andreas's dashboard

Hi,

Here's an initial release which enables Facebook chat notifications via Growl. I'm working on the badges but wanted to get some feedback on the work so far.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3...

Matthew

You could use the same standards of separating urls by commas or pipes from the shortcuts system and automatically open these tabs or maybe browsabrowsa split views.

I'd like to add to it so there's a tool to change the default in Fluid so it applies to all the SSBs created and if possible to propagate through all the existing SSBs too!

rjbs, you should try the latest version. – andreas, on July 07, 2008 12:31

Correct, it was purely a hypothetical because I saw a neat use that could exist, but I didn't want to go ahead and start doing it if there was a better way. I thought it was like Prism where you had to have Prism installed for the SSBs to work. – Thomas, on July 07, 2008 07:23

Hi all, I spent a just few minutes on this but quickly got bored... (not so into JavaScript these days)... I've posted what I've done so far at the URL below. It kinda works, but has not been thoroughly tested at all. It prolly has bugs.

Anybody wanna clean/finish it up?

http://pastie.org/228860

sam, I have nothing else to add to my complete answer above. I'm now convinced Fluid is not for you. I would recommend Mozilla Prism or Adobe Air:

http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/

http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

They are both *excellent* products and much more inline with what you described.

thanks.

It sounds like there are some hard feelings starting to develop here, and that is too bad.

From the perspective of someone who just jumped into the conversation (someone who doesn't know all the details of the decision to license/distribute the software this way) it sounds like Thomas started the topic as a hypothetical idea designed to provoke discussion, and not necessarily to provoke a confrontation. I'm actually pretty impressed with the conversation so far. Todd, I've have had many discussions on Get Satisfaction with Thomas, and while he can admittedly be a bit sharp and pointed in his choice of words, he does often have some insightful observations that often surprise me -- or at least make me consider the alternatives.

My hope is that everyone here -- pretty smart folks as far as I can tell -- will get something useful out of the conversation while still keeping it real, if I may pull out a very tired phrase that wasn't still hip five years ago. In short, agree to disagree if you have to, but I'm actually enjoying the conversation. It may be that there is a way to mine something productive out of this topic, or at least I hope there is a way.

It's good to see others share this opinion - Fluid targets power users while SSBs are most useful for people who have troubles typing a URL into a browser. – Sam Johnston, on July 06, 2008 10:44

Thanks for the prompt response - I'll answer each point in turn (as a new post as comments break the layout).

- I didn't imply that you had not complied with any of the licenses - this is not the point, rather that you have built a tool on top of a stack of open source products without which it would not have been possible. I'm not drawing so many conclusions so much as making an observation; if the upstream developers cared so much about this they could use the GPL or similar.

- No, but you do care. In the about page you say 'Actually, I'd very much prefer you didn't do that' and in this very thread you say 'That should be considered for personal use. Please don't redistribute SSBs.'. OTOH Prism really don't care (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism#User_Co...); why can't we have the same for Fluid - user contributed SSBs with comments, ratings, etc. even hosted by you if you need for fluid itself to get its share of the limelight.

- Freeware (apparently without any license whatsoever - not even disclaimers of warranty/liability) is probably more dangerous for business users than open source or commercial software - in the former case they can fix it themselves if you get run over and in the latter they can sue the provider (actually without the disclaimers they can probably sue you personally). It's not so much nefarious as curtailing many interesting uses (like the web based autopackager for Google Apps domains I'm considering building).

- I wasn't able to find any such statements on the fluid site, except things like 'Is Fluid Open Source? Nope.' and 'Fluid is an end-user tool, not an application development or deployment platform. For the latter, check out Adobe Air.'. If that's the case then why not make a clear statement on the about page and avoid questions like this? Why not be completely transparent and explain your decision - maybe you have proprietary code you don't want to give up, or you want to keep the option of selling it to someone one day, or simply the code itself is messy... users probably won't care but knowing *why* you have made this decision could be useful.

- Suggesting people check out prism if they don't like your regime is not serious either; I'm sure Prism will get there eventually but it has its share of limitations today, especially on the Mac platform. The primary use case for an SSB (in terms of number of potential users) is to migrate from local apps to cloud-based apps, targeting users for which opening a browser and typing in a URL is too hard. I spend my days working out how to get this stuff into large enterprises without drowning technical support in trivial questions and simply getting the user to launch the app is surprisingly challenging in itself - tools like Fluid are incredibly useful for this task but the [lack of] licensing all but rules out commercial deployments (security/code audit questions aside).

Anyway I hope that one of these days this important use case will be catered for by [re]licensing of the [currently not]redistributable or the Fluid app itself.

Thanks again for your efforts with this amazing tool,

Sam

That's what the comment field is for, short replies direct to a message that are to a person but not really to everyone in general. Also, I disagree, his attitude that if you can login to the mac (I'd think his grandmother probably left the autologin option on, which Todd seems to have forgotten exists) then you can fill in some confusing text fields in Fluid. That's an odd way to say "If you're too dumb to make an SSB, an app designed to make visiting a certain website easier, then you shouldn't be using Fluid", which is pretty rude. – Thomas, on July 06, 2008 06:10

thx andreas! :0]

Go Todd!

hi samj,

- i have very strictly complied with the licenses of all open source software that i have used in fluid. I have used those tools entirely in the spirit intended by their developers (read the licenses). additionally, i have open sourced more than half a dozen projects myself and offered them to the community.

- you are more than welcome to send an SSB to your grandmother. Obviously, i don't care. besides, what would i do? (i can't believe we're even having this conversation... although to be fair, I find it very hard to believe that anyone who uses a Mac cant manage to fill out two text fields and click a single button... how do they log in????)

- my point is that in general, i'd prefer more people learn about Fluid and try it for themselves rather than just receive an SSB from their friend and never discover that they can make an SSB out of anything they like. I am providing you with *free* software... all i ask in turn is that you tell your friends. What's so hard to understand/nefarious about that?

- finally, if any of this make you "anxious" about using Fluid please choose another tool like the excellent Prism. I'm not asking anyone to do anything that makes them uncomfortable. i have stated many many times that fluid will always remain free as in beer (free of charge, free of advertising, but closed source). so you should keep that in mind when making your decision.

First, Fluid is awesome so don't take this the wrong way. Second, I'm sure I'm not the first to talk about this, and won't be the last, but I will anyway.

It's one thing to not release the application as open source (I'm glad it's available for free anyway which is better than Prism^H^H^H nothing), but another to not allow users to distribute the SSBs. Yes it's an end-user app, and it's easy to use, but not easy enough for my [grand]mother and there are some interesting potential applications like generating SSBs on the fly.

Anyway maybe if you were to explain your reasoning for your licensing decision(s), bearing in mind that you are relying on a significant base of open source technology without which building this app would have been infeasible, then users like me would be less anxious about the future of Fluid and more likely to throw everything behind it.

I'm not sure how to respond to this honestly. – John, on July 04, 2008 07:17