Fluid and Mac Icons

Fluid is a very interesting and good web browser based program. I like it very much. Basically, you can create a Site Specific Browser application just like a desktop application. Then you can launch it to access the SSB in one browser for that site.

One trick about this is that in most cases, you would have to set its preference to Allowing browsing any URL. Otherwise, if you click on one link to another location, the default browser, Safari in iMac, would be opened. Of course, you can add URLs to matching pattern list. However, that's too much work to figure out what URLs in the SSB you will be interested.

By default, the icon for the SSB application is in low resolution. It is recommended to update icons for it. You can google "Fluid Icons". The first one is Flickr Icons. There are some good icons there, but they are mostly image files. You have to copy the image and paste it to SSB's icon (through General Info or Command + I key). There are also some free Mac icons available. The following are some links:

• Flickr Fluid Icons. Most are tif/jpeg image files.


• iconahhoic.com. Some are cool icons.


• Pixelgirl Presents Free Mac and PC icons, Desktops, iPhone Wllpapers and more!

Icons are important part of OS. Mac Icons are really cool and fun to have. They are also very important for developers. By using good icons, your application will shine,

By the way, I realize that Fluid SSB applications do take considerable HD spaces. Each app takes about 10MB. Fluid itself is very small, about 3.5MB to download. I think that Fluid is using the default browser actually. The SSB may be a light weighted of the default browser. If I change my default browser to Firefox, I would image the SSB is Firefox like. I don't think I'll create too many SSBs. You just cannot manager more than 10 or 20 applications. Just a few for my blogger and emails is good enough.

However, SSBs are really convenient to use. For example, I created a SSB for my blogger. So I don't need to open my Firefox browser to view or to create a blog any more. I can launch it by Spotlight key (Command+Space) and type in f_davidChuBlogger.app (only first few words). Then the SSB is specific for my blogger. In Firefox, I have to tab back and forth to get some site information. With Fluid SSB, I can open my browser and blogger SSB at the same time overlapped.

As recommended by ScreenCastsOnLine (one podcast video show on Fluid), all Fluid SSBs are prefixed with f_ for easy access and distinguish them from other applications.