Some great keyboard shortcuts to take advantage of for power users, but equally well driven using the mouse only. It is great to see software that is so obviously led by the usability issues rather than the programming logic. It is clear that it has been designed around how people actually use RSS feeds. I particularly like the list view which has just enough information to assist my decision as to whether I want to read anymore, keyboard shortcuts then allow me to toggle open and close the item, open it in a new tab, add tags, star it for future reference. I can mark all items read in a particular folder. Simply holding down the shift key allows me to navigate at a folder level rather than an item level. Its all powered by AJAX and uses common like yellow fade technique and some modal windows. Another great advantage is simply being able to access one list from any location and any machine. Just like social bookmarking like ma.gnolia and del.icio.us have made favourites and browser bookmarks archaic, google online hosted RSS reader has done the same thing for RSS readers.

I think some transparent messages (as seen on website URL) rather than the text message that appear currently would be a nice touch.To make it even better I would like to see drag and drop functionality for sorting and categorising your subscriptions.

Its integration with firefox as one of the options for manging RSS subscriptions seals the deal and Google Reader as far as I’m concerned takes the RSS Crown.

• Simplicity, easy to use and compact
• Platform/Browser compatibility
• Good documentation
• Extensive community – I need something with some longevity and plenty of resource driving it forward
• Readily available examples of implementations – again a large community helps
• Good range of plug-ins for day to day development requirements – remember why I need it in the first place
• Something that assists me in my job of creating better user experiences on websites – Is it used by people of like mind
• Unobtrusive – easy to implement in an unobtrusive fashion
• Easily updateable , preferably no maintenance on my part

I am not an accomplished programmer, so I am less interested in whats under the hood and how it is all implemented behind the scenes and more interested in how these clever and talented programmers have provided me with a useful tool for web development. With this in mind I do hope that one day I will be able to grab the basics and use them to create my own useful components. The fear being that I become an accomplished googler and a magpie excelling at stealing other peoples work and not creating any of my own.

Who are the contenders?

For me I think it is between two, namely; jQuery and mootools

jQuery

jQuery is a Javascript library that takes this motto to heart: Writing Javascript code should be fun. jQuery achieves this goal by taking common, repetitive, tasks, stripping out all the unnecessary markup, and leaving them short, smart and understandable.

Mootools

mootools is a very compact, modular, Object-Oriented javascript framework. Its unique design makes it extremely crossbrowser, easy to use, and a snap to extend with your own code. It comes with a choice of more than fifteen scripts, plugins and add-ons

Whats my verdict

I wouldn’t look beyond either of these two. Both have great documentation, I particularly like visualjquery as a quick reference

I am currently in favour of JQuery and plan to stay so for the foreseeable future unless mootools pulls something out of the bag. I hope that jQuery integrates nicely with CakePHP which is to be my new endeavour…or one of them.

If anyone has any other suggestions I’d like to give them a look.

Anyway I haven’t yet decided to remove my aligience to Apples iTunes. From what I can see they are shaping up to become another Microsoft. I mean for goodness sake they are championing DRM. Whats that all about? For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about have a read at this lot DefectiveByDesign.org

So back to songbird. Well they really go to town with the metaphor as you have probably already noticed. It is a lovely piece of software. Functionally I can’t fault it. However I find the interface a little cluttered, it is always hard to beat Apple at interface design. It seems a bit cliquey with lots of links to “in” music site and unfortunately they have gone to town with the whole merchandising thing. I suppose they have to make there living somehow.

There is going to be a large community attached to this software just as there is for firefox, so I expect it will soon hit the media as an alternative to iTunes. If Apple moved away from DRM I think I would stay put with iTunes but until then I think I’m going to keep trying out Songbird with a view to swapping permantly. It brings the whole web to life musically speaking. Automatically identifying any playable media on a web page, and providing the user the ability to download it, listen to it, archive it, file it away for safe keeping, add it to a playlist and eventually no doubt the ability to burn it. All I have actually done is imported my iTunes library and listened to a few tunes with it, that and a brief whistlestop tour through the main features. This allows me the option to come back and write an update to this post with some useful imformation for my loyal readers ;(

I think on reflection as with all things I would prefer you to try it for yourself and make your own judgements. I merely want to draw your attention to it. My opinion is not particularly relevant to most people nor my experience of the software similar to everyone elses. We all use these things differently and have different perceptions of the various aspects of using software, so I’m going to leave it here safe in the knowledge that noone has read this far and steadfast in my determination to improve my writing style, structure, research and content of my blog posts.

Is has an outstanding ‘buzz‘ page, and while I am the first to be cynical about these things it really does appear to be impressing alot of people, deservedly so I think. Adding a book to your collection is a breeze too, just browse Amazon or other librarys a quick click of the mouse button and hey presto the book is added to your ‘bookshelf’ I think the simplicity of the process will appeal to the not so experienced web users amongst us, like, say… the bookworms! It may also serve as a good teaching tool allowing them to benefit from other good social web apps like flickr, mag.nolia del.icio.us. and could provide them with an introduction into the paradigm of tagging. There are a host of other things to learn about and experiment with (including groups), have a look for yourself.

We now have, and I’ll be brief, vastly improved CSS support including @import and media type. We have support for AJAX!, RSS and tabbed browsing with close icons, all the main stays of the modern browsing experience. Oh and did I mention automatic updates, CAB installer or exe via active sync. We have nice bookmarks management, Good useability features like text size switching, find on page feature,variuos layouts, single column, desktop layout and panning. So now I may actually try a little harder to do truely cross device versions of my websites, heck at this rate in a few more months it may be worth it. I will certainly be more inclined to use the iPAQ to casually surf the internet.

