Software
Google To IE6, “Die already!”
Jan 31st
I’m a big, big fan of Google Apps. Their decision to allow people to piggyback on their services with their domains was nothing short of brilliant. Every domain I have set up since has used their service and I have nothing but good things to say about it.
Friday they gave me another reason to love them by sending me an e-mail informing me that:
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
For those who need a translation:
We at Google, after careful observation of the Analytics trends for our Google Apps usage, have noticed a single defining characteristic shared by 100% of our problem users. This characteristic is an affinity for Internet Explorer 6. Therefore, in an attempt to rid ourselves of as many idiots as possible, we are dropping support for their favorite software. Stop using Internet Explorer 6 or stop using Google, we don’t care which.
This is a bold move by Google, although completely necessary (and inevitable) if they want to make the best applications the web has to offer. And honestly, I wish more companies would take this stance. But on the heels of telling China to shove it I’d say Google may have decided that they are now well established enough in both the political and technical arenas to start throwing some weight around.
I generally don’t like when big companies start using their size to dictate trends, but when I think about it that’s probably because almost always the big company does this to further their agenda. Rarely does my agenda fall in line with theirs. From a technology standpoint, Microsoft is the most frequent offender on this front, and we all know that when Microsoft throws its weight around it’s in an effort to make more people see things Microsoft’s way, not in an effort to make the world see things the agreed upon standards way. At least so far, Google seems to be forwarding web standards which are something that for better or worse we as a technical community have agreed upon as good.
I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords… As long as those overlords hate IE6 as much as I do.
Trillian 4.1 – One Giant Twitterific Leap
Jan 20th
I’ve been using Trillian Pro for years. It has always made managing the various chat mediums I have to stay contacted much easier and that makes my life better, so I’m willing to pay for the app. Now, though, with the introduction of Trillian Astra, the team over at Trillian seems to be honing in more and more on what exactly I want to have as an every day social power user. The newest release, Trillian 4.1 (released today) is no exception, catching me a little off guard with some of the great options it has provided me with.
In addition to using every available chat medium to stay in touch with different groups of people, I use Twitter… a lot. I have several accounts for several different reasons and they all have unique needs. In the past these unique needs have made me do a lot of juggling to be able to manage everything.
No more, thanks to Trillian’s new release of Astra. I mean, the client has all of the basics that you would expect, but in addition to those basics are the following reasons that Trillian Astra is now my favorite Windows based desktop Twitter client:
Multiple bit.ly Account Support
Sure, lots of clients allow you to manage multiple Twitter accounts. I’ve been using TweetDeck with decent success on that front for some time. Then there are some clients which actually allow you to integrate with your bit.ly account, so that when the Twitter client automatically shortens a link for you the link is added to your bit.ly account so you can track it like you would any other. But what about clients that let you manage multiple Twitter accounts which are each attached to their own unique bit.ly accounts? Is it really that mind-boggling that this would be something a power user would want? Who knows, but Trillian Astra got it right. Add your Twitter account then right click on the account in your contact list, click settings and WHAM-O you’re ready to enter your bit.ly API key and go to town.
Intelligent Character Limitation Counting
Something else that other clients should get on the ball with is knowing how many characters things like image uploads to TwitPic are going to take. No more wondering, biting your nails and hoping that your image upload URL doesn’t throw your character count over by one character, ending your perfect digital planetary alignment.
Tweet Screenshots
This one is really nice for technical tweets / blogs / etc. Basically, you can use any image in your tweet via TwitPic by dragging it into your message. But if you right click in your message, you have the ability to actually trim out a screenshot to use. Nifty!
Side Docking
I don’t check news sites any more. I don’t check my favorite band sites any more. I don’t have to, because I have a constant stream of updates that interest me flowing through Twitter. Now, thanks to Trillian’s function of docking to the side of your monitor (reserving space so that maximized windows don’t overlap it), something they’ve had for a long time, that stream is constantly available at a literal glance to my left.
