Playing with the Opera Browser
For all of you who are visually oriented, look at this tab bar with multiple tabs.
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting - http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
http://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/
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Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting - http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
http://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/
Royal Botanic Gardens
Bei blauem Himmel und angenehmen 27° habe ich heute eine kleine Tour im Norden von Sydney gemacht. Mein Weg führte mich durch den Hyde Park (zu sehen auf dem Foto mit der Allee), einmal rund um die Royal Botanic Gardens herum zur Oper (die auch auf drei Bildern zu sehen ist, es dürfen Tipps abgegeben werden auf welchen ;). Auf dem Rückweg habe ich noch einen Abstecher zum Museum of Contemporary Art gemacht und dabei zufällig auch Teile der Performance einer Straßenkünstlerin gesehen. Sehr witzig: Sie meinte zuerst "Come on laugh a bit with me. What would the world be without laughing? Germany." und wählte dann aus dem Publikum ausgerechnet einen Deutschen aus. In den nächsten 5 Minuten entschuldigte Sie sich dann mehrmals bei ihm, aber er nahm's eh mit Humor.
Google Wave invite? I got mine today.
I finally received my Google Wave invite today, ten million years after I signed up at the Google Wave homepage. Here's a screenshot of my invite:
Since this invite came straight from Google and not just another Google Wave user, I have 20 spare invites to share with friends. I have already sent out three.
This message popped up when I tried to access Wave from Opera 10. I actually sort of expected this - Google did announce way back that only Chrome, Safari and Firefox were going to be officially supported, and that Wave will only work in Internet Explorer after installing some sort of Chrome emulator. I just hate it that they totally left out Opera (not even an emulator, like they provided for IE). And the way the message was composed really ticked me off: "Sorry, it looks like you are using a browser that isn't supported... If you want to continue at YOUR OWN PERIL, go ahead."I don't know, but I think that sounded harsher than necessary. I think Google should rephrase this. Even better - I think they should start optimizing their services for Opera. A big boo from me to Google for this.
Untitled
nomulous: RT @girlie_mac: Now Opera offers partial support for the CSS3 transition! http://bit.ly/KaSlb css3 opera
via Ping.fm
On missing Chrome and feeling bad for Opera
I have been using Opera for months now (yeah, even I can't believe it) but I'm starting to miss Chrome. That's not to say that I don't like Opera anymore - I still like it, a lot - but I can't help but feel like Opera is a long, uphill battle against the entire Web. Gmail is very, very slow on Opera, as are other Google services which I am unfortunately tied down to (Docs, Notebook, Calendar, are all slow and buggy on Opera, and I'm sure Wave will be, too).
The funny thing is I know that Opera prides itself as one of the most web standards-compliant browsers out there, so I'm starting to think that it could also be Google's fault. Perhaps they do not test their websites as extensively on Opera because of Opera's negligible market share? Either way, most of the Web don't seem to care about compatibility with the world's fifth browser (Opera is fifth in terms of market share), and it really sucks. To this day, Facebook's @mention feature, which went live months ago, still won't work on Opera.
Chrome is lightning-fast, especially with the aforementioned Google services. The new designer themes for Chrome also look decent. I also recently found out that Opera's search engine management (that feature that allows you to assign custom hotkeys for the searchbox, i.e. 'g' for Google, 'y' for YouTube, 'w' for Wikipedia), which for me was one killer Opera feature, is now live in the recent build of Chrome - although the implementation is a bit more complicated than in Opera. But still, it's there - one of the two (perhaps three) killer Opera features, for me - now on Chrome.
The only thing keeping me from totally jumping ship is killer feature number one: mouse gestures. I know most people don't use the feature, but I do (in the same way that most people don't really use the double-click button on an A4Tech mouse, which I use a lot). I really have grown used to swiping left to go back, swiping right to move forward, dragging down to open a link, dragging down then up to open a link in a background tab - these things make it a LOT easier to move around the web. I have grown so accustomed to them that I sometimes do the gestures when I am in Windows Explorer or in Firefox (interestingly, I never seem to make the same mistake when I am in Chrome).
I wish the Web weren't so cruel to small but great things like Opera. Opera is a tragically great piece of software - something that's really great, but won't reach the amount of success it deserves. I remember this one time when I was on a bus listening to a podcast (Buzz Out Loud). The conversation shifted to browser market share and the hosts talked about Opera and how small its market share was. One host said that he had never used Opera and knew no one who used it as a primary browser. Natali del Conte, another host, remarked that she sometimes uses Opera because she feels guilty that such a great piece of technology was not being used by anyone. And then she goes back to Firefox.
I might switch back to Chrome before the end of the month. The seasonal Opera browser love affair seems to have ended, again. Anyway, Opera Mini is my primary browser on my phone, so I guess I'd still be contributing to Opera. I hope that lessens the guilt. And who knows? One day I might switch back to Opera, like I often have.
