Crunchy Melon » Operating Systems

Sharing files with DropBox

Tyler — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:54:15 +0000

My absolute favorite way to share files is with DropBox. Once you signup for an account, you download the DropBox app to your computer (Mac/Windows/Linux) and enter your account details. This creates a “DropBox” folder on your computer. Anything you place in this folder will be automatically synchronized to your online DropBox account, along with automatically synchronized on any other computers that you share your account with. This makes it super easy to share files with family, friends, or co-workers – whether they’re in the next room or the next country.

A couple of my favorite features are:

Undo history & Undelete – you can revert back to previous versions of files and undelete files & folders
Mobile access – all your files are available on the go, via the web interface (or via the upcoming iPhone DropBox app)
Easy – it’s just plain easy to use DropBox – set it up and forget about it

DropBox offers a free plan (2GB) along with a couple of paid plans. It’s well worth trying if you haven’t already.

Easier Browser Testing: Remote Access

Tyler — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:32:15 +0000

So, we’ve had a few posts on ways to make browser testing easier. These work for 99% of the testing you’ll need. What happens though, when a client has IE 6 running on XP SP1 or Firefox 2 running on OSX 10.3, and they have a problem with their site? You’d need to maintain a warehouse full of computers to have every possible combination of OS and browser.

This is where Browsercam’s Remote Access service comes in very handy. Once you signup, you can remotely login (via VNC or your browser) to one of their remote access machines. Once you know the operating system and browsers you need to test on, you can just find a compatible machine from their list of Remote Access machines. You won’t find every possible combination, but at worst you’ll get very close to what you need. I’ve used it quite a few times to eliminate bugs from layouts. Plus, since you have control of the remote machine, you can test things like javascript and flash, which isn’t possible with screen captures only.

Remote Access isn’t a tool you’ll likely need every day, but it can be a life saver for those hard to fix bugs.

Interesting news from Google: Chrome OS

Tyler — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:18:50 +0000

This should be an interesting move to watch from Google. In case you haven’t heard yet, Google announced Google Chrome OS. It’s basically an operating system that will be running Google’s Chrome browser as the main app. I’m not sure how many users beyond the techie crowd will use it initially, but it’s certainly an interesting time to be a web designer/developer.