Fluid Blog

Lots of new features in Fluid 0.4, but most important are features for Fluid-created SSBs of three popular webapps: Gmail, Google Reader, and Yahoo! Mail. Features include “unread count” Dock badges, and support for setting these SSBs as the system-wide default mail or feed readers.

• FluidInstance.app: Dock Badges for “unread count” in Gmail, Google Reader, and Yahoo! Mail just like Mail.app
• FluidInstance.app: New Windows are sized and positioned the same as the last window’s current size & position (including across app launchings)
• FluidInstance.app: You can set Yahoo Mail SSBs as system default Mail client in Mail.app prefs, and they will now accept incoming mailto: links. Upon accepting, they activate and begin composing a new message to the url given.
• FluidInstance.app: Gmail compose email addr auto-suggest works now.
• FluidInstance.app: Yahoo Mail gets Dock Menu support: “Get New Mail” and “Compose New Message”.
• FluidInstance.app: Google Reader SSB can be set as system default feed reader in Safari prefs and will accept RSS/Atom/feed urls from other apps like Safari to “Add Subscription”.
• FluidInstance.app: SSBs can now run local Ruby on Rails webapps.
• Fluid.app: Remembers chosen Installation dir across launches.
• Fluid.app: dragging a URL proxy icon to the Fluid icon in the dock opens Fluid and enters that URL into the Fluid “URL” text field.

Fluid 0.3 is out… Big new feature: Custom App Icons!

Now you can select any image or .icns file on your system to be used as a custom app icon for an SSB created by Fluid. For now this has to be done on creation. Eventually I’ll add the ability to change the icon later. Release early, release often, right?

And, how cool is this… Fluid user Benjamin Stein had the brilliant idea of starting a Flickr group for shared Fluid SSB icons!

Fluid 0.3 is available from the website or via “Check for Updates…” in the Fluid application menu.

Good News and Bad News!

:0[ Bad News: Fluid 0.2 had a bug where certain interactions with the ‘Create Site Specific Browser’ window would cause an error message and fail to create your desired SSB.

:0] Good News: Fluid 0.2 also included the totally-rad Sparkle Update framework for super-simple software updates… and now we get to try it out!!!

Fire up Fluid 0.2 and you should see an alert about a new version (0.2.1) that fixes this issue and an option to download and install. Go Sparkle!

Alternatively, if you’ve disabled auto-checking for updates, you can go to the menu: Fluid -> Check for Updates…

Fluid 0.2 is out with two major improvements:

1. You can now specify a custom app install path.
2. The excellent Sparkle Update framework has been added for ultra-convenient software updates.

The first item is important because the previous version of Fluid forced you to install SSBs in the /Applications folder… that’s not possible for non-admin accounts. :0[

The second item (Sparkle Update support) is especially important for Fluid. Normal apps benefit greatly from Sparkle’s super-simple ‘Install and relaunch update’ feature. But with SSBs created by Fluid, you’d have to delete and recreate multiple applications each time a new version of Fluid is released. So for Fluid, it’s extra-important to have Sparkle Updates for both Fluid.app itself and the SSBs it creates.

The bad news is that version 0.1 (the previous version) didn’t have Sparkle built-in. So this time around, Fluid users will need to delete all of the old SSBs they created with Fluid 0.1. The good news is that from here on out, updates will be painless… any time you launch Fluid.app or a Fluid-generated SSB, you’ll get a notification if there’s a newer version available. At that time you can download, install and restart with a single click! :0]

Thanks to Andy Matuschak who created the Sparkle Update framework.

Get Fluid 0.2

Fluid Changelog

Imagine my surprise as I stumbled home drunkenly last night from a Holiday party in soma (no, I didnt drive!) to find Fluid featured on TechCrunch! w00t!

• TechCrunch: Fluid Is Great For People Who Are More Comfortable With Desktop Apps
• TUAW: Fluid makes site specific browsers easy
• LifeHacker: Add Webapps to Your Dock with Fluid
• Wired: Fluid Brings Web Applications to Your Mac Desktop
• Web Worker Daily: Do You Need a Site-Specific Browser?

And I love how the comments on the TechCrunch article are a collection of vitriolic bile/hate mail claiming Fluid is crap/useless/a Prism ripoff. Nice… I must be onto something then! ;0]

More about this later tonight (after I’ve jogged down the Embarcadero at sunset…. awwwwww), but I’ve just released a new Mac OS X Desktop app called Fluid.

Fluid is a free, beta, Leopard-only Site Specific Browser (SSB) inspired by Prism (formerly WebRunner) from Mozilla Labs but based on WebKit instead of Gecko.

Yo Check it.