Starting New

I never really thought about this for the longest time.  A new tab was just a new tab and a place to start browsing anew while not losing the original focus on the previous tab.  I really bought into the concept of multiple tabs so that I could do and work on a couple of things at once.

Time moves on and I do my best to become efficient.  Because I always check into Twitter, Facebook, my Gmail account, it made sense to save these tabs and load them automatically when I load my browser.  Then, I got hooked on Alltop.  It was a great way to have the commonly read web resources load every time I got started.  For me, I got the sense that I was working smarter and that really made a great deal of sense.  Just the menial task of manually opening tabs seemed to rob me of productivity time.

I think my philosophy changed the first time I loaded the Opera browser and saw Speed Dial for the first time.

You could turn the new tab experience into an ever greater launch point for productivity.  I started looking around and ended up with the Incredible Start Page and I shared it on this blog here.  It just because like a pair of comfortable shoes.  It was there when I started a new tab – had a notepage for quick notes to myself, access to my bookmarks, the apps I had installed, and a list of the most visited sites for me.  For my Google Chrome browsing experience, it was great!  Oddly, I didn’t make the same effort to change the new tab page in the other browser of choice – Firefox, the default always did the job for me.

Then, about a week ago, I read a couple of articles about applications and extensions to bring more functionality to the browser.  The nice thing about blogging was that I could go back to the original post and realize that I hadn’t changed the new tab function for two years.  That’s an eternity to changes made on this computer!  So, I devoured these two articles.

http://lifehacker.com/the-best-apps-and-extensions-to-supercharge-chromes-ne-982659508

http://lifehacker.com/the-best-apps-and-extensions-to-supercharge-firefoxs-n-995238717

…and then started to explore.

I had really bought into the Rockmelt philosophy that there should be something new every time you load a browser.  I was motivated to look for something with the concept that Rockmelt will stop functioning on August 31.  I really hope that Yahoo! finds some way to keeping it alive but that’s fodder for another post.  Wouldn’t it be great if there was just something new when I opened a new tab?

I’ve been curious about active tiles and how it works within Windows 8.  Not enough to buy it but the whole metro interface thing seems to be a new model for getting to the latest and greatest and having it right on your Windows desktop.  Could it not happen in a new tab instead?

To that end, I downloaded and installed the new metroTab.  It had that new metro experience but after poking around I realized that I could do some great customization to suit my needs – including the philosophy that everything looks better in green.  I had access to recently closed tabs but am really drawn to the active content on the desktop.  I liked what I saw and kept it.  It did seem a little wrong to have it running on Ubuntu so I changed the background colour to orange and it does seem to fit nicely there.

I continue to poke around and see what I can do on a regular basis.  The only think that’s seemingly a void in the upgrade was a missing notepad.  But having a tile to Evernote was a no-brainer – I really had gravitated there for the most part anyway.

What to do to refresh Firefox?  There wasn’t a metro interface in the second article but New Tab Tools gives a very nice customization ability to getting started.

In both cases, access to recently closed tabs helps out with those “D’oh” moments.

I’m liking the current new tab modifications.  I haven’t forgotten the past and they may well return but such is the life of an ever evolving search for the ultimate productivity tools.  In the classroom, what a great way to make it easy for students to get to web resources for those computers progressive enough to be using web applications.

Speaking of ever changing, you can’t be complacent.  I read this today.  Changes to Chrome’s New Tab Page.

Who can’t handle a little change?

Related articles

• Firefox makes a Metro move (reviews.cnet.com)
• New MetroTab For Chrome Gives Your New Tab Page The Windows 8 Modern Look (technorms.com)
• The Best Apps and Extensions to Supercharge Chrome’s New Tab Page (lifehacker.com)
• Customize your new tab page with X New Tab Page [Chrome, Firefox, Opera] (dottech.org)
• New Metro Tab Brings you Windows 8 Live Tiles to Chrome’s New Tab Page (spicytricks.com)

A TouchDevelop Tip

Lately, Alfred Thompson (@alfredtwo) has been sharing a great deal about his experiences with TouchDevelop.  His latest post is actually a story around a video showing how to use Turtle Graphic in TouchDevelop.  That did it.  If anyone can program and create a video at the same time, I’ve got to give it a shot.

Of course, you need an idea.  So, in tribute to Alfred’s Tip Calculator presentation at the CSTA Conference last summer, I thought I’d write a little tip program, all the while learning the language and user interface.

