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February 24, 2003

Get Your Neep Neep Here

Pierre Igot reviews blogging options for Mac users, but rejects Movable Type, despite having web hosting with cgi, because of the difficulty of managing the initial server configuration. Now, I adore the strength, flexibility and ease of use of Movable Type, and love its web interface to bits. I particularly like being able to blog from anywhere; a major failing of box-bound systems like Radio. But I have to admit that my ubergeek configured it for me. It took him about ten minutes -- but it had taken him much longer to set up his own system. It's still a bit cheap of Pierre, though, because paid installation of Movable Type for blogs is no more expensive than Radio.

Now, Pair, who provide my hosting, already have some handy support features, like 'click here and we'll set up statistics for you'. So it wouldn't be out of the question for a host to say 'click here and we'll (automatically) install Movable Type in a standard way on your site', would it?

The link to Pierre came from Ranchero, who also mention that there's a rumour of tabbed browsing in Safari beta 0.62. Now, I recall Dave Hyatt arguing passionately that tabs were a cure for a problem (slow window handling and poor window management) that Safari didn't have, and that Safari would never have tabs. But I can't find that post now. Although I'm likely to stick with Safari with or without tabs, I'd like to have a single tabbed window to keep all the pages I'm editing in Movable Type in, and another window to open all the interesting pages from the aggregator on separate tabs. Of course, being Safari, I'm sure they'll have sorted out all the things that are really irritating about the Chimera/Camino tabs, like not being able to move a tab from one window to another. Update: While they're at it, they could also fix my number one irritation about Safari; it doesn't always fetch new versions of pages on reload, and in particular, it doesn't always fetch the new version of my blog, so I have to open another browser to view my freshly-minted posts. Update 2: A comment on MacSlash linked to the not yet released Safari 0.62; I grabbed it and yes, Virginia, there are tabs in Safari, in the Debug menu.

And one more thing on aggregation: I wanted to aggregate Neil Gaiman's journal, but it doesn't officially have an RSS feed. So Adam Wendt knocked up a bit of PHP to produce one. Which is sort of creepy, but very useful. He's done a feed for Bill Gibson's blog, too.

Posted by Alison Scott at February 24, 2003 11:11 AM

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Comments

Ho ho. I'm downloading the not-yet-released Safari 0.62 myself, even as we speak.

Apropos your remarks, I was amused by this, posted to the Slashdot Safari-has-tabs! thread:

"It's hard being a mindless Apple zealot with Apple changing their minds so much. Our job as zealots is to screamingly defend whatever Apple does without thinking or considering what's best for the user or common sense. We defend Apple Corporation's interests over the users' desires at all costs. Our job is to claim tabs suck when they don't have tabs, the G4 1Ghz is as fast as the Pentium4 3.0Ghz, RISC is better than CISC, slower memory and busspeed is a GOOD thing, proprietary software is freer than open source, Safari Beta is more stable than established and mature browsers, paying for .Mac is a privilege, Steve didn't lie when he said 'Free Forever .Mac', using the DMCA is justified when Apple does it but not anyone else, etc etc.

"Originally, all us zealots had to violently attack everyone who said tabs were a good idea, saying they were crude and unintuitive. Now, we have to do a complete reversal and furiously attack anyone who is against tabs. It just never ends.

"The life of a spin doctor is a tough one, but immensely satisfying."

Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden at February 24, 2003 05:29 PM

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