Just a quick note about a new Twitter client – Destroy Twitter, that has quickly replaced Twhirl as my client of choice. It’s lightweight, very simple and very fast whilst being incredibly slick at the same time. Now, all they have to do is get rid of the rubbish Windows chrome at the top and they’re on to a winner!
Archive for March, 2009
Destroy Twitter – my new favourite Twitter client
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009It’s time to upgrade your browser, no, really
Friday, March 20th, 2009
Internet Explorer 8 has now been unleashed upon the Windows world to a small ripple of applause and a snigger from every other browser manufacturer. It’s a big step forward for Microsoft, the IE team have put in a lot of hard work and should be proud of everything they’ve done to enforce standards on the web.
Now it’s your turn.
IE6 still accounts for 20% of all web browsing, and its even higher for corporations where policy gets in the way of letting people upgrade. This browser is now so far behind in terms of security, speed and browsing experience that it’s not even funny, and has become a perennial headache for all web designers who want to push the Internet forward as a medium.
So, I implore you, upgrade your browser today. I’m going to do so and declare from the rooftops that I shall no longer support IE6. My web sites will be standards compliant and I will not be making any exceptions for this browser.
So, farewell IE6. It’s been a long time coming, but you’re gone.
CSS Matrix Layouts: Another Way?
Friday, March 13th, 2009Today, Jonathan Snook posted about CSS Matrix Layouts, a proposal for a third way for creating advanced layouts in CSS3, with Advanced Layouts and Grid Layouts being the others. His ideas are around creating a grid and defining sections (be it divs or natural HTML5 elements) that are effectively laid out like a table. Each section can span like a table can span rows and columns, with all those values being stored in CSS. Take a look at the post for an example, it’s quite simple once you get your head around it.
I raised some concerns about generated columns, and how the grid might not know how to react, and also that adding columns is a bit of a headache in complex layouts, but is relatively minor compared to the benefits that it would bring. In general, there’s a lot of support for the module. Hopefully we’ll see a draft on www-style very soon.
Of course, this is just all new stuff and unlikely to be fast-tracked to CR status any time soon. However, this module is similar to the CSS Grid Layout module, and some of Snook’s work could be very useful in that module. I’m going to investigate the working draft and if it looks like I can improve it, I might even have a go.
Safari update makes itself obsolete on Windows
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
Last week, Apple announced the Safari 4 beta with a whole host of updates and enhancements. Whilst all of this is great for Mac users, it renders the browser completely obsolete for Windows users. Let me explain:
Lets go through the list of new features.
- Top Sites – Opera first added this feature 3 years ago, Google Chrome has it, all Apple did was make it fancy and unusable
- Cover Flow – I like the live page preview (other browsers do have that) but cover flow, to me, is something that windows users will never understand
- Full history search – Safari is the last browser to get this function
- Tabs on top – Google spent a lot of effort getting this right, Apple haven’t put the same level of thought into it. If anything, it makes Apple look like they’re copying Google, badly.
- Nitro engine – Makes pages run fast. Cool
- Native look and feel – looks good in Vista, awful in XP. Considering Vista usage is < 10%, that’s not a good thing
- Developer tools – once again, Apple is playing catch-up
So, what does this all mean exactly? Well, Safari is becoming more and more like Chrome. In fact, all Google has to do is update their Webkit rendering engine and they will be the same browser. In this manner, Safari for Windows has just shot itself in the foot by removing any differentiating features between itself and its nearest competitior.
I fully expect Safari 5 to make itself even more like Google Chrome (whatever that may look like in 2 years time).