Firefox for Mac? Works for Me.

It was with skepticism that I first used Firefox -- a similar skepticism to when I first used Safari -- because my experience with third-party Web browsers for years has been that it doesn't feel like they really work. The Mac's third-party offerings have always had something enticing about them -- iCab, Mozilla, Omnipage, Opera -- but I would also gravite back to Internet Explorer, because it offered fewer hiccups, even if it was slower.

Then came Safari. Written and published by Apple, it seemed like Safari stayed on top of things better than any "non-IE" browser since IE had taken the crown from Netscape. Since somewhere around Mac OS X 10.2, I haven't looked back.

Now there's Firefox. And it's the first time I've been to a true third-party browser that I felt I was likely to stick with. I was reading this Your Tech Weblog entry the other day and shaking my head -- so far, I feel that Firefox is quite a bit faster than Safari in my day-to-day use. It is slightly more crashprone (every once in a while the interface seems to give up and quit responding to mouse movements) and I've not yet utterly tested it with multimedia plug-ins and so on. But there seems to be enough of a groundswell around the product that I think it'll be a player and get the attention it needs so that those plug-in type things work.

I'm also impressed at the Mac-like feel of the browser; even though it's a crossplatform application, the Mac version seems to use Mac interface items very nicely, and I rarely feel like I'm in an app that's not a ground-up Mac app. (As far as I know it is -- I haven't really studied the way the different platforms were versioned and coded.)

That Your Tech Weblog entry did have one fun clue that I've taken advantage of -- apparently Firefox has been built into a few different versions that are specifically optimized for the G4, instead of the G5. Those versions can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/ -- I've installed one and so far I'm pleased with the performance on my PowerBook G4/500 -- it feels faster than Safari.

One thing I've grown to like about Firefox I've never used in other apps -- a tabbed interface. I guess the default [cmd]+click opens into tabs (instead of new windows), which is what got me to switch. In a way it's like going from Classic Finder to Finder windows in Mac OS X. Tabs make a lot more sense than a mess of windows under almost any circumstances.

So FireFox has grabbed a coveted spot on my Dock and home and on my PowerBook, and I've even switched it to the default browser. We'll see how long that lasts -- from what I've read on Apple's site, I might switch back to Safari for the RSS reader that's coming in Tiger, or maybe Camino...which is downloading in the background as a write this...will be worth a look.

Apple Announces Two-for-One Stock Split

Interesting news from Apple. I figured that with the price of their stock heading upward so precipitously that it would likely split in the next little while, although I didn't imagine it would happen so immediately. While buying Apple now probably isn't a "grandma bought shares of a company called IBM in the 1930s" proposition (or whatever), it certainly doesn't seem like a bad idea. Not that I can afford it (nor do I or have I ever owned any Apple stock).

Choosing My Wiki Way

Just a few weeks ago I decided to spring something new on the staff of our newspaper -- a wiki. Currently, communication around our office is a mish-mash of e-mail and iChat, with an FTP server and posted signs on the wall completing the picture. While we use blog technology extensively for the site that we offer the public, internal blogs have failed as a way for us to communicate with one another.

After only about a day of explaining what a wiki is (everyone liked that it was based on the Hawaiian word for "quick"), I set one up for them to use. The idea with a wiki is that you can easily create and edit simple website simply by typing into HTML forms.

On the editorial side, they took to it like wildfire. All of the sudden we had an entire quarter year of issues tracked, with special entries for the office supplies they needed, the phone numbers and e-mail messages of the photographers and a few angry missives from the editor about how everyone is missing their deadlines and needed to stick to the style guide.

The wiki was a hit.

The problem was: Swiki, the service that I decided to use because it was (a.) free and (b.) offered secure wiki sites, only available to people with a password. Apparently Swiki is notoriously unreliable, and, soon after the editors had taken to it like flies on spit (yes, I know the real saying) Swiki up and disappeared.

