future, we may support a stripped-down version of Compass, or Compass Core. But not any time soon. We've tried to integrate Compass several times - we even tried emailing Compass support, but we've had no replies or help from them.

We'd rather see new, elegant solutions to this problem than support yesterday's code. That's why we support (and love) Bourbon - which doesn't mess with your computer's configuration at all.

The Bottom Line

We think you'll be better off without Compass. We have a better road-map without it, and this way we think we can build a much better app for you. Try Hammer today - you won't be disappointed.

Hammer 1.6 has finally hit the App Store, with a brand new feature: speed.

The Cache

When it comes to front-end development, speed is crucial. We're pleased to announce that Hammer 1.6 has a great new caching system, designed to save you time. Loads of time.

How it works

Every time you make a change to your templates, Hammer checks your project's files. Any files that have been updated are compiled and re-built. Hammer's caching engine is even clever enough to work with includes. For instance, if your index.html page includes _header.html, every time you update _header.html, index.html updates too.

Clearing the cache

To clear the cache, simply click the Hammer window, and then click the "Rebuild now" button. Manually building your project always clears the cache, so if you have any problems with cached files, you can easily recompile your project from scratch.

The Bottom Line

It's simple, effective - and fast! Hammer is now up to 500x faster than previous versions. That's huge. We really think this is the best version of Hammer yet, and we really hope you like it.

So what are you waiting for? Grab your copy of Hammer for Mac from the App Store today!

Welcome to the new version of Hammer! We've been working hard to bring you the latest and greatest version of our OSX app for HTML developers, and in this post I'd like to take you through what's new.

Style tweaks

Hammer 1.5 has a beautiful new output view, with filters for all your file types, errors and to-dos. You can easily switch between tabs to see exactly what you need.

Speed improvements

Every version of Hammer is faster than the last. We work hard to make sure Hammer works as quickly as possible. This version is no exception, with tweaks throughout the codebase.

Ignore files

You asked for it, we shipped it - Hammer now has the ability to ignore files in your build. That means you can include PSDs, documentation, resource images - you name it. Simply add paths to Hammer's new ignore panel and it does the rest.

Templates

In Hammer 1.5, you can create and use your own project templates, share them with your friends and hit the ground running with new projects. Whether you're making a Javascript app, a static site or a Rails template build, you can now use Hammer to get started with everything you need. See more templates in the Template Gallery. We'll have more instructions on making your own templates very soon!

Bug fixes

With vast improvements and tweaks throughout Hammer's compiler, Hammer 1.5 is the cleanest, neatest release yet. With our new Hammer Bridge technology, we can ship updates to you more frequently, meaning hot-patches, bug-fixes and tweaks. No other app in the world is this dedicated to your code.

Note: Hammer Templates are only available in the full version of Hammer. Buy Hammer from the Mac App Store today!