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Instead I'm going to bore you about lots of other things.
First up, Chrome and Safari. Those that pay any attention to my Twitter account know a few months back I switched to Chrome as my main browser. Just like any, it's got good and bad points. I thought I'd go through them. I'll start with the biggest problems first. Chrome is not made for heavy browsing on OS X. The design decisions made make this evident. There's no scrolling tabs or "view the rest of your tabs" element, like in Firefox or Safari. If you open three dozen tabs in a Chrome window you're instead greeting with a mess of ridges that are supposed to be tabs, but that would look more at home on the back of a dinosaur.
That's not even the worst of it. Due to the fact Chrome separates processes for plugins and such, you soon have dozens of "Chrome Helpers". Now that wouldn't be a terrible thing - I for one love the fact Chrome is practically uncrashable from plugins. However, I don't like it when it means I can't launch anymore applications. That's right, if you open up enough tabs in Chrome, you can't open other applications on your Mac. Finder will return an error and you'll be forced to close Chrome tabs.
Not just that, but when you hit that limit Chrome will no longer load new tabs. They'll just sit there with the async progress spinning and do nothing. That's insane and one of the largest reasons why Chrome isn't ready yet - if I enjoy it and use it too much, it breaks. Craziness. It's not all bad though. Chrome is very fast, loads pages quickly, has extensions and lots of neat little things. One of my favourite is being able to just being able to type "wiki", hit tab, then type my query. It works on other sites too, like Wowhead.
Another pet peeve is the download system. Having notifications at the bottom for download progress is neat. Forcing me to close them all the time isn't. I understand they wanted to do something different from the usual download window, but it doesn't work well. And if you're downloading or saving things from multiple windows? Well the bottom bars are window specific, so you'll have to close each. All in all it's just a messy system.
So overall? Chrome is good but has some damning flaws. I'll be heading back to Safari as my main browser. I think that blurb'll be it for today, I'll try to post at least semi-regularly from now on. At the very least the next post will be about icons and things. Maybe.
]]>1 - Requiring an MSN address, Live account, etc. Basically you're probably going to have to sign up. I shouldn't have to give a mass of details just to download this. It's annoying. Getting an error when verifying my email is also fun.
2 - The registration and shit won't work in Safari. If you want it, you'll have to launch Firefox and sign in. Again.
3 - The download requires ActiveX or Java? Are you fucking kidding me? In this day and age? A fucking java application used to manage the download? It's 2009. Two-thousand and bloody nine. Classic Microsoft having to reinvent the wheel instead of use perfectly good alternatives such as BitTorrent or another service.
4 - Hitting download loads the java application in that tab. A lot of people, myself included, start to grab the download for something as soon as possible and then read through things. Such as copy-pasting the key. Forcing me to open a new tab and find the page in my history isn't a great idea. Maybe fucking ask if the user wants to browse away from the page and ask them if they have written down the key they need?
It's amazing how convoluted people can make things. Imagine an indie Mac developer requiring all the above to download a beta? He'd be fucking butchered. At most it would be the following: Field for email (to send the key), version and language selection and a button for either direct downloading or a torrent. One click. No mess.
Shame committees don't do simple.
]]>Folks that have known me a long time will probably be shocked at the next news. I've actually started the move to Photoshop for all my work. It's been about half a week so far and except for some confused frustration it's been pretty neat. Certainly different workflow to the one I'm used to. I guess it was about time I did it though, I've probably pushed Fireworks as hard as I can and no matter what I personally do it's still not going a standard for the type of work I do. It's going to be a lot of fun seeing what I can do a year from now.
Here's lookin' towards the future!
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That said, I'm going to be working on catching up with my freebie releases, hope you enjoy today's. Oh and a quick question: Can anyone give me a hint to removing the underlines for image links in Firefox and Camino? They don't appear in Safari and it baffles me a little.
]]>Hope you had a nice Christmas and New Year! If you have any ideas for icons you'd like to see done, don't hesitate to email me.
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Etched is my first stock icon collection available, made up of over one-hundred and eighty 32x32 glyphs in five styles. Made to look fantastic in your application's buttons. It's also my first collaboration with a reseller. Be sure to check it out. Etched is available from $75.
Keep your eyes peeled for Etched getting it's own promotional page with more information here on the 'Soap.
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Rebound is a fun little time-waster app and also my first hired work available at the App store. Bridger was great fun to work with. Be sure to check out his blog for information on how the app was brought to life.
]]>I'm pretty much stunned. Thanks to everyone who posted about either Hydride or Lätt. It's really an amazing leap from the kind of traffic I got even three months ago.
Now it's December and unfortunately it looks like Façade isn't coming until mid-January. It's a shame and I know some people are getting mildly (ahem) annoyed. It's understandable and would probably of been for the best for them to not have gave any sort of date until much closer completion. They're not the first ones to do something silly like that, so please don't gut them okay guys?
I'm still going to be dedicated to releasing good themes once it's out. I know quite a few people are after an update to Niqu and it's definitely on the table to do after Qui. Now, for future reference, Qui and the Niqu update will not get official Windows ports. That has nothing to do with elitism or anti-Windows feelings (hell, I use Windows a lot for gaming), just the fact they're going to be pay-for themes.
At least that's the plan for now. Life is never certain. I'll try my best to get you guys some nice shiny icons this month. Don't be shy about sending me an email concerning Façade, theming, Niqu or anything like that!
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So that's probably a good time to say hello to any new readers there! I also did some changes so now the old Soapsuds RSS/etc feeds use the new Vanillasoap ones, since some folks don't seem to have noticed the move.
Facade is coming next month, hopefully with a shiny bit of goodness. I'm going to divulge something here that may shock and astound you: I hope it does well. Why? Because it can really change Mac theming. That isn't marketing shit. I mean it. Theming on OS X is often a trial in annoyance and bewilderment. Just mention "iTunes" to any regular themer and the chilling howl of pain will give you a clue to the suffering inflicted.
No, it can really change things. A lot of work goes in to a theme and it's just right that people will be able to get something for it now. And this snowballs. You earned a few nickels, so you can put more time in to your next theme. How about an entire suite with matching icons? This is all not without precedent either. Skins Factory, a big player in the world of UIs has payware theme suites too.
I'd love nothing more than to be able to work on an entire suite without feeling I'm shoveling money away because I could be doing something else. The warm glow doesn't pay bills, no matter how much we'd like it to.
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Don't scare too many skeletons folks!
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