You can download the windows installer or the mobile cab installer here.It just goes to show how far the project has come that it has its own page on Mozilla, I used to have to trawl server directories to find the nightly builds. You knwo I think this time next year it will be standard on all mobile devices…

• XPC Shuttle ST20G5
• AMD Dual Core 4200+
• 2GB RAM
• 300GB SATA 7200 HDD
• Shuttle 22-1Card Reader
• Shuttle DVD RW Dual Layer
• 2 X Samsung Syncmaster 770p Monitors
• Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse
• Countless periperhals
• ( D-link Bluetooth and USB Wireless)

For all round performance I can’t fault it. it has handled everything I have done, with no complaining, freeze ups, not so much as a splutter. I have done no proper hardware and/or speed tests, but as a web developer I need a machine powerful enough to allow multi-tasking, lots of software open at the same time, in essence a reliable tool to assist me carry out my job. It has passed that test. The whole workspace is extremely good, the wireless keyboard and mouse are fantastic, wires really can get in the way of everything and knock things over etc. I’m loving the monitors but have yet to really see their full potential. I think I may experiment with the auto rotate function to browse websites in portrait aspect (to get more on the page above the fold)

The Software

• Adobe Studio CS2
• Macromedia studio 8
• Filezilla
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Nero 7
• Open Offfice 2.0 (yes MS office XP is also installed)
• AVAST anti virus home edition
• Kerio Firewall Home Edition
• Spybot Search and destroy
• iTunes
• Object dock (to emulate the ibook! dock)
• WinRAR
• uTorrent
• Textpad

I think that’s all bases covered. This is a list of software refined over many years. All aspects of computer usage is covered. The majority of the software is open source with the exception of a few industry leaders I need for work.

The glitches

1. Fast user switching causes melt down and memory dump! aghh
2. Sub woofer on on-board sound doesn’t seem to work properly, cold be speaker is worn out, but it worked OK on old system!
3. Hibernating the system resulted in losing the connection to wireless keyboard and mouse. After much frustration the only way to resolve the problem was take the batteries out of them , wait half an hour and reinitialise them. Oh and I don’t put the system to sleep any more!

Still to be tested

1. Dual layer dvd recording
2. Video Encoding , while dual layer disc recording, while performing batch operations in photoshop, while debugging code in dreamweaver, while blogging, googling ,socially sharing and anything else I can fit into my multitasking test.

Conclusion

Having read back the post it all seems a bit too geeky for my liking. It is really here in case anyone stumbles upon a link in a search engine if looking for help with anything related to their own setups, It does appear to come across a bit like…look what I have, nah nah nah nah nah! trust me it wasn’t meant to. All in all I am very happy with the new hardware. It was a long time coming but worth the wait. Any updates concerning any of the setup will be posted here as and when. Now I can push for more “working from home”. I hope I have health to enjoy it.

Never really though much of personality tests, but I must applaud the superb UI of personaldna by attap who have put together some lovely web apps. I approve of their philosophy and outlook for the web. (They can all rest easier now!)

I think a short list of web 2.0 apps is in order, with or without a critique, depending on if anyone wishes to contribute. Before I start, for all the geeks out there, yes I will be mentioning all the usual stuff, but for some of you this may be new and exciting and worth a visit. Have a look anyway, see for yourself and be your own judge.

The ones I use regularly at home

• Flickr - no list would be complete without it, for all your photography sharing needs
• Gmail – the new hotmail
• Delicious – online bookmarking, tagging app
• Measuremap – fabulous tracking stats for blogs
• rollyo – custom build search engines
• netvibes – loving this combines loads of the others

The ones I use regularly at work

• Basecamp – project management
• Delicious – online bookmarks

The ones I have used but not returned to

• web2.0validator – a bit of fun
• writely – an alternative to 37signals writeboards
• odeo – all things media
• backpackit – little brother to basecamp, good for lists and organising
• shutterbook – alternative to flickr
• digg – social news aggregator
• rememberthemilk – another tada type list maker. Nelly take note!
• Rojo – online RSS reader and sharing app

The ones I will be using regularly when the necessity arises

• Anything by attap – keeping my eye on these guys, great stuff
• script.aculo.us – special effect javascript library
• linkedin – networking tool

The ones I have yet to try

• sidejobtrack
• mypimp –
• pxn8 –
• conversate –
• mailchimp –
• time-tracker –
• listal –
• youtube –
• vimeo –
• goffice –
• serversidewiki –
• meetup –
• goovite –
• joyent –
• merchboss –
• backbase –

Improvements

• Better and more intuative organisation of features.
• Reimplementation of online and offline validation tools.
• Improvements to and more variety of outline capabilities.
• Miscellenous Goodies, including small screen rendering, linerize layout
• Greater scope when displaying information, even more at your fingertips
• Realtime editing of HTML and CSS
• More complete manipulation of images
• All the old favourites, mostly improved and optimised

Uses

• Final Checks, Images, Accessibility, Validation.
• Measuring and checking layouts.
• Debugging CSS layouts.
• Simulating test environments.
• Gathering information and researching during web browsing.

Just a quick note to say, perhaps ,dreamweaver does a better job of these sitewide checks at development stage, but on a page by page basis perhaps after you have moved to staging server this takes the biscuit.

A must for all web designers and developers. I couldn’t recommend it enough

Did Chris leave anything out?

Well aside from a “create lovely website button using web standard techniques and wake me up when you are finished” button! I think he has it pretty much covered. Perhaps a generate lorum ipsum would have been useful, but with the likes of display line guides and display ruler he really has surpassed himself. Creating Web Standard sites is such a breeze with this extension in your arsenal.