Autoupdate is one of Chrome's killer features. It is magical because it continuously updates an entire development platform invisibly, frequently. Supporting it has driven how we structure our development processes. It was also one of Chrome's first features. Delving back into project history long before we launched publicly in 2008, the autoupdate project was one of the very first we started working on. The idea was to give people a blank window with an autoupdater. If they installed that, over time the blank window would grow into a browser. And today, some five years after our autoupdater started updating a mostly blank window that could barely load webpages, it is now an engine for delivering an incredibly sophisticated web technology platform onto our users' computers, which in turn allo
If I could start building ThinkUp all over again, I would've built its autoupdater first. No app should annoy users with the work of downloading and installing a new release; it's a big reason why app stores are a better way to get software. Speaking of, you should download ThinkUp beta 15 right now.
Firefox 4 beta users: the two most popular "Better" Extensions I put together, Better Gmail 2 and Better GReader, are now compatible with the Firefox 4 beta. Download them now. I haven't had much time to dedicate to the Better extensions lately, but I'd love to create Chrome versions as well as get the less-popular siblings up to date (like Better YouTube and Better Flickr). If you've got the time or inclination to help make that happen, let me know in the comments or on the mailing list. Thanks in advance.
Been using 0Boxer in my Gmail account since it launched a few weeks ago, and damn is it addictive. Here's my writeup of how 0Boxer makes email drudgery fun over at FastCompany.com: 0Boxer Awards Badges, Points for Clearing Away Email.
When it comes to storing passwords, I've been a KeePass fan and user for years now, but when Leo Laporte told me he uses LastPass, I had to check it out. I don't love the idea of syncing my password file to a third-party web site--I'm that paranoid--but it is a total pain to cart around my KeePass database file. Now that I've tried LastPass, I'm sold--well, for my lower-security logins, anyway. This week's Work Smart video covers the security vs. convenience tug-of-war you have to put up with when deciding on any password system, and why LastPass is a solid choice.
Released a few fix-it updates to the Better Gmail 2 and Better Flickr Firefox extensions this week, which you can get by pressing the "Find Updates" button in your extensions dialog box.
Better Gmail 2 version 1.2 plays catch-up with Google's latest changes to Gmail: Hide Spam Count now works, and I swapped out Folders4Gmail (which no longer works) with Label Links, a script that does something similar to the Labs version of Nested Labels. Also replaced the CPU-hogging Highlight Rows with Keyboard script with something that does the same thing without the performance hit. Better Flickr also got a much needed once-over, and now doesn't break editing photo descriptions when Rich Edit Controls are turned on. Enjoy the updates! As always, questions about the extensions should go to the Better Firefox Extensions mailing list.
I don't mind it so much, but a few people have told me they hate the new icon-studded search options panel that appears on the left side of Google search results by default now. To kill the sidebar, try the Google Classic or Remove Google Sidebar Greasemonkey user scripts. Update: There's also the Hide Google options extension for Firefox and Chrome. (Thanks, Ken!)
Mozilla just approved my latest update to the Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension, which now includes the ability to hide your unread Buzz count, and enable an audio notification when you receive new mail.
Thanks to Victor Zhang for creating the Hide Buzz Count script and Yansky for Gmail Sound Notify, and for giving me permission to include them in Better Gmail 2. Press play below to hear the new mail notification sound.
If you've already got the extension installed, click on the "Find Updates" button in Firefox's Add-ons dialog to get the new version. Otherwise, download Better Gmail 2 from Mozilla Add-ons.
Google's Gmail tweak broke some of the more popular features of my Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension this week, including Folders4Gmail and Hide Spam Count. Thanks to the quick work of Arend v. Reinersdorff, the problems have been fixed. If you're a Better Gmail 2 user and your labels aren't collapsing properly or your Spam count is showing when it shouldn't, hit the "Find Updates" button in Firefox's Add-ons dialog to get the fix, or download the most recent version directly from Mozilla Add-ons. Thanks for your patience and for using the extension. As always, news and discussion about the whole series of Better extensions is always posted on the mailing list.
Once you're active in Google Wave, you want to know if something new is happening there--even if you don't have Wave open in your web browser. Several Wave notifier applications and browser add-ons can do the work of checking your Wave inbox for you, and letting you know you've got new and changed waves.
The following is an excerpt from the all-new Chapter 9 of The Complete Guide to Google Wave. Got feedback? Let me know in the comments and help write the first book on Wave!
Just like it isn't on the iPhone and iPod touch, Adobe's Flash browser plug-in will not be on the iPad, and there are a whole lot of opinions about that decision. Predictably, Steve's apostles are smug, Adobe's pouting, and the rest of us will have to field questions from our relatives about why they keep seeing a blue lego piece. Flash usage has been declining over the years anyway, and a few web publishers have shared numbers to prove the point. 32% of visitors to John Gruber's Mac blog Daring Fireball, which has a large percentage of visitors from the Flashless-by-default iPhone/iPod touch, did not have Flash enabled. Andy Baio says 16% of Waxy.org visitors don't have Flash enabled, up from 4% a year ago. This site wasn't around a year ago, but about 16% of Smarterware visitors don't have Flash enabled either.
Because its readership represents a mixed group of both Mac and Windows users--albeit more tech-savvy ones than your average web surfer--I ran the numbers for Lifehacker, which currently gets about 39 million visitsors a month. As you can see in the chart above, the number of Lifehacker visitors without Flash installed enabled nearly tripled from 2.32% in 2006, to 6.07% in 2009.*
My attitude about Flash? Thanks for all the video, but it's time to go. I welcome HTML5 and the browsers that support it. For an even-handed discussion about the realities of Flash from a current Adobe employee who doesn't work on Flash but does have lots of experience with standards, check out John Nack's post, called "Sympathy for the Devil."
* Update: These numbers do not include the majority of iPhone/iPod touch traffic to Lifehacker because a partner manages Lifehacker's mobile site and as far as I know, we're not using the Google Analytics tracking tag for the main site on the mobile site.
Today Google finally releases a beta of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux. I've been using a Chromium build on my Mac for awhile now, and while it's faster than Firefox on the Mac, it's not nearly as fast and stable as the Windows version of Chrome. Also, without Google Gears for Mac OS X 10.6, Chrome and Google webapps are even less useful on the Mac. While I was on the road with my MacBook over the last few weeks, I found myself missing my desktop PC back at home only because of the more-stable Chrome and Gears availability. Will Gears for 10.6 will ever come out, since they're phasing it out in favor of HTML5? With features that depend on Gears like offline Gmail coming out of Labs, you'd think so.
If you use Google Reader's list view (instead of expanded), you want to scan headlines and selectively mark several items as read without having to expand them--and a new Greasemonkey user script, Google Reader Mark Selected as Read, lets you do just that.
Update: Reader leifern reminds us that from the keyboard you can move up and down headlines in list view using the n and p keys, and mark items as read as you go using the m key. So this user script is for the mouse-fans in the room. Thanks, leifern!
Just released a fixer-upper version of the Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension which cleans up some wreckage a recent Gmail API change left behind. Specifically, the change broke Eric Bogs' and Peter Wooley's excellent favicon alert scripts, and man did THAT upset users. Happily, Eric and Peter came up with fixes right quick, and version 0.9.7 includes them. Here's where to get it.
Released a few fix-it updates to the 
Mozilla just approved my latest update to the 
Once you're active in Google Wave, you want to know if something new is happening there--even if you don't have Wave open in your web browser. Several Wave notifier applications and browser add-ons can do the work of checking your Wave inbox for you, and letting you know you've got new and changed waves.
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