You might all be aware of my fetish with productivity, right? Well it’s really what this blog is all about. What I enjoy about time off, such as this recent stint we had with Christmas, is I get to fool around a bit with things that may or may not make me more productive but I just won’t know until I try. Enter Fluid! To preface where I am going with Fluid, here are some things that you have heard me go on about more than once, I am sure:

• web apps suck
• portability rules
• consolidation is king
• proprietary kind of stinks

This being said, there is more than enough contradiction in these statements to make a philosophers head spin until 2010. Yes I think web apps suck, but I do enjoy the freedom and portability they provide. I do believe that consolidation is the way to go (I can do most of my daily web design tasks using TextMate, Quicksilver and Path Finder) but I also feel that using a single browser with multiple tabs to edit some docs, post to your blog, update your calendar, Tweet your friends and watch YouTube videos is a bit much to ask.

This is where Fluid (from the developer of my favorite TextMate plugin, BlogMate by Todd Ditchendorf) comes in. Fluid allows you to create Site Specific Browsers (SSB) which essentially turns any of your favorite web apps into a native OS X apps. The benefit being that if your web app does something wonky, it doesn’t crash your browser and everything you had open at that moment, it only crashes that specific app. And with a web browser I tend to always lose focus of my sessions on particular web apps and close a multi-tabbed browser before I realize that I was in the middle of something in one of those tabs. Having a standalone app of each of those web apps prevents me from losing my place.

Here is another benefit I found; Safari, on a good day, sucks up 250 Mb of Ram… throw in a few tabs, some video, ajax, and that number begins to climb! Why, I don’t know, but when I run any of my new SSB web apps, each of their ram usage remains under 40-50 Mb respectively. So if I am on Facebook, for instance, with my SSB Facebook.app, I am pulling about 40 Mb.

One advantage to SSB apps that might only apply to guys like me; I keep my browser cache clear and my bookmarks light (I hate fumbling through bookmarks), so when social sites come and go, and web apps rise and fall, keeping tabs on the ones I like is a bit of a nuisance, typing in URLs etc… However, launching an app on my system with Quicksilver is a matter of 2 keystrokes.

So how has Fluid changed my life? There are a few web based services I have resisted, more because I couldn’t stand the thought of accessing them via my web browser. I now use Google Reader as my RSS reader, iCal has been replaced with Google Calendar, I know use Google Docs instead of MS Excel, Stikkit is more accessible to me (I love that service) and Blogger is at my finger tips (the only API BlogMate doesn’t currently support…Todd).

I am constantly working at different computer stations in different locations, I have to accept the fact that I need the portability of web apps. I also have to accept that I can’t always be on a mac (though I am 99% of the time). Web apps are a reality for me, Fluid just makes that necessity a nicer reality to live in.

[tags]Fluid app, Mac OS X, web apps, Fluid, SSB[/tags]

Tags: ajax, app, blogger, blogging, computer, create, design, develop, developer, facebook, finder, Fluid, Fluid app, leopard, mac, Mac OS X, nutmac, os x, path, plugin, safari, social, SSB, textmate, tips, update, web, web apps