There are, of course, still a few issues that exist (when you open a retweet you have to type / delete a character for the character counter to register) and some functionality I’d love to see added, but nothing that overrides how awesome the new Trillian is at managing my fairly advanced Twitter needs.
Notification Placement
This isn’t a Twitter specific update, nor is it unique to Trillian. But the ability to place your notification popups where you want them, even with multiple monitor support, means they don’t get in the way of something else that you were trying to do. It’s a really nice touch that makes a big difference to me.
Nice job guys! Now, about that post I made on your forums asking for the ability to have a transparent background with fully visible text…
Trillian Astra – The Dark Side (of skins)
Jan 13th
I don’t have enough time to make a short post here, so I’ll likely be leaving a long, rambling one. You’ve been warned. ;)
I’m a Trillian user. I love it. I bought it, I will continue to give them money as long as their product continues to meet my need of having EVERY chat network known to man connected at the same time. I know my IRC pals laugh at me for using Trillian, but whatever.
There were a couple of things I wasn’t crazy about in Trillian Astra, however. The primary being that the default skin was bulky, and the included secondary, minimalist skin (Cobalt) didn’t contain any dark themes. I’m sorry, but using a white background on chat windows just makes me feel, as a friend said, “flashbanged” every time I chat.
Surprisingly, there aren’t that many good skins out yet using the new features provided by Astra. There are a few, however, if you can figure out where to look. So I’m going to make that easier here and provide a collection of links to resources I used to get what amounts to a dark version of Cobalt.
Listing: A list of Astra Skins, Plug-ins and Mods
Skins: Cobalt Black Magick (Fixed) | Avion Pro
There, maybe I’ll come back later and write up how to disable specific sounds without losing the ones you want.
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Update – 01.20.2010 – A new Trillian build was released today that improved, among other things, Trillian’s support for Twitter. This could change the way I use Twitter, moving me away from TweetDeck. However, the skin I had been using (Cobalt Black Magick) doesn’t yet support the new character counter functionality. So I’ve added a link to the other skin I love from the list, Avion Pro. – DG
TweetDeck – Making Twitter (more) Useful
Jul 27th
I can’t help it, I like Twitter. I love the format of communication it provides. People don’t have to know who you are for you to get their updates… and you don’t have to know who someone is for them to get your updates. That makes for some really interesting possibilities. Additionally, since the media blitz surrounding Twitter has continued to build, more and more “service” type of accounts have popped up which actually provide useful, timely information in a quasi-push format.
In general I’ve used pretty standard Twitter clients. Ones which were obviously based around what the standard Twitter web site provided as an interface. It’s a basic approach which just shows all the tweets that have come from all of your friends since you last took a look at it. I’m not particularly unhappy with the clients I’ve been using (in particular Twittelator Pro is good) but a month or so ago I decided to look around and see what was out there. Enter TweetDeck.
TweetDeck, right from the get-go, is different. It offers columns, which are basically different views of your Twitter information arranged… in columns. These columns can be built however you want to build them, which is where I have found my new best Twitter tool friend.
By default TweetDeck offers what you would probably consider pretty standard columns, “All Friends”, “Mentions” and “Direct Messages.” For a while, I depended on these and while they were cool, they didn’t offer much functionality that I didn’t already have elsewhere.
Then I got the bright idea to start using the columns to separate information. “What if I didn’t have an ‘All Friends’ column at all?” Well, it turns out that’s a great thing…
So I set about making a column for “Friends and Family” which included… er… all of my friends and family. Then I made a column for my “Professional” folks. I kept the mentions and direct messages columns. And here’s where it gets fun, I made a column for “Celebs and Bands” (I follow a lot of bands and band members) and one for “Services.” The “Services” column is where I did some things that were new to me… I followed several of my favorite news services and added them to this column. Now, I can use Twitter to keep up to date with my friends, post ideas / discussions and now… dun dun dun… keep up with news!
Further, what’s really, really cool is that TweetDeck allows you to create a TweetDeck account and save the columns you have created. Once you save them, you can sync your columns anywhere you use TweetDeck (it works on Windows, Linux, Mac [all using Adobe Air] and the iPhone). This is great for me since I use several operating systems as well as the iPhone. This made things really easy and I’ve found myself using Twitter more and more.
