Digital Rubbish

I just came across this interesting, but light, article on Site-Specific Browsers (SSBs).

I’ve been using Fluid for some time now, to view my Basecamp, Confluence and Google Analytics accounts, and there are a few things I really like about it:

1. Having an application icon in my dock for each site means I can open it quickly without having to launch my browser.

2. I test a lot of websites on my browser, and if I happen to crash it, I don’t lose my online applications.

3. I like to either tab through my apps or pull them up with Quicksilver. If your apps are just another tab in your browser window, you don’t have the same quick access to them.

Plus, I love making app icons, but rarely get the chance nowadays. :)

If you haven’t tried Fluid yet, I recommend giving it a whirl.

RailsConf this year was a lot of fun and, in my humble opinion, a big success. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of Engineers that I had only known previously by their IRC nick, and the same for some clients and partners we work with. I spent most of my time in the Engine Yard booth, but did get to see a couple of presentations. My favorites were Ezra’s Vertebra talk and the Rubinius teams’ presentation. I also wanted to see Lew Cirne’s debunking of the “Rails scaling” myth, but couldn’t make it due to scheduling. If anyone knows where I can find the slide deck for his talk, please let me know.

It has also become apparent (since last year’s RailsConf, probably), that some people in the community feel that RailsConf has gotten too big or commercial. I’ve heard some talk about how the attendees are mostly new to Rails and that the presentations reflect this demographic. I don’t necessarily feel that this is true, but I guess the bigger questions is: so what if it is? Isn’t it a good thing for the largest annual Rails conference (and 1,800 people is not a big conference to begin with) to attract developers and entrepreneurs new to Rails? As a group of people who earn their living in the Rails ecosystem, doesn’t greater adoption of the framework benefit all of us in the community? And moreover, if Rails-oriented companies are growing and becoming more profitable and prominent at RailsConf, won’t this help ease some of the concerns of Fortune 500 firms about using Rails in their enterprise applications?

Rails developers are probably the most passionate group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I would hate to think that we would take an elitist attitude towards those who are new to Rails and those who are furthering its popularity in the open source community. Think back to that “ah-ha!” moment you had when you first started using Rails. Shouldn’t others get the opportunity to feel the same thing?