fluid - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/fluid en Copyright 2012 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:00:00 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.35-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 7 Apps We're Falling in Love With AppsWeLoveLogo.jpgWe test a lot of software around here, on the web, on our desktop and on our phones. It's a great job to have, but only so much of what we test really sticks and becomes a part of our daily routines. Every once in awhile we like to compare lists in our team chat room and then share them with you.

Here are the latest tools and services we've come to love, maybe you'd like to give them a try too.

]]> Posterous

Think you find a lot of great stuff online? You should try sharing it with people using Posterous. The user experience for this curation and blogging tool is remarkable, a real model for other app makers to check out. Posting by email, iPhone and a web bookmarklet are all really easy. My Posterous is here and Frederic Lardinois shares some of this favorite stuff here. If you like what we write about on ReadWriteWeb then check out the cool little things we find but don't blog about at the day job - or the things that will make it to ReadWriteWeb later. Posterous just went real time this week, too.

See also: How to Use Tumblr, Posterous and Other Light Blogging Services

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Topify

Ever feel frustrated by the emails you get from Twitter? We did, until we signed up for Topify. From really smart "X is now following you" emails to the ability to reply to direct messages by email - Topify delivers Twitter emails like Twitter ought to. It's another project from Ouriel Ohayon, who's also behind the wonderful iPhone app sharing service AppsFire. Ouriel makes cool stuff.

See also: Ten Companies Twitter Should Consider Acquiring Next

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Seesmic Web

The never-ending battle between Seesmic and Tweetdeck to see who can make the coolest Twitter client is great for users. Tweetdeck ate my groups last night in an upgrade, after I'd spent hours building them, and so I decided to give Seesmic another try. The Seesmic Web app is awesome and Mac users can turn it into its own app on the desktop using Fluid. The best of many cool features? List support! You can turn any list you're following on Twitter into its own column in Seesmic. Frederic Lardinois says he's been using this combo for a few weeks, I still have some kinks to work out.

See also: Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web's Future (From 18 months ago, how did our prediction turn out?)

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Tweetie 2

The iPhone app Tweetie (iTunes link) made a major upgrade last month and we're loving it. Sarah Perez put this one on the list but everyone agrees - this is hot stuff. Will the forthcoming Seesmic Mobile app be as good? Will Tweetdeck's eventual support for Twitter lists turn into an awesome iPhone app? We'll see - but Tweetie's many rich features make it the app to beat right now. My favorite feature? The way the replies page can be pulled down like a spring to prompt a refresh. It's a little thing, but it's fun.

See also: The Favorite iPhone Apps of Five Geek Rock Stars

Aardvark

aardvarkscreen250.jpgAardvark leverages what it calls "the real-time web of people" to deliver answers to any question you have - from people in your social circle who know about the topic and are available at that very moment. Vark gets mixed reviews from some people, but I love it. From technical questions to practical ones about life to opinions about questions I have at work - I've been getting a lot of fast, helpful information from people on Aardvark lately. It's another app that scores very high on User Experience, especially in its iPhone and IM interfaces.

See also: The Robot Made Me Do It: Comparing 3 New Cyborg Q&A Services

Chrome/Chromium

Google's web browser is fast, it's really fast. It's hard to say goodbye to all the wonderful Firefox extensions we've been using for years - but it's harder to use any other browser once you've been using Chrome for awhile. We have high hopes for Chrome plug-ins, but even without them it's a joy to use. You can download Chrome for Windows here and Chromium for Mac here.

LazyFeed

LazyFeed is a topic-driven "discovery engine." It's basically a blog search client that brings in the freshest posts about topics you're interested in. A couple of months into using it, I'm still finding great content every time I fire it up. I've got this running in Fluid and it works great.

Want some serendipity on the iPhone? Try out competitor YourVersion's app. The first version isn't easy on the eyes, but it delivers roughly the same experience on the go.

See also: Ten Useful Examples of the Real-Time Web in Action

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Those are some of our favorites lately. What apps have you fallen in love with this season? We'd love to know.