Google Chrome Launches
Sep 2nd
While it is admittedly early to be talking about a full-blown review, I’d like to at least take a moment to discuss one of the most significant browser releases in recent history.
As someone who has spent the last 13 years writing web applications I’ve seen first hand the path modern browsers have taken to get to where they are. Knowing what I know about this path, I can also say that the journey has been a long one full of good intentions and without much concern for developers (or standards). That’s why I’m so impressed with what Google is doing here.
Apparently Google “accidentally” sent a notification about their browser intentions a day early, resulting in a frenzy around their creative and informative announcement “comic.”
Then, today, they officially released the browser that was the source of all of the discussion. With their claims of speed, performance and standards compliance I was skeptical. After all, like I said I’ve been fed the “we made it faster” line a thousand times over the past 13 years and I’ve almost never been impressed. Sure, you can benchmark browsers and prove a 3% increase in speed but what does that buy me in the real world?
When we’re talking about Chrome, however, we’re talking about insanely fast. Let me be clear, I’ve developed a LOT of applications for intranet usage (internal company networks) and I can say that the “slowness” often felt while using web pages is not a result of bandwidth limitations or slow downloading. Instead, it is a latency experienced while the inefficient browser engines parse through the code needed to create a web page. This is even more obvious when the page has complex (read: useful) JavaScript in place. All that is to say, Chrome is so fast it does away with the expectations you have about using web pages.
I’ve read where some folks had problems with pages, but I’ve looked at all of the ones I am responsible for and found no issues whatsoever. This is probably because I test them in Safari, which uses the same engine for rendering as Chrome.
So for now, those are my thoughts. I’ll post more here if things go insanely awry, but I plan to use Chrome as my primary browser at home for a while to see what I run into. Oh… and I posted this using Chrome on WordPress, so we know that works!
More Chrome Information: http://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html
Download Chrome: http://tools.google.com/chrome/
Adobe Photoshop CS2 on Vista – The Horror!
Apr 28th
I had no idea that getting Adobe Photoshop CS2 to work on Windows Vista Home Premium was difficult. As a matter of fact, as someone who has been using Photoshop for many years I assumed it would be easy. Silly me. Following is my account of dealing with Adobe Support to try and get my legal copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2 to work on my new machine, which coincidentally came with Vista Home Premium. Note that the issues I experienced had nothing to do with Photoshop functionality, the only problem I had was getting the software to accept my serial number.
The Back Story
I’ll start by describing my situation. It wasn’t one that I initially thought was odd, but Adobe’s support personnel have had one hell of a time wrapping their mind around it so I can only assume that my situation is mind (and possibly time, space and physics) bending.
- I have owned and used Photoshop CS2 since 2005
- I recently purchased a new computer from Dell, it came with Windows Vista Home Premium (so I decided to try the much maligned OS)
- I wanted to install, register and activate my copy of Photoshop CS2 on my new computer
The Assets
Now that you have a little back story, I’d like to tell you how I’m set up just to be sure there’s no misunderstanding (again, Adobe support couldn’t fathom this setup).
- My new computer is a hardware monster, it dwarfs the minimum requirements for Photoshop CS2 from a hardware standpoint
- I still have the original download of Photoshop CS2 that I got from Adobe on a CD (I thought it was pretty standard to back up purchased and downloaded software, apparently it isn’t)
The Problem: Part 1
Now for the fun. While I was installing Photoshop it asked me for a serial number. Like a good customer and someone who writes software for a living I don’t keep a copy of the serial number along with the software install. Instead, I depend on Adobe to keep up with that for me. So during the pause in the installation I headed out to Adobe’s site and logged into my account to take a look at my serial number. When I got to the appropriate page, however, the site informed me that the registration services were not available.