I head on over to the TouchDevelop site where you log in with your Microsoft, Facebook, or Google account.  I log in with my live.ca account and I’m ready to explore.  I took a look at one other program and decided to just forage ahead.  Kids, don’t do this at home.  I had no planning, no layout, (quite frankly no idea of what the syntax of the language was going to be…).

When you create your first script, you actually don’t get plopped into a blank workspace unless you want…

There’s going to be lots to explore in the future.  For my simple program, I have no need for any bells or whistles…

Hopefully, I can change that!

Within a few minutes, I had learned enough of the environment and the language to create a first program.

And run it, I did…

Wait a minute.  Careful observers will note that I created the program in Windows but ran it on my iPad!

Therein lies the excitement of this application.  It’s not just a development tool for the desktop.  Because it’s all online and carefully crafted, it will run on many devices!

Whoops.  OK, just about anything.  Looks like Google Chrome for the iPad isn’t on the list!

But it certainly worked well on my Android Phone.

In fact, the nice clean interface seems to play well just about anywhere.

But, writing and running on your device is only part of the story.  There is an option to compile and share your work.

I don’t have a Windows Phone or Windows 8 but I certainly do have devices that could run the HTML 5 WebApplication.  Even running it locally is interesting when you view the source and see all that’s going on to make it work.

If I’m a Computer Science teacher, I would be very excited to see this land in my classroom.  It’s web based so you’re already accessing the latest, greatest version.  It works on a variety of devices so BYOD is a real possibility.  Students don’t need the school computers; they could be coding on their own device both at home and at school.  What’s not to like?

I would encourage anyone who is interested in coding at any level to take a look at TouchDevelop to see if it has a home in your classroom.  I’m betting that it well.

In addition to your own work, make sure that you explore the home page for TouchDevelop to see the showcase applications that are being development.  There’s some amazing things and if the author allows you, you can grab a copy of her/his code and make it uniquely yours.

A printed manual and free to download manuals are available here.  Finally, stay in touch on Facebook!

Related articles

• Touch Your Way To App Development with Microsoft TouchDevelop (pluralsight.com)
• Getting in touch with TouchDevelop (Think “From What to Wow”) (channel9.msdn.com)
• Speaking Hello World – TouchDevelop (acthompson.net)

 

The Browser I’ve Always Wanted To Use

On my computer, I’ve always kept the latest copy of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, Safari, and Opera – depending upon the computer.  It’s not nearly as important now but years ago, it really was important to test your webpages on different browsers as they can render things differently.  There’s nothing I find more frustrating than visiting a site and it just doesn’t look right or you’ve done something that limits things.  Remember messages like “Sorry, this page ony runs on Internet Explorer”.

I always am intrigued by web studies showing where the current popular web browser is.  Only a fool would take a look at one set of stats and make complete decisions based on that.  Rather, they’re just a snapshot in time.  It’s always been interesting to see the fall and decline of Internet Explorer, the rise of Firefox and Chrome.  Always taking a small slice of the pie has been Opera.  And yet, it’s always intrigued me so I keep it installed.  Unlike other browsers where I load up on extensions, I keep Opera basically free of them.  That way, if I run into something that looks badly on one browser, I could flip to Opera and test it unfettered by third party authors.

There has always been a lot of things to like about Opera; it’s very quick to load, always seems to be rated highly in security testing, Scandinavian in design (who doesn’t like good things with Scandinavian heritage), and I’ve never had it crash on me.  Like Firefox, the latest version allows you to search from the address bar as well as having an area to specify a search engine.

I’ll typically have the default search enging set to use Google and the second one to use Yahoo!  It allows me to to do two searches without a great deal of effort.  Opera has also had some unique features like Turbo Mode and Speed Dial which you don’t find by default on other browsers.  All in all, it’s a solid performer and yet I’ve never made it my default browser.  It’s a question I really can’t answer except that, I guess, I like the additional functionality that extensions to Firefox and Chrome provide.

This week, there was exciting news from Opera.  They’ve released their next version – Opera Next.  Word had been trickly down that Opera was going to be re-written, abandoning its Presto web engine in favour of Blink.  So, you know me – I had to give it a shot.

With the switch in engines, it came as no surprise that Opera Next looked like Chromium or Chrome right out of the box.  I started to poke around to see what was what.

Right off the bat, there were a couple of things that had me scratching.  I’m a big user of pinned tabs.  At present, there doesn’t seem to be a way to pin a tab in Opera Next.  The other gotcha was the X to close a tab.  It’s on the other side of the tab.  As a long time Chrome user, old habits die hard!  Got to suck it up here.  That certainly can’t be a show stopper!

