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The 5 best third-party apps with Lion full-screen support

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:32:08 +0000

Want some great Mac apps that work with Lion’s new full-screen mode and really show off why the new feature is one of the best new additions to OS X? We’ve got you covered. Each of the following apps has been updated to include the telltale little icon of two diverging arrows that indicates full-screen support, and each works very well when in that mode.

1. Reeder

Most of us likely do a lot of reading on our Macs. Reeder for Mac is a great way to make that reading even more of a pleasure. The RSS app ties into your Google Reader account, and syncs read and unread status Google and with Reeder for iOS devices. The Mac version was already a lot like the iPad version when it first came out, and with full-screen support in the latest version, it’s even more so. Grab a coffee, but leave the newspaper on the table; Reeder with full-screen active provides a distraction-free environment for catching up with all the latest.

2. Screens

When you need to remotely access your computer, there isn’t always an easy solution, especially when you’re trying to connect from the road. Screens (combined with Screens Connect for hassle-free remote access) is a great way to quickly and easily setup and manage VNC access between Macs. With full-screen support, working on your home computer away from home (or your work computer from home) feels even more like you’re actually working on the target machine, since everything you see is on the remote Mac.

3. Fluid

I noted this update when it arrived, just ahead of Lion’s release, but it’s worth noting again. Fluid provides the ability to turn any website into its own, dedicated Mac app by creating a site-specific browser (SSB). Facebook, Google Docs, and Google Plus are all favorite Fluid apps of mine, and full-screen support means I can keep them even more safely contained away from more productive, work-related apps and content.

4. MarsEdit

If you’re a regular blogger with multiple sites on the go, you’ve probably heard of the Mac standby MarsEdit. It’s a blogging client that’s compatible with most major blogging services, including Blogger and Tumblr, and it’s a native Mac app. MarsEdit’s latest update allows you to compose and edit posts in full-screen mode, which means you can get down to writing in a much more distraction-free environment.

5. Sparrow

Apple’s new Mail app in Lion remedies a lot of the problems many users had with it, and brings some nice new features as well, but that doesn’t mean it’ll feel right for everyone. Alternatives are always appreciated, and none maybe more so than Sparrow, a nice light native email client originally designed for Gmail. Sparrow now works with most other email services as well, and it has a refreshing simplicity that Apple’s own offering can’t match. Plus, now that it has full-screen support, it provides a great environment for catching up on your correspondence in a really focused way.

Those aren’t the only apps with full-screen support, but they are my favorite. What are yours, and which would you like to see get the update that don’t have it yet?

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Will the Cloud Lead Me Away From the Mac?

Alfredo Padilla — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:24:52 +0000

There’s no doubt that cloud computing is a growing trend. All you have to look at is the popularity of netbooks to see that many people nowadays will be quite happy with a computing device that gives them access to the web, and not much else.

I’m certainly part of this trend, as I write this story I have the following web-based applications open on my Mac:

What surprises me isn’t how many web apps I’m accessing, but how few native Mac applications I am using to access these services. I am using Tweetie to access Twitter, Evernote has it’s own native Mac application and I use BusyCal to access Google Calendar. Apart from that, all of these web services are being accessed either via Safari (Facebook and Lexulous), or via Site Specific Browsers (SSBs), which means I’m using the naked, if you will, web interface for the application.

Two years ago I never would have done this. I actually wrote a whole blog post, on a now defunct blog, about how I eschewed web-based applications in favor of native Mac apps because I wanted a Mac-like experience. As such I used Mail.app to get my email, NetNewsWire for RSS feeds, Omni Focus for tasks, etc. Nowadays I use web-based apps for all those functions.

There were several factors that led me to this place. First of all web based apps have become better in terms of user experience, in some cases even exceeding, in my opinion, the user experience of the native Mac alternative, for example Gmail versus Mail. Although Google’s web apps aren’t particularly pretty, they are well thought out, and some other web apps are almost elegant, like Remember the Milk.

The iPhone has also been a driving force towards web-based applications because they are more likely to offer the ability to easily synchronize over the air. For example, I would love to use Things as my main task manager, but the simple reality is that I never remember to go through the rigamarole of synchronizing via Wi-Fi. If I can’t sync over the air with my iPhone, then I don’t want to use it on my Mac.

Probably the most important driving force, however, has been features. Google Reader is an excellent example of this. I recently went over several native Google Reader clients for the Mac, but despite this range of choices, I’m still using a site specific browser to access Google Reader. Why? Because none of these applications offer the feature set that the actual website does, and I actually use all of those features. I’ve faced similar problems with native Mac apps that purport to give you access to Facebook or WordPress.

The reality is that many web applications have reached the point of complexity that building a third-party client for them becomes very difficult, especially on the desktop where users will demand feature parity, or something close to it. Unless a company is building their own client, such as Evernote, or the service is exceedingly simple, such as Twitter, desktop clients are constantly going to be playing a losing game of catchup.

What all this means for users like myself is that more and more of my computing experience is moving away from the Mac and to the web (subscription required). I love the Mac, I love the combination of stability, elegance, ease of use and power Apple’s computers offer me, but I have to admit that I’m taking less advantage of the platform than I have in the past, and unless something drastic changes, that trend is only going to continue.

