Fluid — "Site Specific Browser"
Posted by James | Filed under Future, Geek, Web
Todd Ditchendorf has released Fluid, a Site Specific Browser that allows you to ditch the 30 tabbed browser, and run web applications in the own world (icon etc):
Fluid 0.4 includes Dock badges and Dock menus for Gmail, Google Reader, and Yahoo! Mail, auto-software updates via the Sparkle Update Framework, custom SSB installation paths, and custom SSB icons.
And, how cool is this… a Flickr group for shared Fluid SSB icons!
How does it work?
Fluid itself is a very small application. When launched, Fluid displays a small window where you specify the URL of a web app you’d like to run in a Site Specific Browser. Provide an application name, click ‘Create’ and you’ll be prompted to launch the new native Mac app you’ve just created.What makes Fluid different from Prism?
Fluid is very similar in nature to Prism, but is based on Safari’s WebKit rendering engine. And SSBs created by fluid are true, native Cocoa OS X applications offering seamless integration into the Mac OS.
Tags: fluid, prism, site specific browser, web applications
My Favourite Web Apps of 2007
Posted by James | Filed under Geek, Web
It’s the end of another year, and so time for "best of" and prediction posts, which are a lot of fun to write.
In no particular order, but loosely categorised, my favourite apps of 2007 were:
- RSS Reader: Google Reader
I used to be Bloglines’ biggest fan. I still love what they’re doing, but Google Reader has been my favourite RSS Reader throughout 2007, thanks to their continued innovation and experimentation. But the great thing about this space is that innovation is back: Google forced Bloglines’ hand, but the Bloglines Beta is encouraging. Newsgator has never really stopped innovating and it’s only the fact that I prefer a browser-based Reader that’s prevented me from becoming a Newsgator fanatic.
One new RSS Reader to watch is fav.or.it, which is doing some innovative work including integrating comments. - Start Page: Netvibes
I use Netvibes because its a fine product, well-designed and always ahead of the curve in comparison with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo’s similar offerings. - Tech News: Techmeme, Original Signal
Techmeme is well known amongst tech bloggers and readers, quite simply because it’s second to none in keeping up with tech news. Aggregating news on a single page, ordering it and having it constantly catching scoops as they happen — it’s very hard to pull that off. Many have tried, but none have become daily addictions like Techmeme has for me.
Original Signal is another that I use a lot. It is a useful aggregation service of popular links, in a variety of categories. It’s a very simple idea, but nicely implemented (with previews, ability to re-order, etc). - Online Music: last.fm
Without a doubt the best online music service. I frequently use last.fm during the working week, and it never fails to throw up great new artists that I’d not heard before.
Pandora is also fine, but unfortunately it’s inaccessible to me as I live outside the US. - Web Email: Gmail
I’ve spoken many times about how I love the ‘web native’ functionality of Gmail. It has performance issues at times (even going down for half a day early in the year), but overall it remains my number 1 email account.
Yahoo Mail is still the number 1 worldwide, and Windows Live Hotmail has millions of users too. I also tried Thunderbird during the year. But none was able to even come close to enticing me to ditch Gmail.
Tags: 2007, end of year, favourites, web applications, web apps
Firefox 3 Beta 2 and IE8 Acid2 Test
Posted by James | Filed under Future, Geek, Web
The Internet’s top two web browsers each had significant news this week. Mozilla released the second beta version of Firefox 3. Not to be outdone, the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft announced that they had taken a major step towards standards compliance by correctly rendering the Acid2 Test face.
The Acid2 is a browser test designed by the Web Standards Project which employs HTML and CSS to attempt to reveal flaws in web browsers’ interpretation of standard formatting code. When correctly rendered, the Acid2 Test will render the smiley face pictured to the above left.
Neither the current official, non-beta release of Internet Explorer nor the current official non-beta release of Firefox properly renders the Acid2 test. Though some beta testers for Firefox have reported the FF 3 Beta 2 choked on the Acid2, there are other reports that it renders correctly.
For their part, the IE8 team downplayed the significance of their internal build supposedly passing the Acid2 test. Instead, Microsoft General Manager Dean Hachamovitch used it as an opportunity to highlight how far the IE team still has to go to reach their goals. He also seemed to be hinting at the team’s intention to reserve the right to pick and choose which standards they mean to follow.
"When we look at the long lists of standards (even from just one standards body, like the W3C), which standards are the most important for us to support? The web has many kinds of standards — true industry standards, like those from the W3C, de facto standards, unilateral standards, open standards, and more," he wrote. "The key goal (for the Web Standards Project as well as many other groups and individuals) is interoperability. As a developer, I’d prefer to not to have to write the same site multiple times for different browsers. Standards are a (critical!) means to this end, and we focus on the standards that will help actual, real-world interoperability the most. As a consumer and a developer, I expect stuff to just work, and I also expect backwards compatibility. While supporting the features tested in Acid2 is important for many reasons, it is just one of the several milestones for the interoperability, standards compliance, and backwards compatibility that we’re committed to for this release."
Tags: acid2 test, beta release, browser test, compliance, ff 3, firefox, internet explorer, web browsers, web standards project
Welcome to Jimmahdigital.com, personal blog of James Simm, Wigan/Manchester-based .Net developer.