Opera Next is snappy and was a pleasure to work with.  Now, it comes time to deck it out.  Can I customize it?  I went to the Chrome store and many of the extension were expecting to install themselves into Chrome.  That’s fair enough; I don’t know why but I thought that they would just transport across the platforms.  But I did poke around and from the Opera Menu, there’s an option to install extensions.  Opera is developing its own store for extensions so a trip there was in order.  There’s some of my go-tos there.  I install Web of Trust, Evernote, Feedly, LastPass, Ghostery, and Ad Block Plus.  That’s about it – no blogging tool at present – I was hoping to see Scribefire.

While there, I notice that there’s an option to change themes.  I visited the Opera Next theme site and there are a few ways to dress up your browser desktop.  I looked at a couple – nothing green!

Desktop real estate is important to me.  In my browser, I’ll also downsize the font a couple of steps.  I’m not a fan of Full Screen Mode all the time so the less that the browser uses, the more room there is for me to read.

I stacked Chrome, Opera Next, and Firefox together and you can see that Chrome maximizes the screen real estate nicely.  Notice how it places the tabs on the same row as the exit, minimize, and maximize buttons.  That’s a really good way to avoid dead space.  I’d really like to see Opera Next and Firefox follow suit.

Regular browsing functionality was there.  I was surprised that Opera Mail was not included.  Perhaps it’s just because it’s early in development?  I guess time will tell.

There are two features unique to Opera Next that I spent a bunch of time playing with.  One is called “Stash” and the other “Discover”.  I’m excited about both.

Discover finds news stories for you just by selection.  I changed the setting to Canada and then back to Global.  It seems to have more interesting reads for me at the moment.  I’m just not interested in Toronto’s Mayor or a certain Senator.

That’s a really nice feature.  It reminds me of Rockmelt for Web.  It’s based on the premise that there should always be something new and interesting to read when you open your browser.

The second feature, Stash, I think is best described as temporary bookmarks.  A regular bookmark is permanent.  With Stash, if you’re browsing the web looking for stories, click the little heart icon to stash them away for later retrieval.

Don’t get caught up on the actual stories I’ve stashed above – I just stashed three pages for this post.  I can see myself using this quite a bit, particulary in conjunction with Discover.  As I scan news stories, I can Stash them and then later on take some time to read them fully.  I see a boost in productivity coming here.

I haven’t even talked about cottonTracks.  This could turn out to be a big change for me.

My first kick at Opera Next was very positive.  For the Chrome or Chromium user, there’s very little new learning to take on and yet, the potential for better productivity certainly is there.  I really did enjoy it; the limiting factor is the number of extensions that are currently available.  That will get better with time and Opera has promised regular updates over the next while.  I’m looking forward to seeing this product evolve.

Related articles

• Opera releases new Chromium-powered desktop browser for Mac and Windows (thenextweb.com)
• → Opera Next 15 for Mac and Windows (my.opera.com)
• Opera Promises Fast Updates, Reveals Three Release Channels like Chrome and Firefox (news.softpedia.com)
• Latest Opera desktop browser powered by Chromium – interesting Stash & Smartbox features (9to5google.com)
• Opera browser takes a radical left turn with Opera Next 15 and Opera Mail pre-releases (pcauthority.com.au)

Life in a Browser

Yesterday, Alfred Thompson posted an interesting article titled “Why Web Apps?”  I read it via mobile and was just going to let it lie but it must have been percolating in the back of my mind because I went back to it when I got to a computer and replied to his post.  It really had me thinking.

I think there would have been a time when I would have agreed wholeheartedly with him.  There really is something comforting about having an application installed on your local device to do the things that you like/need to do.  But then I thought about my own computer habits.  I do enjoy programming in Visual Basic or C# but haven’t had any pressing projects for quite some time.  For the most part, that machine seldom is even booted to Windows anymore except to update things.  For the most part, it runs Ubuntu and I’ll be honest – 90% of the time, it’s running Firefox and that’s about it.  My Macintosh computer runs Google Chrome and the FirstClass client.  Updates that are needed happen with little fanfare as Firefox and Google Chrome are configured to silently update themselves so that I seldom have to think about it.

My iPad is another thing.  As I write this post, there are 17 applications that require updating and I may set that to go while the dog and I check out the mailboxes up and down the road.  My daily use on that device involves a bit of web browsing but a great deal of time spent in applications so that @tgianno can clobber me in Word with Friends or any of the other Zynga games we’re playing.  Portable is still a maturing platform and I don’t see ditching applications there in the near future.

