Life is grand

there taking over the world!

Originally uploaded by lomokev.

Sasol Tigers - December 2004

Originally uploaded by Steve Crane.

In memory of the Friday crash.

Originally uploaded by m.a.x.

The more I come to rely on web-applications the more I think site tailored browsers are a good idea. The idea is best explained with an example; I have GMail open in a Firefox tab for most of the day. It is all too easy to inadvertently close that tab when it is lost amongst 30 others. I also have to swap to the tab every now and then to check if I have email (I can’t use the GMail notifier because I am running hosted Google on my own domain.) Starting a new email means clicking on the tab and hitting compose. I could open it in its own Firefox window but then it is part of the Firefox window list and gets closed when I close Firefox. It doesn’t have a distinct icon in the dock/taskbar either. The list goes on. At the end of it though you realise that what you are frustrated with are all the things having separate desktop apps solve.

But I still want to use the web-app and not a desktop app.

So imagine if you will a customised instance of Firefox that on start loads up my GMail URL, provides a distinct dock icon as well as a “new mail” indicator and right-click “new message” functionality. It runs separatley from my other Firefox instances too.

It need not get too complicated. It shouldn’t end up being a bloated desktop app and it shouldn’t be hard to use it on multiple computers. Really it is just a single-tabbed Firefox instance wrapped around the web-app.

This isn’t my idea though. Matt Brindley is making a living from selling site-specific browsers. He hasn’t done a GMail one yet but I’ll bet there are plenty of people willing to shell out a few bucks for one.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, Facebook is reportedly valued higher than the GDP of Antigua and Barbuda.

Someone pass the spoon please.

Taylor Creek 1

Originally uploaded by peter bowers.

What a brilliant idea. Eminently practical and useful. Rechargeable AA batteries via USB.

cusp

Originally uploaded by embleton.

Snook has some good tips for coding and managing CSS. Here are my thoughts on each.

px for font sizes

Absolutely. I’ve tried ems and they are more hassle than they are worth. Percentages are too finicky and small/medium/large/etc. is too imprecise. Offer people alternate stylesheets with bigger font-sizes for accessibility in browsers like IE6 that don’t resize px sized fonts.

CSS declarations on one line

I understand Snook’s point but my text-editor supports code-collapsing and putting it all on one line makes it hard to decipher complex styles. Plus I usually use find to navigate my CSS.

Blocking the Styles

Very good advice. I also comment the blocks which makes a find operation really simple. Snook’s comment on not overriding browser defaults is also a good one.

Browser Support

Sadly I just can’t do this. Too many IE5.5 users still on my logs. Though I find stopping at that level makes for only a few cross-browser issues anyway.

Allow Block Elements to Fill Their Space Naturally

Amen to that. Often you don’t even have to think to do this, it is a by product of good HTML structure in many cases.

Use CSS Shorthand

I am mixed on this. Margin absolutely should be short-hand but font or background I often break up. Too many times has a URL problem broken the rest of a background declaration. I think that if you put everything on one line then it is easier to use shorthand.

Avoid Unnecessary Selectors

Definitley. Especially avoid div#content and use #content. It lets you swap to different elements and allows multiple uses of a class on different elements.

I’ve just encountered the first utterly daft Mac OS X feature. You cannot easily turn off the start-up chime/sound. In Windows it is simple to do but in OS X you have to use shell scripts, 3rd party apps or remember to mute your audio before you shut-down.

I don’t know about you but having your Mac chime in the middle of a quiet room is not pleasant.