Fluid Blog

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Fluid 0.9.2.2 is out now, and this release is all about improved stability and bug fixes, sans new features… consider this Fluid’s “Snow Leopard” release ;0]

Some highlights:

• Improved reliability for changing SSB icons from General Preferences pane.
• Improved printing support.
• Improved FullScreen behavior.
• Improved Single Window Browsing Mode behavior.
• Fixed support for displaying Muxtape playlists in the Thumbnail Plug-in.

I wanna share two really great Fluid screencasts created this week by two different Fluid users. The first is an introduction to using Fluid from Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline. The second is from Fluid user Yatil, and is a tutorial on creating a Fluid-based desktop Twitter client with no API request limit using the mobile Twitter site and a Userscript.

• Fluid on ScreenCastsOnline
• How to make a Twitter Client using Fluid, GreaseKit and Growl

How to make a Twitter Client using Fluid, GreaseKit and Growl from yatil on Vimeo.

Hi all, Fluid 0.9.2.1 will be shipping very shortly. Unfortunately, when upgrading your old Fluid SSBs through the Software Update facility it may briefly appear as though your SSB has lost it’s custom icon after restarting. In fact, your SSB will retain it’s icon, and a little “jiggle of the handle” will fix the issue. The screencast below shows how to very easily deal with the issue.

In order to ease the pain a bit, I’ve even added the ability to change the SSB custom icon after creation (look in General Preferences). Also included in the new version is true Full Screen support, Single Window Browsing Mode (sites which attempt to spawn new windows spawn new tabs instead), improved performance for Cover Flow browsing in the Thumbnail Plug-in and more.

• Grooveshark
• Desktop Curtain
• Video Permalink

• Video Permalink
• Socialthing!

Fluid 0.9.2 is out with Embedded SSBs, TinyURL resolution and many other bug fixes.

• Video Permalink
• Socialthing!

Several outlets are speculating on the future of Fluid today.

See:

• Daring Fireball
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog
• MacRumors
• Ars Technica
• AppleInsider

Obviously I’m not going to speculate on any possible future features from Apple, but I do have two things to say:

First, Fluid isn’t going anywhere. Fluid has been, and will continue to be, the industry leading SSB product in terms of innovation, polish, and speed of development. As for the future of Fluid, expect much, much more of the same.

Secondly, I want to remind everyone of one thing…

In June 2004, Apple demoed Safari 2.0 featuring RSS feed-reading capabilities. Many were initially concerned that Safari’s new features may signal end times for Mac-only News Aggregators like NetNewsWire.

In fact, quite the opposite occurred. Apple’s move into the RSS space with Safari validated the technology and introduced millions of Mac users to the joys of RSS and feeds. NetNewsWire (and many, many other feed reader apps) basked in the newfound attention, and continued to innovate well beyond Safari’s relatively paltry feed reading offerings. I think it’s safe to say that NetNewsWire benefited from Apple’s move into the space.

So overall, I’m psyched about the attention SSB technology is getting today, and look forward to the challenge of maintaining Fluid’s lead as the best SSB for the Mac with excitement and confidence.

Fluid user Zsolt Benke shows how he uses Fluid to combine all of his social webapp destinations into a single MenuExtra. Awesome.

How to bring all your webapps into one menu item with Fluid from Zsolt Benke on Vimeo.

• Video Permalink
• Zsolt on Twitter