Känsla på medlemsmötet
Så här såg punkterna ut efter A:et i opera-sessionen.
Vad 17 var det nu OPERA betydde? OP - Parvis
E
R
A - Arrangera 2009/11/3 Posterous (angest) :
Känsla på medlemsmötet
Vilket bra medlemsmöte!
- Den omedelbara känslan direkt efteråt. Tack allihop!
#MFL | Free Classical Music | Stravinsky | Rite of Spring | Firebird Suite | #stravinsky #classical #opera #free
Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring, The Firebird Suite (1945)
Celebrate bonfire night with some musical pyrotechnics courtesy of Stravinsky and his exotic ballet suite
via classical.com
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MonoTouch.Info with a pinch of search
MonoTouch.Info has now been running since the beta of MonoTouch and the community support has been terrific and it is really appreciated. Even better than the support we have received is the great content that is being generated by members of the community.
MonoTouch.Info has been growing fast and we now have over 150 MonoTouch related entries on the site with more being added every week. As the content grew we wanted to make it easier to find what you need to make great iPhone / iPod Touch applications.
We see the site being used in two main ways:
- Browsing - You're not looking for anything in particular but you feel like browsing the site to see what great MonoTouch content has been generated by the community.
- Searching - You know you've seen an article somewhere and you'd like to find it again or you have a question and you want to see if someone has written an article, posted an answer to the forum/mailing list or added something to the wiki that may help you.
Yesterday when you performed a search it would search the summaries of each entry and return a list of any entries that matched the single keyword you entered. You would then click through to get more details and then click through to the content. We try to offer a nice summary of an entry for those of you who are browsing, but a summary doesn't cover the entire content of the entry so you could in fact be missing out on the content you're actually looking for.
Today when you perform a search we don't search the summary of the entries listed on our site, we actually search the content of the entries we've linked to! This allows you to get more accurate results and ensures you don't miss out of any of the great content out there.
On top of that we also include all of the content on the official monotouch site, wiki, forums and mailing list. We see these as official sources and therefore include the whole site in our index. One other site we include in our index is StackOverflow.com. The reason we include stackoverflow.com is because it is a source of great content. As a MonoTouch developer you might have a C# question, an Objective-C question, a .NET framework library related question or an iPhone SDK related question. StackOverflow.com has these types of questions covered and a great community of people asking and answering questions.
What about Filtering?
To make things easier we've also introduced the ability to filter the results via a key character (simply prefix your search terms with one of these characters e.g. a monotouch would search all articles for the word monotouch):
- a - search all article entries
- b - search all book entries
- e - search all event entries
- l - search all library entries
- n - search all news entries
- p - search all podcast entries
- q - search for questions/answers on forums.monotouch.net, the monotouch mailing list and stackoverflow.com
- s - search all sample entries
- t - search all tool entries
- v - search all video entries
- w - search all website entries (only the homepage is indexed apart from wiki.monotouch.net and monotouch.net)
Can I only search the content by visiting your website?
Ideally we would love other sites to have a search box that made use of the MonoTouch.Info search index and we are looking at adding instructions on how you can add a search box to your site (search parameters are sent via a querystring so it is very easy to add support to your own site).
Individuals have two main choices (other than going directly to our site):
- If you are using a browser that supports Search Providers (e.g. Firefox or Internet Explorer) you can add us as a Search Provider
- You can add our Bookmarklet to your browser which will let you quickly search from your browser no mater what site you are on
Internet Explorer
When you are on the MonoTouch.Info website if you click on the down arrow next to your search box within Internet Explorer you should see the option of adding MonoTouch.Info as a Search Provider.
Firefox
Similar to Internet Explorer you should see a down arrow next to your search box within Firefox. Clicking on that should give you the option: Add "MonoTouch.Info". Once you have added it you should have the option to search for content using the MonoTouch.Info search engine:
Safari
With Safari you will need to use our bookmarklet. First ensure that your Bookmarks Bar is showing (View -> Show Bookmarks Bar). Once that is showing simply drag the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Bar. It will ask you for a name to save the bookmark under (you can keep the default) and then you'll have the following available (clicking it will open a search box for you to type your query):
Chrome
With Chrome you'll need to use our bookmarklet. To show your Bookmarks Bar use Ctrl + b. Once that is showing simply drag the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Bar. You can then simply click on the link whenever you want to search for MonoTouch content.
Opera
If you are using Opera you will need to use our bookmarklet. You'll need to drag our bookmarketlet to your Personal Bar (View->Toolbars->Personal Bar). You can then simply click on the link whenever you want to search for MonoTouch content.
This is just one of the features we wanted to add to MonoTouch.Info. There are still plenty more things we wish to add in the future in order to make it easier to find content that will help you develop your MonoTouch based applications.
Thank you for using the site!
MonoTouch.Info
http://monotouch.info