“No problem” I thought, and continued to click the “Trial” button to go ahead and install Photoshop CS2 so I could use it for the task I needed and activate / register it later once the registration services were back online. Logic has been the downfall of many…
The Problem: Part 2 – The Problem Grows
I finished my task with no problems, saved my graphics files and continued on about my way comfortable in the knowledge that soon Adobe would be back online and everything would be tidied up.
So the next day before I head out for the day I check on the registration services site again only to find that it’s still down. I figured what the heck, I’ll call their support center. The conversation with the support personnel was pretty short… as she informed me that she couldn’t help me because the registration service was down.
“Well that’s less than ideal, but whatever…” I thought as I headed out the door.
Online Support
At some point during my day that day I had a thought, “I might as well submit an online ticket so the nice support folks can get to my problem as soon as the flaky registration service comes back online.” So as soon as I got home I sat down and submitted a support ticket using Adobe’s site.
Two days later (on Monday, which is fine, they don’t work weekends) I got an e-mail with a PDF attachment… apparently this is how Adobe’s support communicates… via an e-mail with a PDF attachment. What a clever way to try and force people to use Adobe Reader. Anyhow, the gist of the message was that they would be unable to help me because it was a weekend (note that this was sent on Monday). However, the message continues on to tell me that my Photoshop CS2 serial number will not work with Photoshop CS3. They then continue to assure me that they were happy to have solved this issue for me.
Of course, CS3 had nothing whatsoever to do with my problem, so I responded. Admittedly it took me until the next Saturday to do so (after all, the trial was working, getting it activated wasn’t my top priority). I was pretty straightforward but polite in my response that CS3 was nowhere to be found. I even used Photoshop CS2 to make the image below and attach it to the support ticket. You see, the only problem I had is that I couldn’t enter my serial number… nothing else was wrong!
On Sunday (the next day, at least these guys are prompt) I got a message informing me that it was the weekend. This time, however, I was instructed to call Adobe’s support telephone number instead of bothering the online support folks, they said the phone support personnel would be better qualified to handle my unique issue.
Telephone Support
So on Sunday I went ahead and called the Adobe support folks again. I got a nice individual on the phone who seemed genuinely eager to help me solve this issue of epic proportions.
Of course, all he could tell me was that Photoshop CS2 does not work on Vista, I need to upgrade to Photoshop CS3. After me spending 20 minutes trying to convince him not only did it work, but I used it to make the attachment on the ticket, my support tech was ready to get rid of me. He told me to call back some other time, when the technical support folks would be around. I had to wonder who exactly I had been talking to all this time if not technical support.
Going Rogue
The time had come for me to put some of my own time into solving this problem. In all honesty, it wasn’t that hard to solve once I put my mind to it. I had originally hoped for a quick fix from Adobe but once it was obvious they were not going to be of help… and that my trial would run out… I had to figure out how to make things work on my own.
I researched the problem on the web and found some vague references to it, but nothing that out and out told you how to fix it. Thus this article…
There seem to be several approaches to fixing the problem that people have found over time. However, I found what worked for me and it goes a little something like this:
- Uninstall Photoshop completely
- Disable Vista’s UAC functionality
- Re-install Photoshop CS2 in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode
- Enter your serial number during the initial installation
- Run Photoshop CS2 in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode
I will add a more detailed post at some point in the future which outlines each of the steps in detail, possibly with screen shots if I find the time (now that my copy of Photoshop isn’t going to expire).
Note that I was never able to get the “Activation” popup in Photoshop to work, it would always give me the error listed in the picture above. However, the first time I used my serial during installation using the steps I just outlined everything seemed to work great.
The Conclusion
Adobe Photoshop CS2 does, in fact, work on Windows Vista Home Premium if you’re willing to toy with it. Of course, having to toy with it is the reason I don’t use Photoshop’s competitors.
It’s an online life – E-mail
Apr 14th
Online Life Tool: Gmail
Replaces: Outlook (and the associated old-school mail servers)
As you read through this series of articles you will find that I depend on Google for a lot of functionality. The primary reason I chose Google springs from the great approach to online e-mail that they pioneered, Gmail. With virtually unlimited storage and the recommendation that you archive instead of delete messages you have only yourself to blame if an important e-mail goes missing. If you are careful you will find that you can find anything you need very, very quickly using their approach to categorizing and filing messages. Of course, all of this and more has been said before about Gmail, so I’ll stop the fan-boy praise and get to the nitty gritty.