Since then I've been looking for an alternative, but the editors haven't quite taken to a new wiki with the same gung-ho attitude. In particular, I'd settled in with XWiki, which the salespeople and I have been using to track our calls on advertisers and to note what ads need to be designed. XWiki is great stuff and getting better all the time. In particular I like that you can turn pages into PDFs with the click of a button, and I like the way each page could handle comments.

Then, today, I finally got my codes for a beta test site at Jotspot, the "latest and greatest" think in wiki-stuff. I'd have started with Jotspot if they'd have gotten me a beta site sooner, but apparently they're doing it by hand. (JotSpot is a cool startup that's got original Excite developers involved.) The reason I wanted to try it so bad is that Jotspot is going further with little WikiApps than anyone else so far, enabling you to create forms and accept input, keep track of events in calendars, track your contacts and generally do some cool stuff. There's even a Customer Relationship Manager, which is a whole other quest I've been on for our sales office.

So there I was, tooling around in Jotspot, when I got an inspiration to check Swiki. Lo and behold, it was up again! I quickly cut and paste page after page from the old EditWiki to a new one I'd established at JotSpot. Then I created accounts and invited the editors to the new incarnation of their old wiki. So far, they're pretty excited.

The question at this point will be -- JotSpot or XWiki? Jot is slick -- you can add to a wiki page by e-mailing to it, which is interesting for, say, adding items that editors should read from the local paper or for writers to send in stories. It's also not clear how much it's going to cost when they get out of beta mode. It'll probably be more than a few pennies rubbed together.

XWiki, on the other hand, is more home-grown, but it offers page commenting, attachments to pages and other impressive features. It's still one of the better-looking wikis, and in a few short days I've gotten used to its syntax and some of its idiosyncracies. (It's one of the few wikis I've come across which doesn't use WikiWords. WikiWords actually lose their charm after a while, but they are handy for quickly creating new links and pages.)

More than likely it'll boil down to cost. If JotSpot ends up too expensive, or if the applications simply aren't worth it (so far I'm actually less than dazzled by the CRM, although there isn't one that has dazzled me enough to keep using it) then I'll probably switch back to XWiki. But I'm going to play with Jot for a little while longer and see if it takes with the rest of the crew.

Regardless, there's something to this wiki thing. If you've got a reasonably tech-savvy group that needs to share some text, plan projects and track changes to things, then a wiki might be worth a look.

Bloggies Posted

So, I'm already thinking that the lack of categories in Blogger sorta sucks. I should have noticed that -- I mean, really thought about it -- before switching over. Because I like categories. This entry, for instance, would be in the "Blogging" category instead of one of the Mac-related (or politics or beer-related) categories. Ah, well.

So, the 2005 Bloggies Finalists have been posted and announced -- I just came across them, actually. Some interesting options. The winners will be announced in March, but, for now, you can page through the finalists and see the prizes that each category can bring.

Man, I could really use "A large olive oil gift set from Alejandro & Martin." Seriously.

Back in the Saddle

I've been humming that song for the past few days now, but didn't fully realize it meant I was going to be working to put my blog back up. It's been down for a while -- after a blow-out with pMachine (not the software's fault, but a bad upgrade and not enough of a backup strategy on my part), I've decided this is as good a time as any to play with some other solutions. If you've stopped by in the past few weeks you saw a iBlog-based site. I enjoyed that (and the idea of killing of my current ISP and putting that $99 .Mac space to good use) but got sick of the idea that I had to use iBlog from a single computer to make my updates.

So, I'm going to try Blogger for a little while. There's almost no guarantee that I'll stick with it -- I'm already feeling the crunch of limits in terms of categories and layout -- and I'd like to included a forum feature here on the site, but I'd prefer to have the whole system integrated.

But, in the meantime, it'll give me a chance to play with Blogger and let you know my reaction. And I can get back to talking about some Mac stuff!