Not dead, just hibernating. :)

So, I downloaded Firefox 2.0 beta 2 the other day, and this morning downloaded Firefox 2.0 RC 1. Impressions (from running it on OS X 10.4):

It feels a good deal faster than Firefox 1.5. Still not as fast as it could be, I suppose, but it’s more responsive. I’d forgotten that Firefox doesn’t have to be slow. :)

You can now subscribe to a blog in Bloglines via the RSS button in the location bar, which is sweet. It worked flawlessly for me.

Being able to close a tab from the tab itself is a nice addition which I’ve been missing (having used it in Camino and such). In the beta 2, the inactive tabs were faded out quite a bit so you could barely read the text; in the release candidate, though, they’ve pulled the text back into focus, so it’s a more legible dark grey. I think I like the tab overview button at the right, but it’ll take some training to get used to it (I keep thinking subconsciously that it’s the “close tab” button :)).

Another little gem is History->Recently Closed Tabs. I haven’t had to use it yet, but it’ll be quite handy, I’m sure.

Firebug (which I use for web development) already works with the new release, thank heavens. But it’ll only be a matter of time before the other extension developers catch up.

As far as the theme goes, it’s okay. The reload button wouldn’t be my first choice, but overall the look is tolerable — certainly much better than in 1.5.

Conclusion: it’s a keeper. I haven’t run into any stability problems, so unless I do (and I doubt it), I’m sticking with Firefox 2 from now on.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Bloglines, Camino

From Software As She’s Developed, I came across Wanted: Massive Local Storage this morning:

Local storage - beyond 2KB cookies - is now a step closer with the latest Firefox effort…. The fantastic thing is Brad Neuberg’s Dojo work means we can code independently of the local storage mechanism. Since IE also has local storage, as well as Flash, most bases are covered, or soon will be: Anyone with EITHER IE or Firefox or Flash will have local storage. (Incidentally, we had a discussion in the comments on Ajaxian about the possibility of S3 and other remote bindings as well, which I’m guessing Brad will implement at some point.)

Quite interesting — I’ll have to look more into this…

As for Dojo, I browsed through the website and I get the feeling that I’d prefer Prototype+script.aculo.us. (But then again I haven’t actually coded in any of them yet, so this is based more on an extremely superficial glance.)

Having said that, I googled “dojo prototype scriptaculous” and found Jon Aquino’s comparison:

Prototype is more of a Porsche, whereas Dojo is more like a Hummer. Prototype is pure programming bliss (feels very much like Ruby), whereas Dojo is very much engineered (feels like Java) — possibly a little overengineered in some places (IFrame-based workarounds) in order to offer what no other toolkit offers (asynchronous file uploads; AJAX back-button handling; javascript “include” mechanism).

From Jon Tirsen’s comment on “Dojo or Prototype or …?”:

Prototype+script.aculo.us is really the way to go for Rails apps. Prototype makes JavaScript look more like Ruby (without loosing the essence of JavaScript itself) and script.aculo.us goes hand in hand with the convention over configuration/sensible defaults philosophy of Rails.

Dojo is interesting but quite frankly I think it’s slightly over-designed. There’s a significant learning-curve associated with it where as you can use script.aculo.us completely out of the box and get results really fast.

And finally, from Raible Designs:

I really like the idea behind both projects, but I can’t help but think Script.aculo.us is a little better. Why? Because its creator is a designer (vs. a developer) and its development is driven by one of the most popular web frameworks and it was built from a real-world application rather than a consolidation of libraries.

I think I’ll stick with Prototype+script.aculo.us. :) (I’m not a big fan of overengineered projects, nor do I like Java very much. Ruby is the way to go, and if it feels like Ruby, that’s what I want.) Even just comparing the script.aculo.us website to the Dojo website, script.aculo.us comes across better.

Now to start coding so I can base my choice on more than just surface skimmings…

Technorati Tags: Dojo, Prototype, script.aculo.us, Firefox, Ajax, Javascript, Ruby, Java

This morning I got a link in my e-mail activating my test Google Spreadsheets account, so I’ve been playing around with it. It’s pretty cool, and I even think it’ll work out fairly well for managing my (meager) finances.

The collaboration, with inline chatting, seems cool. I had it open on my Windows box, then forgot about that and opened it in Camino on my Mac. And suddenly, to my surprise, there was a chat sidebar on the right. Easy and unobtrusive. (And yes, I did chat with myself, but only a little bit, I promise. :)) The chats aren’t logged in the Gmail chat archives yet, though. When I closed Camino, the chat sidebar on my Windows box didn’t change (it said I was still there), but I’m sure that’s just a small bug they’ll fix soon.

All the basic functionality seemed to be there (at least everything I need). Simplicity is bliss. Good call, Google.

For some reason it was quite slow in Firefox on my Mac, but in Firefox on my Windows box it didn’t feel slow at all. It was kind of slow in Camino, too, but it’s Gecko-based — go figure. It doesn’t support Safari yet.

So, hopefully it’ll get faster on the Mac. But even as it is, it’s sweet. I love Web 2.0. :)

Technorati Tags: Google, Excel, spreadsheets, Camino, Gmail, Firefox, Gecko, Web 2.0

Wow. Firebug is cool. Like, oh my gosh cool. Why haven’t I heard about it? Why haven’t I been using it? The Web Developer extension is cool and I use it every day, but Firebug is more than I could’ve expected. Wow. It’s amazing. Being able to hit Command-C to switch to inspect mode and then Escape to get back out again is pretty darn nice. (I hear the Web Developer extension has keyboard shortcuts too, but I’ve never used them.) I like the Firebug UI a lot. Mmm. I’ll have to start playing around Greasemonkey, too…

In other Firefox news, I’ve switched to the GrApple (Brushed) theme, too, which is beautiful (in a minimalist sort of way, which is good).

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Firebug, Greasemonkey