Apple doesn’t seem to be making aggressive moves towards building better support for web applications into the operating system, and this may be a dangerous mistake. Someday in the not to distant future something approaching 100 percent of the average user’s computing is going to move online, and when that happens Apple may find itself flat footed in a new world, and I may find myself looking for a computing platform better suited for my actual use.

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Quick Look: Creating and Using Site Specific Browsers

Alfredo Padilla — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:30:51 +0000

The advent of the cloud over the past few years has meant that a lot of the tasks that we were used to doing on our Mac have now moved to the web. This brings with it a host of issues, from data ownership to reliability of services (see recent Sidekick fiasco) and whether the web can deliver a Mac-like experience.

Putting all that aside, however, a more mundane problem is managing all of those sites and getting to them quickly and easily. Individual apps conveniently come with their own icon on your dock, web apps do not, forcing you to dig through the myriad of open tabs in your browser to find the app you need.If you’ve truly made the jump to cloud computing there is, thankfully, a better way: site specific browsers (SSBs). The basic idea is simple: Create a separate web browser, complete with its own icon on the dock, to browse to a single site. We’ve covered an excellent example of a site specific browser here on TAB in the past, Mailplane, which is used to access Gmail’s online interface.

The beauty of an SSB is not only do you get the bonus of neatly having your own icon for a single web application, but it also allows that site to integrate with OS X more completely. For example you can have things like address book access and dock badges, all things that Mailplane does for Gmail.

That’s great if you use Gmail, but what about all the other great web-based applications out there? Although there are not specific SSBs for things like Twitter, Google Calendar, Remember The Milk and other web services, there are two different programs that will let you take any web site and turn it into a site specific browser: Fluid and Prism. The major difference between the two is that Fluid uses Webkit to power its SSBs, while Prism uses the Gecko browser base that runs Firefox.

Aside from these underlying technologies, the two programs offer remarkably similar functionality. Simply enter a web address, choose an icon (or just use the site favicon), and voila, a new program based on that site will be created for you. What’s more, each browser can accept various scripts to add functionality like a dock icon and even Growl notifications. You can even make an SSB your default email or RSS program.

In many ways SSBs may represent the future of computing. Just look at Google’s upcoming Chrome OS, where the browser is the operating system. In such a situation it makes no sense to continue using the outdated system of web pages and browser bookmarks. When a website is a program unto itself you can argue that it deserves to be treated as one at the operating system level.

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Use iPhone Optimized Web Sites On Your Desktop For Greater Productivity

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:00:56 +0000

We’ve talked about Site Specific Browsers like Bubbles in the past and while I have found them to be useful in some instances, it’s only with the proliferation of web applications with iPhone optimized interfaces that I have really started using them.

I have found that setting up multiple SSB windows ,each containing the iPhone view of a web application, allows me to create a dashboard of sorts on my spare monitor. At a glance, I can view my stable of important apps in nice compact, consistent windows.

For example, I am a big fan of the Toodledo task list application. For heavy duty task management or review, the full app view is better but the iPhone optimized interface is great for quick viewing and modifications. So while I do keep the full application open in a Firefox tab, I also keep the iPhone interface open in a Bubbles window on that secondary display. This allows me to view, add or complete tasks very quickly.

The iPhone interfaces are typically very well done and these SSB windows work very much like desktop widgets, providing an excellent view of my data.

BatchBook designer Adam Darowski just published a great instructional post on how to use Fluid.app to bring Google Reader for iPhone to your desktop, but these steps can be used for just about any application that has an iPhone optimized interface. The process for using Bubbles on Windows or the multi-platform Prism is comparable.

Do you use Site Specific Browsers? Which iPhone interface would you find most useful?

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No jog dial on your Tablet? Two old friends to the rescue.

James Kendrick — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:05:00 +0000

I mentioned in my first impressions of the HP 2710p that the lack of a jog dial like that on the tc1100 was a big oversight on HP’s part. This is particularly evident while web browsing, especially reading feeds in Google Reader. Without an easy way to move up and down the page the experience is not as enjoyable as it could be. Today as I spent more time with the 2710p, I remembered two old friends that have rekindled the passion for web browsing and more than make up for the lack of the jog dial.

The first friend is for Firefox users, the Grab and Drag extension. Nothing is easier than dragging the web page all over to reach those hard to browse parts of the page. Highly recommended. The second friend is a utility that transforms the Google Reader experience into one of pure joy. It was a Freeware of the Moment pick way back when and it still lives up to that designation . Miniscroller adds up/down arrows, page up/ page down keys and more right on the screen. Using Miniscroller I can spin through feeds so fast it’s great. Don’t leave home without it.

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Consumer Reluctance on VoIP… So Far

Om Malik — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 16:04:00 +0000

My former boss, David Churbuck had some thoughts and I thought, well time to share them with you…

Consumer reluctance on VoIP is, I think, due to a few things.
1. Switching costs. Inertia is difficult thing to break. Some segment of the population will switch broadband providers or long-distance carriers are the mere whiff of a savings or some frequent flier mileage. Not for most.
2. Features. Your average Joe needs to see a compelling feature set, other than cost, to drive the cross-over. VoIP has lots of compelling office applications, but no one is marketing any “must-have” residential features.

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