Author Topic: Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon  (Read 4374 times)

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Software Santa

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Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon




http://vimeo.com/22820843

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Are you a Gmail, Facebook, Campfire or Pandora fanatic? Do you have 20 or more browser tabs open at all times? Are you tired of some random site or Flash ad crashing your browser and causing you to lose your (say) Google Docs data in another tab?

If so, Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) provide a great solution for your WebApp woes. Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate Cocoa desktop application. Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, logical separation from your other web browsing activity, and many, many other goodies.
Small OS X window titled 'Fluid' with label 'Convert to Desktop Application', two text fields labeled 'URL' and 'Name' and 'Create' button. The 'URL' text field value is 'facebook.com' and the 'Name' text field value is 'Facebook'.

Fluid includes Tabbed Browsing, built-in Userscripting (aka Greasemonkey), URL pattern matching for browsing whitelists and blacklists, bookmarks, auto-software updates via the Sparkle Update framework, custom SSB icons, a JavaScript API for showing Dock badges, Growl notifications, and Dock menu items, and more.

The Fluid Thumbnail Plug-in allows you to browse the web with CoverFlow or iPhoto-like thumbnail previews for links on the current page. Watch the screencast in the sidebar on the right to see the Thumbnail Plug-in in action. How does the Thumbnail Plug-in know how to find the links on the current page from which to make the thumbnails? Simple... Use CSS selectors to select links or images for a given URL pattern (like *google.com*). Add CoverFlow support for your own site with a simple CSS selector!

How does Fluid work?

Fluid itself is a very small application. When launched, Fluid displays a little tiny window where you specify the URL of a WebApp you'd like to run in a Site Specific Browser. Provide an application name, specify a Location and an Icon, click 'Create' and you'll be prompted to launch the new native Mac app you've just created.

Use Fluid to run YouTube, GTalk, Flickr, Basecamp, Delicious, .Mac webmail, or any other WebApp as a separate Mac desktop application.

Anytime you click a link to another site in an SSB, the link is opened in your system default web browser, keeping your SSB dedicated to the original site you've specified.

Fluid also offers the ability to convert your favorite webapp into a MenuExtra SSB - an SSB that exists only as an icon in your OS X system Status Bar next to other MenuExtras like the Clock and Spotlight. Click the MenuExtra SSB's icon and your chosen webapp appears as a drop down window. Perfect for sites you access multiple times a day (like Twitter clients, email, or Digg).

Fluid was inspired by the excellent Prism (formerly WebRunner) project by Mozilla Labs. Check out Prism for much more information about SSBs and the benefits they provide to WebApp lovers.

Fluid is very similar in nature to Prism, but is based on Safari's WebKit rendering engine. And SSBs created by Fluid are true, native Cocoa OS X applications offering seamless integration into the Mac OS.



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      Site Specific Browsing. Specify a Home URL when you create an SSB with Fluid to keep your SSB browsing targeted. Whenever you click on a link outside of the Home URL's domain, Fluid will send the page request to your system default Browser.
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      Whitelists and Blacklists. Fluid's powerful pattern matching feature allows you to specify multiple URL patterns for allowing or disallowing browsing to specific URL patterns.
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      Tabbed Browsing. Optionally enable Tabbed Browsing, just like in Safari.
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      Automatic Software Updates. Both Fluid SSBs and Fluid itself leverage the Sparkle Update Framework for dead-simple, one-click software updates. Fluid automatically checks for new updates in the background, so keeping your SSBs up to date is a snap.
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      Userscripting. Fluid SSBs include built-in support for GreaseMonkey-compatible Userscripting. No PlugIns are required or used for this feature... Userscripting is baked right in for your hacking pleasure.
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      Custom SSB Icons. When an SSB is created, choose from a custom local Icon, the WebApp's Favicon (or even the WebApp's "apple-touch-icon" if available). Find and share high-quality custom Icons at the Fluid Flickr Icon Group.
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      Dock Badges. Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook, and Flickr SSBs display "unread message count" Dock Badges just like Apple Mail.
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      Session Restore. Upon quitting, Fluid SSBs will store your window sizes, locations on screen, and open tabs -- and then immediately restore them the next time launch.
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      Photo Browser. An iPhoto-like view of all photos on any page viewed in any SSB.
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      Minimal UI. By default, SSBs created by Fluid feature a very minimal user interface, allowing your favorite WebApps to be the star. However, you'll eventually miss that Back Button, Search Field, or Bookmark Bar. No worries, the SSB UI is totally configurable with hide-able/show-able Toolbar, Address Field, Search Field, Bookmark Bar, Tabs Bar, and Status Bar and more.
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      Full-Screen Browsing. Fluid SSBs support "Full-Screen" mode.
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      TinyURL. Fluid SSBs include a built-in "Make TinyURL for This Page" command for convenient linking.
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      Bookmarks. Bookmarks are nice, but Bookmarklets are essential. Fluid SSBs include a simple Bookmark manager including a Bookmarks Bar UI similar to Safari and Firefox. Great for Bookmarklets.
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      Custom User-Agent Strings. Choose from several convenient User-Agent Strings for popular browsers, or provide your own.
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      Resizable Search Field. Google search the entire web or just the SSB's Home URL domain.
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      RSS/Atom Feed Detection. Fluid SSBs auto-detect RSS and Atom Feeds. Click the 'RSS' button, and you'll be wisked away to your system default Feed Reader with an option to subscribe to the feed.
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      Browsing History. SSBs feature a History menu identical to Safari's.
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      Web Preferences. Much like Safari, configure Fluid SSBs to enable/disable PlugIns, Java, JavaScript. Also select your preferred default Fonts, block Image loading, and much more.
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      Download Manager. Many WebApps require Download support... like the "Export" feature in Google Docs for example. Fluid sports a minimal Download Manager.
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      JavaScript API. WebApp creators can use Fluid's JavaScript API to show Dock Badges, Growl Notifications and create Dock menu items.
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      JavaScript Console. For convenient JavaScript debugging.
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      Growl Notifications.
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      Popup Blocker.


http://fluidapp.com/
« Last Edit: February 16, 2014, 09:04:42 PM by Software Santa »

 

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