Something that I have been wanting to do for quite awhile is move my email back to the desktop.
I’ve been using gmail exclusively since ‘05 to collect all of my email, and it’s been doing a bang up job! I love me the gMail. But, there are times when I’d rather open an app, or compose an email offline (like when travelling) or I would just like to have that information under my control 100%.
At first I thought I would try iMap with gMail. In theory, a great idea. All of the email lives on gmail, and your labels and mail is replicated in your email client. In practice however it doesn’t work that hot, at least not with Gmail. Maybe I have too many rules or labels. Maybe I get too much email. Whatever the reason, it works poorly at best. I was missing emails, or they wouldn’t show up at all in my client. Oh, and the client would almost always crash.
Back to the drawing board I went. Started using Fluid for Gmail and it kinda made it feel like I was using a desktop app. It’s a great app and I highly recommend it especially for Gmail. Watch for a write up that soon.
Let’s hide some of this, since I’ve got a fair amount more to say. (Read on…)
I got tired of looking up roman numerals.
I still hate IE
New project I’m working on is coming along nicely. Layout, content display and navigation all working pretty much exactly as the customer wants it too. Sweet.
Because it’s how I roll, all of the dev has been happening in FireFox 3 on the Mac. And everything is exactly where it is supposed to be. Just like Safari. Just like Camino. Then, I fired up windows.
Firefox. Check. Looks exactly (or, as close to exact as you can get for crappy Windows font rendering) like it should. Crossing my fingers, toes and eyes (for good measure), I fire up IE 7.
Epic Fail.
First of all, a p in the header is acting like it’s not even anywhere near the div that it’s contained within. Some of the spacing is a bit wonky too. Oh, and my very favorite part? the horizontal scroll bar that I can not get rid of at the bottom of the page, even when I strip everything out of out the layout and shrink the overall width (body and content containing div) to 50%.
I’m sure I’ll be able to chase this particular ‘bug’ down, but it’s going to take me some time. Time I can’t bill the customer. Time I have to spend trying stuff, signing up for forums that I will never visit again, time that I will never get back.
It would appear I’m not the only one having this problem. A quick check of msn.com in Firefox 3 on the Mac vs. IE 7 shows that they can’t even get the entire page contents to fit within the browser window. See for yourself.
Firefox 3 on the Mac
Not too shabby. I mean, it is msn.com for craps sake. Now, for IE7. Try not to laugh too hard.
Internet Explorer v7 in Windows
For curiosity sake, I ran all of my sites through IE 7 (something I do at least quarterly to make sure nothing is broken) and you know what? They all look exactly the same (again, within reason, see above) as they do in Firefox/Safari/every other browser on the planet.
Not to toot my own horn here, but there is a reason I stay away from complicated layouts. This is reason #1. Sure my sites are fairly boring looking and don’t have any cool tech behind them (other than Wordpress, which is teh awesome), but dammit if they don’t work every time, in every browser. Well, except the iPhone, but it’s a width/wrapping issue that affects less than 1% of 1% of my total viewers, so I’m not worried.
Back to the research. Of course, if anyone has an idea for a fix, I’m all ears. So you know, I have tried the overflow:auto, overflow-x:auto, overflow:hidden and overflow-x:hidden and well as getting rid of all italics. Next will be to have the raw page, without CSS, and I will add each CSS element until it breaks.
I’ll comment with the fix.
There are a couple of new switchers in our midsts, so, like Josh did for me last year, I shall do the same. A list of apps that, I think, are a must have for the Mac.
Starting with not an app. An external hard drive for Time Machine. You need to backup as often as possible. Might I recommend any of the Western Digital MyBook external drives. Shoot for the dual-interface model if you can (Firewire and USB). Firewire is better on the Mac. And Faster. And, you can boot to it.
If you want a backup solution other than Time Machine, I would recommend SuperDuper. $30 and worth every penny.
We will begin with the free apps.
Before you do anything else, get a copy of Quicksilver (free) and install it. If you used the ‘run’ box in Windows (or many keyboard shortcuts), you will use this all the time. After it is installed, go into System Preference –> Spotlight and uncheck menu keyboard shortcut at the bottom. Then, whenever you press cmd-space, Quicksilver will come up and be ready.
For video, you will need Flip4Mac and Perian. Download and install both of them and you will be able to play any video you come across. Another good one to have is the VLC Player. This app plays everything, but I only use it to play the odd video files that quicktime won’t (high def .mkv files in particular). And, if you are one that likes to rip your DVD’s to your machine, Handbrake is the only way to go.
Well, not right now. They are trying to get into the Guiness Book of World Records by setting the record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. From Spreadfirefox.com.
Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy. We’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.
Before the day (which isn’t posted yet), they are looking for users to ‘pledge’ a download, which requires your email address so they can notify you when Firefox 3 is ready to go.
Being a Firefox user since the aught-point-seven days (called Phoenix if memory serves), I went ahead and signed up. Nice to know I’ll be, a very small part of, a Guiness Record.
The Lad’s mom was just here for the weekend. What a nightmare. But, instead of dredging that up, I shall instead take this time to tell you why I’m not going to be able to use Safari full time. It’s pretty easy, really. And I can sum it up for you into one word.
Gmail.
Huge fan of the Gmail I am. In fact, it’s the only thing that I have found that can actually manage the volume of email I have to sort through. Including the over 15K pieces of spam I receive every month. Nothing else even comes close.
Well, Google, in their infinite wisdom, has been making changes. Changes that are actually pretty cool but, and you probably saw this coming, don’t work with Safari. The big one is auto-complete.
I use auto-complete exclusively for filling in the To:, CC: and BCC: boxes. Without fail. 100% of the time. But one of the changes in Gmail has made that feature no longer work in Safari.
That’s ok, since I’ve been using IMAP and Mail.app, right?
Not so much.
IMAP in concept is a great idea. All of your email stored on a server and you can access it with a client on your desktop. Bonus with Gmail is that you can access with a kick ass web client as well. The problem, for me, is that is too slow. Or I have too many labels (folders for you desktop app users). And Spam is handled weird.
I can deal with the slow. But when I’m not notified of a new message because it is in the bottom of my label list, that is a bit of a pain in the arse. But, I do now exactly how many spam messages I have, always staring at me from the dock. Sure, I could turn that off and only have notifications about messages in my inbox, but what about the labels? This is problematic for me.
So, what I have done, is turned firefox into my web-based application running app. I’m still using Safari for general browsing, but for email (Gmail), news (Google Reader) and FTP (leave me alone about anything because I have tried them all and they all suck), I’m using FireFox. All set to tabs that open when it starts.
Now if the Mozilla guys could make FF run as fast as Safari under Leopard I would be a VERY happy guy.
