Webkit JavaScript Notifications API
Something I learned about recently by following the updates being issued to Chrome, is that with today’s release they also pushed out the Webkit Notifications API to Chrome Stable (v4). Surprisingly, this is actually the first I’ve heard of it’s existence. I took a look and played around with it a bit, and it is qué cool.
Visit my Sandbox to see the code in action, or continue reading for some code excerpts.
More Windows 7 Steam Goodness
This is just a small update to the whole Steam on Windows 7 thing. Looks like they’re embracing more Windows 7 features than I saw previously. Discovered this while downloading Zero Gear today:
Why Steam on Windows 7 Disappoints Me
This actually isn’t a post against Windows 7. In fact, you will find very few of those among this blog, if any at all. This is actually a post voicing my disappointment with the very popular Social Network Gaming Software, Steam.
One of the first things quickly and easily noticed is that it uses its own Window customization. This really isn’t such a big deal for me. Sure, it’d be nice if it could do the whole aero thing and fall back on this, but this looks pretty cool, so I’m not really going to fault them for this.
Next is actually mostly a good thing. Steam has this very nice jumplist for Windows 7, something not a lot of other programs have really taken the time to integrate just yet. You can see video games I have recently (attempted to anyway) launched from Steam, their own quick links to important parts of their client, and an optional (disabled by default) ability to change your current status from the jumplist.
The one problem I have with this jump list is that the tasks have no icons. You could easily find some sort of icon for each of their little tasks. A shopping cart for Store, a generic user-like figure for community, etc etc but there is nothing there.
Then of course, there is my ultimate pickle with Steam. As I’m sure you can tell from the above screenshot – Steam has NO PRESENCE in the Windows Games Explorer. This is awful! The Games Explorer has been around since Vista, and yet Steam has yet to embrace it.
There could (and should) be (at the very least) a high resolution steam icon under Game Providers. It’s not very difficult to make, and the “News” feed you see from Games for Windows LIVE is a simple RSS feed. They could either populate this with the news from their site, or just a list of new releases, creating a steam:// URI (if it doesn’t already exist) to open up links in their own client. Instead, they don’t even touch this.
As for games, I don’t know if they show up in the Explorer or not. I don’t have any spare cash lying around, so I haven’t been able to check for myself – but somehow I doubt that the games appear there (though, I could be wrong – can anyone vouch for this?).
Hopefully, these issues will be addressed in a future version of Steam, and embraced by Rival companies. (I’m looking at you On Live. Yes, I expect this from you as well).
What are your thoughts on the matter, anyway?
Hunting Down the Bugs – TwCLI on Chrome for Linux Beta
This is the first post of a new series, looking at some of the odder bugs encountered while developing for the expanding Web, no matter how basic a bug it may be.
Thanks to twitter user @paperfairy, a bug was discovered on my Command Line Twitter Client, TwCLI.
For some reason, when submitting a command in Chrome for Linux, the page would simply refresh, and the command would never be sent. At first, I had no possible way to track down this bug. I didn’t have a linux box (with a GUI, anyway) so I simply told him that it was unfortunate, but it’d have to stay a bug. Until a recent post on lifehacker brought my attention to Portable Ubuntu. I immediately installed it, opened up the Chrome website in Firiefox, installed Chrome Beta, and headed over to TwCLI to see what was amiss.
Of course, it was a single line in a detection script to send Geo-Data to Twitter (as long as the user approved it, of course):
else if(google.gears) {
This single line was throwing an exception I hadn’t encountered in other browsers – Google wasn’t defined. Oddly, I thought it would handle that properly, since google wasn’t defined, it would just skip over it, but instead it threw an error and halted all further javascript code.
The fix was simpler than tracking down the bug, I simply had to add this to the start of the javascript code:
try{ if(!google) { google = 0; } } catch(err) { google = 0; }
And voila, I had both a check for google, and a catch if it decided to throw errors while checking for it.
Whether this is a Chrome bug or not, I don’t know – I simply don’t know enough about JavaScript in order to say so either way. But, are undefined variables supposed to throw errors, or are they simply supposed to return false?
Google Voice in Outlook
EDIT: I managed to bring this into being thanks to other people generously letting it run on their servers (though unfortunately I can't vouch for the security). You can check it out at http://www.gvoms.com.
Additionally, I've also made the source code available over at https://github.com/navarr/Google-Voice-OMS
If you’re a regular reader to my blog, I’m sure you read yesterday’s post about how Google Voice could gain a head in the business world. At that time, my dream of connecting Google Voice and Outlook via OMS was far from completion, with the only work I’d managed to accomplish being a simple reading over of the related technologies.
