Firefox 3 RC1 – ‘Awesomeness’ redefined

Let me say this at the very onset – I was never a Firefox fanboi. I really depended upon IE for my development/browsing needs – on Windows of course. Joining my current organization, I got weaned away from my dependence on IE, and rediscovered Firefox after a gap of nearly 3 years. And so it began. After I purchased my first Mac, and converted my POD Box (Plain Old Dumb) to a Mac it was on to Firefox for good. I have loved FF for the convenience and the plethora of plugins it offers to make day to day tasks easier. I don’t wish to feed the trolls here, but over time I have discovered that FF is a much more well rounded browser and most compliant with Web Standards. Don’t believe me? Go try out the ACID3 test on any browser other than FF and Opera. You’ll get my point.

But today after my Internet connection was restored (after a Telfort muckup), I discovered that most of the plugins I depend upon for my browsing needs (AdBlock, Fire Gestures etc) have been updated for FF3.0RC1. There simply was no reason not to switch to FF3. And dear me, what an immense pleasure it has been thus far. The AwesomeBar is just that, Awesome! I have been tagging my existing bookmarks and squeal in glee when just entering a tag, I can see the list of bookmarks load immediately. This is simply perfect! No longer do I need to organize my thousands of bookmarks by Folders and Sub folders and worry about a bookmark that belongs in two categories. Ok I realize I am ranting, but this is significant for a dweeb like yours truly. Add to that the update of the look and feel to the native OS (Firelight for OSX) has given Firefox a much needed facelight. Beautiful.

AND on top of that, the blazing speed of this browser, especially when it comes to handling JS. I have been trying out the Web Authoring tool I developed back in March, which if you recall makes heavy use of JS for UI generation and drag-drop metaphors. The good news is that the little bit of lag I noticed with FF2 is a thing of the past. Not only does the app look gorgeous, it performs the way I always envisioned. I couldn’t be more pleased.

Well off to experiment a wee bit more. Cheers.

PS: What would a post on FF3 be, without the mandatory screenshot?

GFXUtil FTW!

I can report unequivocally the success of the GFXString hack for com.apple.Boot.plist! I followed an excellent tutorial I found on the Interwebs (can link if so requested), that outlined how to extract the Hex string for my GFX card. I did follow the instructions, plug it in my plist and repaired permissions, and voila, after the reboot, I logged into my Hackie without standing on NVInject’s shoulder! It feels just so liberating, and I can already report a certain rise in GFX performance as I navigate through the Spaces and Expose. Tally ho!

Dashcode & Widget development

A languorous Sunday is fodder for the developer within. Today I decided to give the much touted (and often brick-batted) Dashcode Widget development app a whirl. Dashcode can be downloaded as a part of the Xcode developers toolset from the ADC member website. The whole package is around 1.1 GB.

Dashcode offers a very simple and intuitive interface which is the hallmark of software developed on the Mac, for the Mac. Starting the app you are presented with a number of templates which you can use to quickly get on your way. I chose one "Countdown timer", and quickly had it customized to count down to a special event coming up. But here’s where the problems kicked in. I had resolved to create a countdown timer that can be customized for any event, given a specific date and time. Sounds simple, but to actually design this, you need to be intimately familiar with the Apple way of development. What promised to be a 20 minute chore turned into a three hour task which had me delving into the depths of ADC forums etc, to get the simplest things running. A simple example – how to get the value of a combo-box which in Apple world is called a "pop-up". Not so straightforward indeed! What’s disappointing is the lack of documentation, and since the world of Mac programmers is still quite restricted: not enough online help.

But it works, and works beautifully! It more than makes up for the time spent poring over huge code samples to glean the smallest details, to look at the finished product, uniquely for the Mac. On to Cocoa tomorrow. Cheers.

PS: I will submit the widget to Apple soon. You can download it from there!

Feed aggregator for OS X – NewsFire

I have been trying of late to replace Firefox and/or Mail.app as my feed aggregators, with little luck. So desperate was I, that I pretty much resolved to program one myself. But before I could start, I decided to give it one more shot & search the interwebs a bit more. My luck indeed – by sheer chance I came upon NewsFire. This remarkable app does it all for me, aggregating the feeds I usually subscribe to (BBC, CBC, Digg, Newegg and the like), and allows me to create views on the same – I can for instance keep an eye out for deals on MacBooks by simply defining a search term which creates a separate list. NewsFire features the option to allow Spotlight to index the content, which is such a time saver for me. The clincher of course was the fact that NewsFire is free – developed by the same team that brought us – Acquisition and XTorrent.

One thing I do sorely miss though, is the integration with Growl.app. I would love a minute by minute notification via Growl instead of the icon bouncing in the dock. Oh well, I’ll take it anyway!