See also our previous installments in this series:
30 Days Later: 22 Apps We're Still Using One Month After Finding Them From one year ago!
Still Shiny: 23 Apps We're Using One Month Later From this Spring.
What We Use: A Tour of RWW Desktops (Mac & PC) Video screencasts.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/great_new_apps_november.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/great_new_apps_november.php NYT Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:03:03 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
Cruz: A Smart, Multi-Pane Browser cruzlogo150.jpgThink you've found the best browser to surf the web with? You may be selling yourself short. Mac users with Leopard should check out the latest entrant into the browser world, Cruz.

Cruz lets you easily set up multiple panes in your browser, with sophisticated controls. That's just one of the many things it does, but it's the feature we like best.

]]> Cruz was built by Todd Ditchendorf, the guy behind the popular single app browser Fluid. Todd is one of the most innovative people in the browser world right now, but there are many people pushing the envelope on features or entirely new browsers altogether.

In addition to the multiple panes, Cruz also offers a full-screen mode and a long list of other features.

We really like the idea of being able to set up any web app we like as a sidebar. We tested it with FriendFeed, setting Cruz to act as an iPhone in that panel. It worked pretty well, though the status bar's ability to preview URLs was lost.

We also like the idea of of side-by-side browsing, as we often like to compare two web pages at a time or drag text from one to another, and using two browser windows is less handy. Unfortunately, there's no ability to bulk-import bookmarks from another browser, something we'd want to do before using Cruz too extensively.

Finally, we wish we could run separate Google Accounts in this browser and in Firefox, simultaneously. Unfortunately, that's not possible with Cruz any more than it is with Fluid.

Despite its early shortcomings, Cruz is fun to use. We expect to fire it up in some circumstances and we wouldn't be surprised if it suits some people well all the time. Three cheers for innovation in the world of browsers!

Thanks to Chris Messina for discovering this, as he does so many things.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cruz_a_smart_multipane_browser.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cruz_a_smart_multipane_browser.php Browsers Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:41:08 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
Super Hot: Muxtape With Coverflow muxtapelogo.jpgMP3 "mix tape" site Muxtape has been my preferred source of new music for the last few weeks now, in large part because the simple interface is such a joy to use. Now, internet and organic root-beer lover Colin Sproule has come up with a great way for Mac users to get an iTunes-style Coverflow preview of playlists on the site.

The improvement in user experience for this already fantastic app is remarkable. Check out the how-to video embedded below. It's also a great example of several brand new apps all put to use together.

]]> Sproule demonstrates how he used the deceptively "site specific browser" Fluid to make what's almost a Rich Internet App on the desktop, dedicated here to Muxtape, and then pull in the CSS of Muxtape previews and turn on Coverflow. The end result is super hot. Notice also the great screencast production technology, Sproule uses the popular new screencasting tool Screenflow. Here's a screenshot , below that is the video about how you can put this on your Mac in minutes.

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You can also skip the Fluid part and just download the completed "app" from Tom Martin's blog. You'll still have to make the CSS edit yourself, though.

If you've wondered why you'd use Fluid to make a standalone browser for a single web site, this is a great example. Following Sproule's instructions was remarkably easy, it took me less than five minutes and added a wrinkle to my internet experience that I expect to use regularly.

I struggled for awhile until I realized that my Mac needed a software update and that solved the problem of previews not appearing right away. For some reason still, a couple of the pages aren't fully previewing - but this is a much better experience than the standard Muxtape black box.

This really inspires me to try some more things out with Fluid, including perhaps a standalone FriendFeed browser - since the newly released AlertThingy really aint doing it for me. Update: While walking my dog and listening to Newsgang talk about politics and Twitter, I realized that to be honest it was through AlertThingy that I saw a Growl popup about Engtech Digging Sproule's post about this. Sometimes I drown in a soup of input and forget exactly where I first find things. I apologize for that.

The Coverflow feature combined with Muxtape is really great though.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/muxtape_with_coverflow.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/muxtape_with_coverflow.php Product Reviews Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:05:13 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick