Topic: Not to be an open source tool....

[NWR_insanolord]

I got Office 2008 in some deal but I haven't actually used it yet, mostly because I haven't needed it (beyond simple word processing, which can be done in TextEdit) and I've been playing around with Creative Suite 3 which I got in the same way. I'm pretty sure Office works pretty well, but that's expected from software that costs $400. Everyone's complaining that in the switch to Universal Binary Microsoft felt it wasn't necessary to port over all the features, so Mac Office 2008 doesn't support VB Macros.

Yeah, Quicktime for the web isn't much of anything anymore. Show some respect for the original digital video, though, and it's a good video player on Macs (at least once you get the Perian plugin). Not everybody has iPods or buys from iTunes, but judging by how many billion songs Apple has sold so far it was probably a good business decision to port iTunes to Windows. I think the touchscreen stuff is handled on the iPhone side, the testing is to make sure it runs without problems in Safari, which the iPhone uses. This will become less of an issue now that there are real third-party apps on the iPhone, but since you have to have a Mac to make those we'll probably still see small Windows-using companies/people using Web apps.

There is actually a new piece of software, or more of a service, that was announced earlier this month to be ported to Windows. Formerly called .mac, now MobileMe, it's a suite of internet-related services that Apple offers for $99 per year. The reason it's coming to Windows is that it now includes some iPhone related features, including the ability to use push mail with your regular e-mail account without an exchange server, and has sophisticated Web App versions of Outlook on the Windows side and Address Book/iCal/Mail for Mac users that you can use on an iPhone. It also includes 20 GB of web space for files you want to access anywhere or web sites, as well as bookmark syncing, which, surprisingly, at least the way I read it, works with Firefox and IE as well as Safari.

[animecyberrat]

I tried that SeaMonkey once, but having no use for the Newsreader and Email Programs I never used it as it wasn't much different than Firefox.

[NWR_insanolord]

I have Google for my e-mail and newsreader needs.

[animecyberrat]

that is why I didn't need those built into the web browser.

[Smoke39]

You can choose to install only the browser.

[Shift Key]

I got Office 2008 in some deal but I haven't actually used it yet, mostly because I haven't needed it (beyond simple word processing, which can be done in TextEdit) and I've been playing around with Creative Suite 3 which I got in the same way.

If you got OneNote in that pack, give it a whirl. Its an awesome tool for note-taking and organisational stuff - integrates with other parts of Office to track emails, calendar, pictures, documents, websites, etc. I used it throughout uni this semester to track assignments, work stuff, and random brain dumps.

This will become less of an issue now that there are real third-party apps on the iPhone, but since you have to have a Mac to make those we'll probably still see small Windows-using companies/people using Web apps.

It'll be interesting to see what comes out of the Mac development community regarding native mobile apps. Got any interesting links or demos?

I have Google for my e-mail and newsreader needs.

Gmail gets my thumbs up too, but I use Outlook for my RSS feeds so I can read them offline. I *could* use Google Gears, but its "2000 items" restriction is kinda limiting when I want to go back a few months when looking for specific information. I can also track specific RSS items within Outlook with flags and alerts, just like emails, so the "one-stop-shop" thing is nice.

[animecyberrat]

yeah but if you did that you're only getting fire fox anyways.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'd love to learn Objective C and be able to program for Macs and other various Apple devices. I don't keep up much with the iPhone news because I don't have one, I'd love to but I don't have the money. All I know is there's a lot of hope that people learning to program for the iPhone, which is done very much in the same way as for Macs, could lead to increased development for the Mac itself.

[Shift Key]

All I know is there's a lot of hope that people learning to program for the iPhone, which is done very much in the same way as for Macs, could lead to increased development for the Mac itself.

Yeah, I've heard this mentioned a fair bit. But I haven't actually seen much in the way of code and applications (I know they showed a few when the 3G model came out, but I wanted to see how easy it is for people outside Apple to build these apps).

For all intents and purposes, Objective-C is a wrapper around normal C code (that's what a professional OS X developer told me anyway), with some additional libraries for OS X development. If you want to get the hang of it, have a look at some C programming books to get a hang of the fundamentals. There may be some actual Obj-C tutorials or books out there as well.

[NWR_insanolord]

Like I said it sounds like iPhone development is a lot like Mac development, so the ease of creating iPhone apps is probably proportional to how much experience with Mac development you have. The device is supposed to be running a version of OS X. There's quite a dedicated Mac development community, and they will most likely be the first ones to do much with the tools.

I do intend to look more into learning to program, but right now I'm trying to learn InDesign and that seems complicated enough.

[Smoke39]

One thing that bugs me in Firefox versus SeaMonkey is that in the latter I can press ctrl-enter when entering a URL into the adress bar to open it in a new tab, but in Firefox I have to open a new tab manually and then enter the URL there, as far as I can tell.  Anyone know if there's a hidden key combo for this in Firefox that I don't know about?

[animecyberrat]

crtl + tab will open a new tab. if you are already in the address bar it will take you there in the new tab. Is that what you mean?

[animecyberrat]

So I took the plunge and downloaded it, wow it is faster.

[Smoke39]

crtl + tab will open a new tab. if you are already in the address bar it will take you there in the new tab. Is that what you mean?

Ctrl-tab cycles through your tabs...  Ctrl-t opens a new tab, but won't take you anywhere even if the address bar is hilighted.

[animecyberrat]

it did just now and earlier when I tried it. Maybe it is the new version only I don't know. Oh it was ctrl + t not tab you're right.

[Caliban]

Right now I'm using Google Chrome. It's not bad, but it still has a few quirks to it that I'm sure sooner or later will be fixed or upgraded.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

SeaMonkey has been holding up pretty well for me, especially after applying the Windows Media Player Firebadger plugin.

[NWR_insanolord]

I love Firefox and I can't live without some of my extensions but it's using up all of my memory and slowing my computer way down. I knew I should have gotten more memory.

[Plugabugz]

I can't break Chrome. That's an achievement in itself.

[BranDonk Kong]

I made a post about Chrome yesterday...but it didn't show up. Anyway, I downloaded it, and I...don't like it. It has some nice features, but I can't live without Firefox's extensions, and it takes WAY longer to load a webpage.

[Caliban]

It's on the NASA thread:

Another open sourced tool for tools is out...Google Chrome, Google's web browser. Get it here.

[bustin98]

I tried it. It doesn't like some of my web designs, which work perfectly fine in Firefox, IE7 and IE6. Probably why its still beta.

[BranDonk Kong]

What the hell, I must have been really tired when I made that reply.

[Shift Key]

I tried it. It doesn't like some of my web designs, which work perfectly fine in Firefox, IE7 and IE6. Probably why its still beta.

How does IE8 Beta 2 look for your designs? Its actually stable enough for everyday use (but I can't tear myself away from FF3 to make it my main browser).

As for Google's browser, it came with a "all your posts are belong to Google" EULA. Which quickly got rewritten. High-larious.

[NWR_insanolord]

I tried it. It doesn't like some of my web designs, which work perfectly fine in Firefox, IE7 and IE6. Probably why its still beta.

Do you design for standards or do you design for IE? Chrome is like Safari in that it's based on Webkit, and Safari is the most standards-compliant browser out there but can be tripped up by some non-standard stuff that will work in IE or Firefox.