Some developers from the original Firefox team have gotten together and created a new browser based on Firefox called Flock. The great thing about flock is that for its core features, it ties into existing web applications. Bookmarks are all stored in your del.icio.us account. You can view flickr photos. You can post to your blog and even use Flock as a RSS reader that is much improved over Firefox. All of this with an improved interface also. Sound good? Go get it.
I didn't write near as much about my experience at MAX as I had planned, but I'm sure that what happened there is going to find it's way into what I write here for a long time. It was a super conference and I think there was a real feeling of sadness at times realizing that this would be the last time that we all came together as Macromedia. Next year Adobe will be running the show and no one knows what that will bring at this point. Will there be a conference? What will it be like? Will it include everybody from designers to coders to server admins or will they work to separate these audiences? I think that everybody who has attended MAX sees the benefit of bringing all of the parties together to mingle and I hope that Adobe continues this. It really is a thrill being around such smart and creative people for a week and -- when it's easy to become tunnel-visioned with a project or organization -- it's helpful to be allowed to step way back to see one's place in moving the internet forward. This is such an exciting time to be a developer and it's important to keep that perspective.
That which makes October the best month of the year begins today as the major league baseball postseason begins today at noon central.
MIT has put together the specifications for a computer that should cost no more than $100 to build. The 12 inch laptop computer has wireless networking, six usb ports and a shoulder-strap that doubles as a power cord. The computer would be built primarily for third world countries looking to introduce computers into the classrooms of their students. Given this, the computer also features a small crank which can be used to provide juice to the computer in areas without handy electrical power. The computer may be produced commercially for developed nations and would likely run around $200 with some of the proceeds going to the effort to get these computers, again, into more povershed areas.
Tomorrow morning, I'm catching a plane to Boston to watch Saturday's game against the Yankees. It's going to be incredible. Wakefield vs Johnson. I don't know if I'll even sleep tonight
Another school year has started and things are humming. I’ve just switched my blog from being based on Movable Type to WordPress and things are probably going to be a little funky here for a week while I learn this new environment and make this what I want it to be.
Jobs finally announced it yesterday around noon, central time. Apple will be starting to include Intel chips in its systems. I’m pretty excited about this. Apple released the PowerBook G4 a long, long time ago and there is no G5 in sight. It seemed that with IBM’s new chip production facility that the stall may be short-lived. It seems apparent now that there are no major speed-bumps in sight (at least for power-book chips) and I’m sure that IBM is more excited right now by the prospect of delivering chips for the XBOX 2, PlayStation 3 and the new Nintendo game systems.
Apple needs to get on track with something that is going to deliver consistent improvement over time and the only logical partner is Intel. A few of the articles I have read see this as something that will confuse customers and drive them away. I don’t see it that way. Did UNIX scare customers away? Unless someone fires up a terminal, there is no hint that UNIX is sitting under the hood. It’s not an issue. Likewise, as long as Apple uses the new chips in the same way that it has used the PPC chips, there should be no issues. Apple has already said that it will not allow OS X to run on non-apple computers. This eliminates a lot of compatibility issues. The hacks out there won’t like it, but Apple computers are what they are largely because they are a closed system. Apple knows, for the most part, exactly what is in each computer and they can design the OS accordingly. Apple is not going to address the compatibility nightmare the Microsoft does with Windows.
I just hope that the next wave of PowerBooks doesn’t have a goofy Intel sticker on them.
Looks like XHTML2 is coming soon and it sounds great!! Here is a presentation about it and here is the working draft.
I had never found a great Fireworks forum, but there seems to be good discussion here at geekforum.
Nokia and others think that mp3-enabled cell phones will overtake the iPod. I think that, for the time being, they are nuts. As long as you have to buy phones from only your vendor and buying a phone usually happens only when getting a new contract, people are not going to race out and get these phones. While they may sell 12 million phones a year, I would sure be interested to know how many of those are the $500+ models. I can’t think of anybody I know that has a real fancy phone, although there are certainly many available. Additionally, you don’t need your mp3 player everywhere while you may choose to take your phone everywhere. Why allow your phone take on that additional heft for something you don’t always need?
Adobe has announced the future availability of a new piece of software called co-author. It is to GoLive what Contribute is to Dreamweaver. I'm sure this product has been in the design phase for quite a while, but I question the value of introducing it now. Contribute is a well-liked, version 3 program. Why release a version 1 product that will overlap a product that you know you will be acquiring?
Take a look at this column (support materials) discussing the iPod shuffle's audio supremacy.
Wow. This is going to be big. CFAjax is the AJAX implementation for coldfusion. It allows javascript to directly call ColdFusion methods without refreshing the page. The possibilities of not having to submit and request pages blows my mind.
What is Netscape? As far as I can tell, it's been reduced to nothing more than an ISP and it's new browser is just one more branded application. The new Netscape 8 browser that came out yesterday drew some attention early as it was going to be based on Firefox, but has drawn more attention in the last couple of days because it also uses the Internet Explorer engine for other sites. Less than a day after it has been released they have issued a security patch for it. It's really sad that such an important name in the history of the web has been reduced to a messed up browser shell put out by a net-zero competitor.
How do you get columns to stretch the length of the page in CSS? There are many ways I'm sure, but the one I use most often is using background images to give the appearance of columns. There is a new article about this on Macromedia's site and also the article I originally learned the technique from at A List Apart.