Fluid Futures
Several outlets are speculating on the future of Fluid today.
See:
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.
June 10th, 2008 at 16:49 pm
Safari’s feature will probably resemble of the webclip feature found in Safari 3. In other words: Great for beginners that just want to view their favorite page in a separate windows. Nothing more.
June 10th, 2008 at 21:42 pm
I’m with ya’ Todd. I enjoy Fluid, and recommend it to lots of people. With the new Mobile Me websites in July, I expect I (and many others) will enjoy having an SSB to use those tools, and you might have a year of increased attention before Safari 4 might debut.
Keep up the good work.
Jason.
June 10th, 2008 at 23:12 pm
I think if you implement Keychain access you’ll be a step ahead.
I’ve used Safari 4 DP, and it’s behaviour is _very_ similar to Fluid, but more so the “first” edition.
I think you need to keep improving to ensure you stay ahead!
(But seriously, I’d love Keychain access: I’m forever having to open up Keychain and copy-paste across passwords.)
June 11th, 2008 at 08:31 am
One key differentiator: Safari 4 and its SSBs will presumably also run under windows. Personally, I’d love to have a version of Fluid that would create Windows SSBs - this would solve a lot of problems for me. Send my mom/family a FLuid app to let her monitor my .mac photo streams, clients can receive an app via email that connects them straight to projects, etc.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:28 am
While RSS may have gained a higher profile thanks to Apple implementing within Safari, it did eventually lead to NNW making their App freeware. Since Fluid is already free, it shouldn’t affect you unless ur future plans called for turning it into shareware once it reached the 1.0 milestone
June 11th, 2008 at 11:36 am
@Jason thx for the vote of confidence! :0]
@Matt Keychain support is on the TODO list… and I’m beginning to think I’ll add this sooner rather than later due to a new Fluid-related project to be released soon… (also free).. stay tuned! :0]
@Dogzilla Considering how much better Fluid is than any SSB product available for Windows, I can understand why you’d like a Windows version ;0] However, Fluid is thoroughly Mac-only and this is really one of it’s greatest strengths. No least-common-denominator, cross-platform approaches here. Fluid is a best of breed Mac SSB, and will stay that way.
@Abbi As I’ve stated in the past, Fluid will *always* remain freeware and also free of advertising. No worries. As for NNW going freeware… I really don’t think that was a reaction to Safari’s RSS features at all. Rather, it was a reaction to other free RSS syncing services like Google Reader.
June 11th, 2008 at 23:21 pm
@Todd - I think the RSS example isn’t quite right because Safari never intend to complete with delicate RSS reader in the first place. Yes like you said they help promoting RSS by adding simple RSS reader to Saferi.
However this time around they are adding an exact completing feature to Saferi. If Saferi was only a 30% RSS reader. Saferi 4 will likely be a 70%+ Fluid alike.
Not that i am discouraging you to continue to develop it. Since completion is always good. But i am just wondering, just wonder….
Would you feel extremely angry if Saferi 4 did turn out to be 90% Fluid like?
June 12th, 2008 at 05:18 am
Well, I think the developer is correct in his analysis. I had never heard of Fluid until I stumbled upon it from a MacRumors link talking about the Safari 4 feature and It’s something I’ve really been looking for. In fact, it does 99% of what I already wanted and looks like it’s on track to be a great solution to some of the problems I wanted to address.
I also think Apple will only be implementing this half-heartedly. Probably no extra scripting or growl integration.
Great job and keep up the excellent work!
June 12th, 2008 at 05:56 am
Same here - never heard of Fluid or SSB’s nor even been aware of a need for such a thing until I came across a TUAW post today.
June 12th, 2008 at 13:39 pm
@Marc @Gerard, thanks for your support!
@Ed I’m not going to speculate on future features from Apple. However, I will say that I fully expect to be able to differentiate Fluid from any other SSB products on the market.
No one else currently offers MenuExtra SSB functionality, Userscripting, Growl notifications, Dock badges, custom window styling/opacity/levels, a Cocoa UI plugin API, CoverFlow views configurable by CSS, Split view browsing (BrowsaBrowsa Plugin)… etc, etc. And I’m just getting started! I have many more innovative features planned for Fluid.
Bottom line: I’m not worried. :0]
June 12th, 2008 at 14:34 pm
Hi Todd,
I love Fluid.
However, I really think the killer SSB will be one that runs cross-platform (Windows, Linux, too).
The ability to distribute an executable to all my customers regardless of their OS means I could restrict my web application is a single browser (e.g. safari) and not have to worry about browser incompatibilities… GODWILLING!
Anyhow, rock on.
-Theo
June 12th, 2008 at 16:46 pm
I don’t think safari 4 will bring nearly as many features to the table as Fluid does. The best part of fluid is that you can add your own support for services with dock badges, growl etc.
June 12th, 2008 at 17:27 pm
@cawlin, thx man!!
@Theo glad you like Fluid!! However, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on what makes a great SSB. To me, the single most important feature of an SSB is to make any given webapp feel like a *fully native* desktop application.
What makes Fluid great is that it is a *thoroughly* native, Cocoa Mac application. Cross platform apps (tho they may have many other benefits for the developer) will never be able to match the fidelity of a native Cocoa app on OS X.
So I don’t see Fluid’s Mac-only nature as a weakness, but rather as its greatest strength.
June 13th, 2008 at 06:43 am
With an interest is SSBs, Apple may also come up with new stuff that in turn benefits Fluid. This could be under-the-hood stuff in WebKit, or something in AppKit, or even some cool UI conventions that are easy to, uh, be inspired of
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
Likewise, looks like Safari 4’s Save as Web Application feature will lend credence to Fluid. Yes, different audiences… basic and advanced needs.