Well, late last night a certain gear clicked in my brain, and I spent the entire night awake and coding PHP on a local XAMPP server. But my end result was fruitful – I finished successfully coding an Outlook Mobile Service that allows the delivery of SMS through the Google Voice system.
Here is a video showing it off:
I’m not yet prepared to release the source code for this, though. (Messy, Messy, Mess! as Double D would say). There’s a lot in my mind about it, it took a lot of work and I’m not ready to see forks and duplicate services pop up. (Sorry guys =S). Be on the look out for follow up posts that describe some of the technologies I had to learn to make this possible.
Oh, also – If you’d like; Help sponsor this project (I can’t afford to make it public ATM) with either Free (VERIFIED) SSL Hosting for a subdomain of a domain I own [contact me], or the money to make it public using my current host ($62.40/yr) [donate through my host]. I would be most appreciative if you could offer either of these to get this thing up and running!
The King of all Music Apps
Five years ago, I didn’t care a single little bit about music in any way shape or form. Now, I have over 4 gibibytes or so of it, and I can’t seem to find an application to manage it decently.
I recently tried MediaMonkey, but what i thought would auto-update all of my music, just assigned it to the album of a completely unrelated artist and screwed up a good bit of my library! Ughh!
So, I’m still trying to find a Music Management Application that can do the following:
- Update MP3 ID3 Tags (with:)
- Update Album Artwork (High Resolution)
- Update Album and Track names and Artists, Year, Genre (basics)
- Add/Update Lyrics (Unsynchronized & Synchronized if Possible)
- Move into custom directories the user specifies.
It needs to do this for both English/Japanese tracks. iTunes and Windows Media Player both do most of these functions fairly well, but their library isn’t nearly big enough.
If I had an app that could do all that perfectly, and almost automatically, that would be great. Pulling the data from wherever it needed to, FreeDB, Gracenote, Amazon, anything it could possibly get its hands on.
Does anybody know of an app that does all/most of this, or am I eventually going to have to write my own?
Overlooked: iTunes 9 & Windows 7 Make Sweet Love
I’m not much of an Apple fanboy, in fact I generally don’t care much for the brand at all. But today’s iTunes update has made even me smile in elated happiness just a little bit.
Why is this, you ask? Because Apple is making sweet, sweet love with Windows 7.
As you can see, iTunes has added the ability to pause and skip forward and backward in Windows 7, a feature that (so far as I know) is only supported by Windows Media Player at this moment in time. But that isn’t all. The application now loads up quicker, doesn’t usually give off that annoying black background in place of UI elements, and even includes some Windows 7 Tasks!
As you can see very plainly in this picture, iTunes 9 has added tasks involving the iTunes store.
This is all of the secret love making I’ve found so far. Have you found any? If so, please, post about it in the comments!
Connecting to Mac OS X via VNC
In the entirety of my house, I happen to be the only Windows user (and an Avid one at that! Macintosh can suck my Windows 7 Orb!), but for some occasions I too wish I could use the Macintosh. For such things as the local web server, and in the future possibly making iPhone applications.
Now, I don’t like going downstairs to use the best non-laptop Macintosh. Its hooked up to a High Definition Projector system, and it is simply a burden to try to get anything code-wise with it done, without either sitting up close to the screen, or using Apple+ to make it larger, so, I did what any geek would attempt to do. Get Apple’s Screen Sharing system working with my Windows Box.
I have to be honest with you. It was a hassle and it was definitely NOT worth it. Regardless of client side settings, VNC was incredibly slow over the Local Network.
However, as some of you may wish to try this yourself, I’ve included the instructions after the break.
Chrome’s Next Steps on Windows 7
Back in August, Google Chrome introduced the Jumplist in the Developer’s Version of Chrome; the Jumplist being a new feature in Windows 7 that allows users to quickly and easily access tasks related to the program, as well as quickly open recently opened, and pinned files with the app. With its new version, Google Chrome had added “Most Visited,” “Recently Opened,” and “Tasks” to its Jumplist. Now, There are just a few more things Google needs to add to its Chrome web browser before it fits right in with Windows 7.
Tab Previews
In order to better compete with Microsoft’s new version of Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7, Google needs to add previews for all open tabs on the web browser, allowing a user to quickly select the tab they want right from the Windows taskbar.
Status Indication
When Google Chrome is running in the background with that huge demo version of Adobe Premier Pro downloading, you really have no clue how far the download has gone without checking up on your downloads bar. A quick fix for this would be easily adding the status in the Chrome icon like Windows Explorer does.
Other Things
What else do you think Google Chrome needs to add in order to fit in with the Windows 7 Operating System that will better improve its functionality?