I use Google’s Apps for your Domain for all of my e-mail needs. The great thing is that all of my sites and e-mail addresses can play together nicely because of Google’s “share and share alike” approach to their services. So using Google Apps is equivalent to having a Google account (which anyone can get for free). For most of these services, their web based interface is way up the list of good web-based applications and while their e-mail interface is definitely no exception.
While it would be easy for me to assume that people reading this story, owning and iPhone and wanting to live an Online Life would be able to set up e-mail without assistance, we all know what happens when we assume. So here’s how I roll in regards to e-mail:
- Get a Gmail account
- Register your Gmail account on your iPhone
- Learn to deal with the envy of your peers
So just use the IMAP client on the iPhone to connect to your Gmail account. The two synchronize beautifully (much better than with my Windows Mobile phone) and working between them is really transparent.
If you want to label and archive something via your iPhone, just drag it to one of your “folders” and presto chango Gmail will handle the rest for you. When you set up your account your iPhone automatically added a special set of folders which have a [Gmail] folder as their parent. These folders allow you to do all of the special things Gmail’s web interface allows you to do. For example, if you want to “star” an item, simply place it in the [Gmail] > Starred folder. All of the special folders work the same and with them you have all the tools you need to keep your inbox in order quickly and easily. If you’re like me, with time you’ll find yourself using your iPhone for all of your e-mail related tasks even when you’re sitting right in front of a computer!
For an obligatory comparison, this approach replaces Outlook for me. While I don’t have many complaints about Outlook at all, it really is very nice to be able to have all of my messages stored on the web instead of in an archive file on my hard drive. Now that I’m using this approach I can’t count the number of times I have been out and wanted to pull up an e-mail. If I were still tethered to Outlook (without a mobile device) that wouldn’t be possible and even with a mobile device (Outlook works pretty well with any Windows Mobile device as well as the iPhone) if I hadn’t synced lately I would be out of luck.
Something else to remember that I will definitely be mentioning more later is that almost all web-based applications support some sort of interaction via e-mail. Because the SMTP (e-mail) standard is so widely accepted, having a good e-mail client is paramount to achieving any goal as an Online Lifer (woot, I just made up that term, I Googled it to be sure).
So on the e-mail front I would say that not only have I been happy with my new approach, it has been better than I realized it could be which in the end is what we should all hope for when we try something new.
It’s an online life – Introduction
Apr 12th
I am a web developer which means that I spend my days (and often nights) designing, implementing and supporting useful software which runs in a web browser (preferably all web browsers). A couple of months ago the thought struck me, “If I’m writing all of this great software for the web why am I using so many non-web based methods of keeping myself organized?”
Why, indeed? At the time I simply didn’t see how I could accomplish everything I wanted or needed to get done using only web based applications. After all, most web-based applications required you to be at a computer to use and if I was going to be at a computer anyway why wouldn’t I just use desktop software? And if I was at a computer using desktop software, why not depend on my trusty old notebook and pen which would inevitably be available.
Then I met the iPhone. It was a chance meeting, I had fully intended to just upgrade my Windows Mobile device (I had been using them for over three years) and continue on with the way I had been going. But after toying with an iPhone for a while I decided to buy one.
There’s really something to be said for what Apple has done with the iPhone. And I don’t mean sales success or over-hyped marketing and fan-boy addictions, I mean what they have actually done with the thing. When they released it there was no SDK and a requirement that you purchase a data plan. The obvious intention was that if you wanted to do something, do it using the web browser or one of the few built-in tools which supported internet protocols other than http (such as the e-mail client).
Because Apple did this and because I bought the iPhone I am now revisiting my previous idea of moving more and more of what I do every day into web applications.