But, let’s turn back to the traditional computer.  Life here is indeed spent on the web.  Alfred laments the demise of the standalone Tweetdeck and I remember how I felt when the Seesmic Desktop stopped being supported.  I evaluated everything under the sun and ended up with what fits my needs perfectly – Hootsuite.  It runs on the web; the developers are constantly updating things and these updates don’t interfere with my use.

My documents, spreadsheets, forms, and presentations are all handled so nicely with Google Drive and Evernote.  In fact, I can’t recall the last time that I had to seriously use anything but a web browser to do anything.

Image Courtesy of Morgue Files 

As I write this, I just opened my Applications Folder.  It’s not like there’s a shortage of applications in there.  As I scroll through them, I guess I would have to revisit the last sentence in the preceding paragraph.  It’s all coming back to me.  Last Christmas, I did use Adobe Photoshop for some graphics work.  Do I really have to go that far back?  I guess I do.  Looking at the extensions and tools that I’ve added to extend the power of Google Chrome, it really has become my digital toolkit.  Ditto for Firefox on Ubuntu.

For me, Life with an App does seem to be relegated to mobile.  Maybe I just haven’t tried hard enough there?

There definitely are limitations to working solely online.  The internet needs to be there!  Privacy concerns encourage a second and third thought before signing up for anything new.

However, I think the writing is on the wall for me.  I could be writing this post using a local app in Qumana or I could be using LiveWriter, but I’m not.  I’m using ScribeFire in the Google Chrome browser.  It’s not quite a web app; it’s sure is not a local app; it’s really a browser app.  Times have certainly changed.

There is another aspect to all of this.  Every time a new computer needs to be purchased, it’s a total exercise in spec checking.  How much processor, how much drive space, how much RAM can I afford to buy to feed the habit.  At the Google Summit, I had a great conversation @mrfusco who has been living/working with his Chromebook.  If you like Google Chome and don’t mind working in an OS that works like a browser, is $250 all that you need to buy to stay on top of things?  Put the power mongering in the hands of the web service provider!

The bottom line for me includes a wonderful collection of extensions to my browser and the miracles that programmers are doing with HTML5.  It’s not a perfect world and this article provides a nice comparison.

Like it or not, I seem to be migrating to Life in a Browser.  It seems to be my new reality, Alfred!

Related articles

• Some best and must have Google Chrome extensions (technostall.com)
• Google: Chrome is the most used browser with 750+ million active users (9to5google.com)
• Why I’ve Switched from Google Chrome (lockergnome.com)
• Playing Around With Browsers Part 2 (renardmoreau.wordpress.com)
• Chromium Likely to Replace Firefox As Default Browser in Ubuntu 13.10 (omgubuntu.co.uk)
• 750 Million Active Chrome Browser Users Each Month (coated.com)

Hovering

Keeping my mind focused is always a challenge!

I really enjoy the way the web allows us to share content and images are a key component of that.  Very often, to conserve space, people will allow the software that they use to resize an image so that it fits nicely in the space allotted.  Or, a service like Flickr or Facebook will create a collection of thumbnails to show a gallery on a screen or you do a search for images and a gallery of results is displayed or …  There are lots of ors when it comes to images and the web!  These smaller images or thumbnails are a handy way of keeping things neat and tidy.

When it comes time to see the real image, there are a number of ways to do this.  Sometimes clicking will open the larger image in a new tab/window or you can right-click to open the image in a new tab/window.

I’ll admit that this sometimes takes my mind into a different direction and I’ll forget all about the original page!  I’ve found the greatest extension for the Google Chrome browser to solve all my problems.  (Well, actually just this one but it’s one less from the big list of problems)

The extension is called Hover Free.  For me, it’s the perfect answer.

Neat and sweet, it just does one thing.  Move your cursor over an image on the screen and let it sit for a second.  The extension sends a request for the original image and displays it on the screen.

For example, yesterday Jaimie and the neighbour’s dog were over to get their Easter treat.  They had to “sit” and do the mandatory pose while I take a picture for this post.  I posted the image to Facebook where it appears as part of a gallery.

To see the original, I just hover over top of the thumbnail and the larger image is displayed.

To make the larger image go away, just move the cursor off the thumbnail.  It’s gone.

This has been a tremendous tool to let me enjoy the images and not lose focus on the original page.