jpc101

I've created a new site for Matt Chant Decorating - Professional Painting & Decorating in Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire.

I've taken over managing the site for Bicknoller Parish Council. The site has had a minor facelift as well!

I've recently designed two site for local Home-Start Groups. Home Start Bristol - http://www.homestartbristol.org.uk/ and Home-Start North Devon - http://www.home-start-northdorset.co.uk/

I've been a user (and big fan!) of Alfred App (a wonderful app launcher and do-er of many other great things on a mac) from the early days.

Now you can make your own theme for it and also share it with others (hurrah!). So here's my theme 'Alfred Smoke' - an attempt to make it look like the smoke theme for growl.

If you like the photo behind the alfred window, you can get it from my flickr!

Click here to download:

Alfred_Smoke.alfredtheme (1 KB)

The West Somerset Complementary Health Alliance promotes Complementary Medicine in West Somerset, to educate the public and health professionals and to provide a network for the membership of the organisation. My Natropathic Doctor, Dr Sally from GetNatural is a member.

Yesterday: FirstServe - a dynamic Christian gap year programme for 18-25 year olds looking for an opportunity to serve locally as well as overseas went live. It was a joint project by KSD Associates LTD and JPC-DESIGN (design by KSD, coding by JPC!).

Yesterday the Red Arrows did a display over Minehead. Although I didn't go down the sea front - I did see them from my garden! So here's a few clips of them doing their stuff.  Sadly I didn't capture the one that flew really low over my house and scared the living wotsits out of me as it had come and gone before I could get the camera on it!

The BBC got some photos down on the sea front: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8906000/8906131.stm 

I've been a long time Firefox user (and fan), first on the PC and then on the Mac. However, when Chrome came out it quickly became the browser I recommended, and installed on friends PCs when sorting out their computers. I'd used Chrome as a casual surfing browser but Firefox was also my main design/development browser as a web designer with several addons that I relied on everyday. Some designing friends had made the change from Firefox to Chrome, but I wasn't sure I could!

But... last Saturday Firefox crashed twice in 10 minutes, for no good reason, and I decided that it was time to seriously try Chrome.

There were a few main addons on Firefox that I used everyday and thought I couldn't live without:
Firebug (Allows you to play with html/css/js on a page and also do useful debugging things)
Web Developer (Great web tinkering tools)
FireFTP (FTP within Firefox)
Gmail Manager (Tells you when you have new mail in Gmail Accounts)
Echofon (Using twitter within Firefox)

I also used addons for blocking ads, mouse gestures, seeing what server sites were located on, 'read it later' type bookmarks and downloading videos.

Whilst I knew that quite a few of these functions were also doable within Chrome, I was still nervous.

I needn't have been! I found Chrome Extensions or external programs that do (almost) all I wanted/needed and have found that my new setup is a lot nicer to use all round. So here's what I now use in Chrome and with external programs.

Chrome Extensions:

Firebug Lite for Chrome
Compared to the Firefox version, it's pretty limited - well for what I want to do anyway and on Chrome I've actually got it disabled. Instead I'm using the excellent built in Chrome Developer Tools. It works in a slightly different way to firebug but does the job very nicely

Pendule
There's a version of the Web Developer addon for Chrome but I find Pendule much nicer to use and it's a lot prettier!

Ultimate Chrome Flag
Tells you what country/server a site is hosted on. It can also be configured to show either how trustworthy a site is or what its google page rank is (I have the later).

Chrome SEO
Some great and easy to use SEO tools about the site you're viewing.

Awesome Screenshot
By far the best browser screenshot thingy I've ever used.

Resolution Test
Quickly see what a site looks like on different resolutions.

Adblock
Kill (most) ads on sites in their tracks - generally makes surfing nicer!

Mouse Stroke
There are several mouse stroke/gesture Extensions for Chrome, but many have problems with Macs (because of right-clicking and things)! Even if you use a mouse with a right-click button (as I do) getting strokes/gestures to work can be a pain. With this Extension you can configure to use the center mouse button (or clicking the scroll wheel) and we have gestures on a Mac!

Cheese Cake
A strange name for an Extension but I love it! It creates a new folder in your bookmarks called 'Cheese Cake' and easily allows you to save page you want to read later/keep for reference with a single button. You could do this yourself with a new folder and by putting bookmarks in it, but having a bit of cake on your toolbar is rather funky!

With these Extensions Chrome works a dream and like lightning. However, there's some big things missing, namely Gmail, Twitter and FTP - these are taken care of with external programs.

External Programs:

Gmail Notifr
A little app that sits in the Mac menu/task bar and lets you know when you have new mail. It can also handle gmail on domain accounts. It can't directly login to gmail (which the gmail addon on Firefox could do), but the extra click is no big deal.

Echofon for Mac
Having long been a user of the Echfon twitter client on Firefox, and running the Echofon Pro App on my iPhone, I thought I'd try the Echofon Desktop App for Mac for a twitter client. It's brilliant and I wished I switched to it earlier! I thought having twitter in Firefox was great as it meant I needed one few app running. But having it out of browser had made me realise what a distraction it had become in browser! I've got Echofon sharing a space with Times, my feed reader of choice, and they're a great pair together.

Transmit
For FTP I knew there were a couple of good free options for the Mac, FileZilla and Cyberduck. I've used Cyberduck on the odd occasion. For creating sites I've used Coda for a few years and thought it would be a good idea to try its (pay for) FTP sister program the mighty Transit. I'd heard very good things in the past but had thought "It's an FTP what can be that special about it?", how wrong I was! Like Coda, from the moment the app opened I was in love (is that very wrong?!). The interface is simple stunning and I've very happily paid for it! And the fact it can also handle Amazon S3 and WebDav accounts makes it even nicer.

I've only been using my new setup for just over a week but truly wish I'd changed months ago! (And since I made the change, on the odd occasion I've launched Firefox - to check a site or two - it's crashed on me when closing! Can browsers sulk?) 

The only addon I've not been able to replicate is one which allowed me to easily download web videos from within Firefox. However, I only do this occasionally and can use Firefox for this purpose when needed!

If you're thinking of seriously trying Chrome for all your needs, give it ago, like me you might well rather like it.

I've just launched a new site for Bespoke Summerhouses - individually handcrafted summerhouses made in Exmoor, Somerset.