Now with an initiative like this there are always risks. People I’ve talked to along the way have warned me of the impending attack of our information hording overlords and how keeping personal (but not necessarily private) information online would only seal my fate as one of their minions. As someone who has spent my adult life giving the government personal information and handing my credit card to the random shady figure waiting my table I figure it’s a risk I’m either willing to take or a risk I’ve already been taking all along.
I required that my new approach meet the following requirements:
- Convenient – Be easy and non-intrusive to my daily life
- Collaborative – If others are involved, let me involve others
- Available – I need my information when I need it, not later
- Portable – It needs to work equally as well whether I’m at a computer or not
- Complete – This is an all or nothing deal
- Cost Effective – I’m an Open Source fan, don’t make me pay too much
My progress has been surprisingly good and now I’m ready to begin sharing my experiences in this adventure with the world and that’s where this series of articles comes in. I will be writing these articles as I have time to outline how I have accomplished keeping myself organized using just my iPhone and the internet.
7-Zip – Archiving for the masses
Sep 19th
There was a day when the only way to create ZIP archives was to purchase a copy of WinZip. The software was definitely ahead of its time… on Windows. *nix users had been playing with compressing and archiving files for quite some time prior to that.
Then, Microsoft decided to begin including the ability to create and manage simple archives directly into the Windows Explorer. This decision really brought archiving to the masses. However, many of us still have a need to do more… more quickly… with our archiving utility.
Today I was attempting to unzip 1,000 or so very small files (a set of PNG icons) into a directory on my machine. When I began the process using the built in Windows tool it told me it would take 19 minutes. Using what I can only assume is Microsoft’s patented time tracking algorithm the timer then proceeded to continue calculating backwards until I stopped it at 36 minutes with only 300 of the files copied over. This was after a 5 minute period of waiting on it to finish, figuring that things would eventually just speed along.
After a moment of frustration I went and got 7-Zip, an open source archiving tool that I had used in the past a limited amount. I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to test the speed and abilities of 7-Zip against the convenience of the Windows tool.
Well… the 7-Zip archiver took less than 5 seconds to complete the same job.
I really shouldn’t have to say any more than that to sell you on how good this tool really is.
Spoofing your browser’s user agent
Aug 22nd
If you are a web developer (or anyone doing any programming which involves web browsers, which is just about everyone nowadays) you really are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t include Firefox in your toolbox for diagnosing issues and testing sites. The community provided Addons for Firefox are just invaluable in day to day tasks. A great example is the ability to spoof your browser’s user agent, pretending to be any browser you want, all from one browser.
My quest to do this started as a curiosity when I found a blog post titled “Search Engine Marketeers are the new script kiddies” discussing a Wordpress blog which was hacked in such a way that it invisibly provided more traffic to the hacker’s site whenever a search engine bot crawled the site. The hack was pretty impressive, actually but more impressive was the ability for the blogger to diagnose what had happened and track down the culprit.
Having a few Wordpress blogs of my own, I decided to look into checking mine for the same issues. It took me an hour or so of toying and poking around to get everything I needed, so I figured I would take a shot at documenting the steps that went into my adventure in the hopes that someone else would be able to get this done more quickly if they ever needed it. Plus… it will provide a reference for me when I inevitably do this on more computers in the future.
First, you’re going to need to get the User Agent Switcher Addon for Firefox (written by Chris Pederick). Installation should be fairly straight forward, so just click the button while in Firefox and let it do its thing.
Now for the part which took some searching…
The default installation of the Addon doesn’t provide a lot in the way of user agents to switch to. A couple of examples are all that are there, so in order to be really useful you’ll need to add agents of your own or find them somewhere. I found a very complete set of agents conveniently compiled into an XML file which can be imported into the Addon (Options > Options > User Agents > Import) over on Tech Patterns.
Once you have installed the Addon and loaded a complete set of user agents, you can test them out with the QuirksMode Browser Detect page.
There are a lot of uses for this ability, from security to verifying code which reacts to a specific browser. Whatever you use it for, hopefully this short guide made it easier to get your results.