My day to day work is done on a Mac, and therefore that automatically rules out Internet Explorer. I can’t say I’m too upset about that – on any installation of Windows, the first thing I do is download a more capable browser if there isn’t one already installed. However, on my Mac, I have a multitude of browsers to choose from. As the image above shows, I currently have installed 5 – Chrome, Safari (obviously, as it comes preinstalled on OS X), Firefox, Camino and Opera. I use them primarily in that order.

Google Chrome

Chrome is now my primary browser. It’s set as default, and I’m using it now to write this post. This is a very recent addition to my browser arsenal, as it has only just been released for the Mac. However, since its release last year, I have used it almost exclusively on my Windows laptop, and I was pleased to see it finally come to Mac. I never did get around to installing Chromium – so a native app direct from Google seemed much easier.

There main reason I use Chrome primarily is speed. I don’t care what Apple say about Safari being the fastest browser – my installation of it certainly wouldn’t. It would lag when loading large Javascript-heavy pages, or lock up altogether when opening a new tab (and triggering Top Sites). Chrome, however, opens in a flash, new tabs appear in an instance, and it can handle an impressive amount of Javascript without blinking. Google Wave, especially, always threw Safari off balance, but Chrome breezes through.

Another not insignificant reason I use it the Webkit rendering engine. To my mind, it is by far the most superior engine around – and I love the advanced CSS it is able to support. I know Safari also uses Webkit, but for reasons mentioned above, I prefer Chrome. The built in web-inspector comes in very handy – and to me, is a brilliant alternative to Firebug.

Safari

Safari is my second choice browser. It’s native on the Mac, and therefore integrates perfectly. It’s use of the Webkit rendering engine makes it one of the most advanced browsers out there – but for me, Chrome just tops it with speed.

Firefox

Firefox is also a brilliant browser. After Chrome, it is my choice of Windows-based browsers, but on the Mac I mainly have it installed purely for testing purposes. It’s Gecko-based engine provides some advanced CSS features, but not as many as Webkit. One of it’s major plus points is the extensions available – amazing functionality can be added to the core browser, and I wish Safari/Chrome would follow Mozilla’s example.

Camino

As Camino used to state on their website, this browser provides the power of Firefox with the OS X integration of Safari. This browser is fast, there’s no doubt about it – it’s very lightweight, and loads in seconds. I’ve found that it’s also the most capable browser for heavy-duty Flash, shining where the other browsers seem to flag. It uses Mozilla’s Gecko engine, but is designed to integrate better with OS X. This is the only browser in this list that’s Mac-only. As I mentioned just now, I purely use it for heavy Flash sites.

Opera

Opera is also a very advanced browser. It’s one of the oldest, and can handle some CSS features that no other browser can. However, I use it mainly just for testing – I couldn’t get along with it when I tried to use it daily. There’s just something about the interface that bugs me.

Well, they’re the browsers that I have installed and use regularly. If you know of any other obscure browsers I’d be interested in having a look at them.

In the end, for me, nothing can beat the Webkit rendering engine – so it’s got to be Chrome or Safari. Hands down.

Yup, that’s right, yet again I’ve redesigned my blog. I really ought to just find a design I like and see if I can stick with it for more than 6 months.

This time, I’ve gone for an old style, poster on the wall, advertising concerts, kind of feel. The menu on the left was inspiration taken from The Who’s album Then and Now – I blogged about the album art last year.

Feel free to browse around. There’s not much more to say about it really, comments and feedback appreciated!

On a completely different note, I installed a plugin today called WP-Syntax to perform syntax highlighting on code snippets in my post. So here’s a demo, to see if it works:

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puts "Server: $server\nUsername: $username\nPassword: $password\nEnable Secret: $secret\n"
 
if { [ regexp -- {\s} $server ] } {
 
  set index [ string first " " $server ]
  puts $index
  set tempServer $server
  incr index
  set port [ string range $tempServer $index [ string length $tempServer ] ]
  incr index -2
  set server [ string range $tempServer 0 $index ]
 
}

There you have it. Some neat, highlighted TCL code. Sweet.

Firstly I was walking past Eldon Building at University the other day when I noticed some large wooden letters in a window spelling out the word “TIME”. I thought the letters were really cool, and that it’d be cool to have my own name in free-standing wooden letters too! So I found some online, and this is the result:

They’re so cool! They’re solid wood, and even come with holes in the back so I could put them on the wall if I so desired.

In one of my many feeds today, I found a link to this blog post, where a company have been asked to design logos and emblems for Minichamps, a manufacturer of scale model cars. The logos they designed are all baby versions of the original logos, literally:

The Jaguar above was my favourite out of the four, but they also did Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini. Go to the post above to see.

I’ve also printed some quite cool (but rather geeky, I’ll admit) posters and put them above my desk. I liked the typography and the design of them, but I’ll also admit that the Mac-style icons and connotation appealed to me too.

To complete the story, Dan was worrying as my birthday present hadn’t turned up in time for the get together I was having, so he went out to buy “something small” for me – it turned out to be this album. And the music is outstanding to boot!

The idea is that the large image at the top changes to reflect the category which the latest post (or the post you’re currently reading) has been posted under. This should (if I blog frequently enough) provide a bit of variety to the homepage without too much effort on my part!

It does mean I’ve got rid of the collections idea that the previous version had, which I was quite proud of, so it’s a shame that that’s gone. But, unfortunately, it was a lot of work to maintain. And in the end I just wasn’t happy with the last design, so this new one has come into play!

This is the first site that I’ve fully designed and written using my Mac :) I must admit, working with Photoshop CS3 on it’s native platform of OS X is much more of a pleasure than working with it on Windows. It’s so much faster, and integrates perfectly with the operating system. Probably quite hard to explain unless you know how it works in both situations!

Hopefully this new design should encourage me to blog more often than I have recently. Plus, typing on the Apple keyboard is so nice it makes me want to write more anyway!