Geek Stuff: CarcassonneCentral as an Application

[mjharper]

This is something I've just heard about, and it's really cool. I'm posting to let everyone else know, because I have a feeling that it just might be one of those things which actually changes the way we use the internet. If you're familiar with this idea already, please forgive me my rant.

So, there are sites that we visit all the time, and sites which we want to keep an eye on constantly. Gmail, Yahoo, and all those webapps which are truly beginning to take off. As an admin of CC, I have the site open in my browser a lot, often in several windows. The browser I use—OmniWeb—remembers ever page and every tab you had open when you closed it, and I use that feature to always have certain sites open. But it's a pain, because it always takes time to launch the browser, and the CC pages are mixed in with others than have nothing to do with them at all.

And then along comes Fluid (there's a Windows alternative which I'll mention in a moment). Basically, Fluid puts an application wrapper around a browser window: you can then launch the 'app' as you would any other, and it will sit in your dock or menu list or whatever. In a way, it's a dedicated browser, which has the usual browser features—tabs, cookies, history and even a fullscreen mode. You can use a custom icon, or let it use the favicon of the site. Here's a screenshot of my dock (on the bottom because it's easier to display—I usually have the dock on the left):

On the left, second icon in, is my dedicated application for CarcassonneCentral, using one of the graphics I proposed for badges (before I understood what was really required). On the far end, next to the trash, is another app I set up for StatCounter, which I use to keep track of traffic on my websites. Fluid itself is the app on the left of that (it doesn't have to be open for the new 'apps' to work—they are completely stand-alone.)

So now, instead of having these clutter up my browser, I have them separated off into their own space, with their own place on the dock, and any other sites I link to from from will the associated with that app alone. Clearly, using this for something like CC is hardly making full use of the potential—something like the webapps which Google has will do that. But I really think that being able to split up your browsing experience in this way is awesome.

This post is being written in the CarcassonneCentral application…

Okay, Fluid only works on Macs (Leopard), but it's "inspired" by the eventually cross-platform Prism, which is a Mozilla project (meaning that it should use the same Gecko engine that Firefox does; Fluid uses WebKit, the same as Safari). Currently they only have a Windows version up, so I couldn't test that out and make a comparison, but I'd be interested to hear what Windows users think about it—and Linus users, when they post that build.

This whole post may seem a little 'off topic' for CC, but in fact CC was the first thing I though of when I heard about Fluid. And I just love having a meeple in the dock… 

Free the meeple!

[Scott]

I installed Prism and tested it with this site. Basically it just removes all the "browser chrome", or user interface if you prefer. The only real advantage I'm seeing is that if your web browser's cookies get cleared, any Prism apps should be unaffected. Compared to Prism, Internet Explorer 7 doesn't take up that much additional screen real estate, and quite often I have things happening in other tabs, which Prism doesn't support. For example, I sometimes need to open some forum threads for reference while replying to another one.

If somebody just wants an icon for Carc Central on their desktop or in the Start Menu, that can be done already without extra software (provided you're using Internet Explorer as your web browser). Seems like Firefox is playing catch-up with Microsoft.

[mjharper]

Fluid does support tabs. Odd that Prism doesn't, since it's a basic feature nowadays.

The utility of Fluid for me is simply having a given site—CC in this case—completely separate from my usual browsing activity. I've sometimes used different browsers, set to various homepages, to achieve that in the past. So for me, something like Fluid is great; I can see why other might not see what the fuss is about.

[Gantry]

I'm a big enthusiast of computer gaming.  A near-daily ritual for me is after I've put in my day's work, an hour before Nat comes home from her job I fire up whatever game I feel like playing (Battlefield 2, Team Fortress 2, Medal of Honor Airborne etc).  In order for me to be competitive where the difference between winning and losing is measured in milliseconds, most of these games require a decently fast system with lots of memory.  In addition to playing, I also administer game servers for a number of different gaming communities, and sometimes have to pop into a server to help out.  The reason I'm saying this is to demonstrate how my usage is completely different than say Matt's.  When a game takes over a Gig of RAM to run, and needs all the bandwidth you can throw at it, you don't want any unnecessary applications or browsers or services running. Thus for me, even though I've been aware of Webrunner (which is the precursor to Prism) in a professional capacity, it really has no use in my day to day operations.  I open and close browsers all the time, and don't like any apps running (or even docking apps) that I'm currently not using. Interesting, yes, in some situations. I'm a bit of a minimalism in this regard I suppose.

[mjharper]

I know our computing needs my be different, but I'm not sure I see the point about gaming. I don't have a computer which does gaming overly well, but if I'm going to play something fairly intensive—like Unreal Tourament—I close every other application. I've actually got an application to really close everything, even non-essential hidden processes. I wouldn't want the custom applications running at that time.

On the other hand, when I'm browsing and doing less intensive tasks, I do, by default, have about a dozen browser windows open. Being able to separate some of those off into their own spaces is useful to me. Effectively, these apps are like glorified bookmarks, except they live in my dock and not in the menubar of a browser. And if the browser crashes, say, those apps remain untouched—fairly trivial with CC, although if you're using Google Docs it might be a real pain (although some of my CC rants are fairly long too).

Or did I miss something?
 

[Gantry]

Having any app minimized or running takes up resources, my only point is that I like to be a few clicks away from a clean environment, so typically i wouldn't have either a lot of browser windows or apps open, unless I'm working on something at that moment.  For me, putting a site in a dedicated wrapper really isn't any more advantageous than just leaving it in the browser (unless I'm missing something too?)

[Scott]

I think there is something more coming in future versions of Prism. Maybe the advantage(s) will be more obvious down the road?

[mjharper]

I'm not sure; I have a feeling that this is coming down to whether you like your tasks separated from each other. I mean, some people think using virtual spaces for organising tasks is a fabulous idea; others think that it's unnecessary complication.

Although it does sound like Prism is a little thin on functions…

[Gantry]

Personally what really interests me is something slightly similar yet different: application virtualization.  Instead of packaging a web page for use on a desktop, you package the app on the server and only a shortcut exists on your desktop.  That way, it's easy to add applications to multiple desktops, no apps to reinstall multiple times for every pc, easy to back up or image your computer.  SoftGrid is one of these items.  Of course most of you aren't running full fledged networks at home so I may be preaching to an empty cathedral...

[mjharper]

That may be the way things are going…

Drifting even more off topic, I've heard people discussion Apple's new MacBook Air as a significant movement of hardware in that direction. Curious to see how things develop.

[Gantry]

Physical dimension-wise, it should be the gold standard for all laptops and tablets.  Now if they can only shrink down the AC adapters to the size of a matchbox and include them inside the case!