Fluid Blog

Hi all, I’ve decided to remove the Fluid Nightly with Google Gears bundled that I posted yesterday.

Here’s the deal… WebKit support for Gears is very much in progress at the moment, but as you could see if you tried the Fluid Nightly, it’s just not all there yet. I’ve heard from some of the folks who work on Gears that they are hard at work getting WebKit support up to speed.

So in the meantime, shipping Fluid with an not-yet-working version of Gears for WebKit is obviously not a good idea. It doesn’t reflect well on Gears or on Fluid.

The good news is that Gears is open source! So if you are a C++/ObjC hacker interested in Gears for Fluid or any other WebKit-based browser, you should jump on over to the gears site, sign up on the Gears engineering mailing list, and dig in! :0] That’s what I plan on doing. Ain’t open source grand?

Thanks, and stay tuned… hopefully more complete Gears functionality will make its way into Fluid soon!

Update: I’ve removed the Fluid Nightly for now. See my latest post for details.

After a bit of tinkering, I’ve managed to bake the Google Gears code directly into Fluid SSBs. (No SIMBL plugins required!)

I haven’t tested this much yet, but the functionality seems to be there. For now I’m providing a preview (or ‘Nightly’) build for adventurous souls. Download the Fluid 0.9.1.5 preview with Gears support baked in:

Download Fluid Nightly with Google Gears (6.8MB)

Note that the normal download on the Fluid website does not include Gears support yet. Only the Nightly linked here has it.

Also, if you’re attending Google I/O tomorrow or Thursday, please spread the word!

Fluid now has its own “Room” on FriendFeed.

FriendFeed Rooms are a great way to share links, pics, screenshots, blog posts, and other tips about how you use Fluid with your favorite webapps. Check it out and join!

Sarah Lane pimps Fluid+Muxtape on episode 1 of Revision3’s new podcast, PopSiren Bites:

Fluid on PopSiren.

Check out the screencast below to see a preview of a cool new feature I’m working on for the next version of Fluid: MenuExtra SSBs.

Note that unlike in the screencast, this feature will be totally *optional* in the released version.

The latest version of Fluid (0.9.1.3) includes the ability to change the visual theme of an SSB from the Default metal appearance, to a black HUD-like style. Check out the video below, and update to the latest version!

Desktop Clients via Fluid from Todd Ditchendorf on Vimeo.

Fluid user (and JavaScript badass) YungSang has developed a great Userscript for the popular web-based mobile Twitter client, Hahlo.

YungSang’s Userscript features handy Growl notifications for newly received Tweets from friends. Add the new window transparency and dragging features from Fluid 0.9.1, a custom icon, and you’ve got a full-fledged desktop Twitter client.

To complement the Hahlo Userscript, YungSang has also developed a nifty Brightkite URL resolver Userscript that will display a tooltip with the actual geographical location represented by any URL from the geolocation-tracking webapp, Brightkite.

And earlier today, YungSang again posted a neat Fluid tip for using XPath + the Fluid Thumbnail plug-in to visually preview those enigmatic TinyURLs… perfect for use with your Hahlo SSB.

Finally, we noticed that Dean Robinson, the developer of Hahlo, has recommended using Fluid with Hahlo for your Twitter needs. Thanks for the thumbs up, Dean!!! Right back atcha!

Fluid 0.9.1.1 is out with an important fix for a bug introduced in version 0.9.1. Now, when reactivating a Fluid SSB with no open browser windows, a new browser window will be spawned.

Also added is a small enhancement to the JavaScript API: custom icons can be provided to Growl notifications using a string URL or with a reference to an HTML <img> element from the current page.

Fluid 0.9.1 features a slew of bug fixes and browsing enhancements.

Fluid.app now supports <link rel=”fluid-icon” href=”…”> tags for hirez favicons, and <link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”…”> tags for iPhone-optimized icons.

Fluid SSBs are enhanced with preferences (under the Appearance Preference Pane) for changing SSB window levels (Normal, Floating, Below Desktop, Overlay [above Dashboard]), window opacity, and Spaces behavior. Also included is a preference for making an SSB browser window draggable from anywhere (like Dashboard Widgets).

The full list of changes can, as always, be found in the changelog.