DIVID Technology Riffraff & Whatnot

For early adopters that want to test webkit2 without upgrading OS X 10.7 Lion developer preview, here’s a way to build it from source and run it from the webkit nightly app. Before we continue, a little background on webkit2, from macrumors:

“Starting in Mac OS X Lion, we’ve learned that Apple has started utilizing WebKit2 in their Safari web browser. The advanced version of Apple’s Webkit engine was first announced in April of 2010. WebKit2 is described as a new API layer for WebKit that offers both speed and security improvements:

WebKit2 is a new API layer for WebKit designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process from the application UI. This model is very similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients of WebKit to use it.

For the end user, the result should be a faster and more stable browsing experience. If a webpage crashes or hangs, only that single tab is affected rather than the whole browser. Subjective reports from early end users have indicated that the new Safari seems to run smoother.”

Before we start, a little disclaimer. This build will not show the new 10.7 UI changes that feature multi-touch and disappearing scrollbars, zoom to text, etc. because those are handled in the application interface and probably rely on frameworks only available in the developer preview version of Lion. As far as I can tell, downloading a nightly binary is the same as building it from source, but this is just for those who want to do it anyway.

1.) Download the standard webkit nightly build as an application. (you can stop here, or go on to build from source and we’ll use this application to run the compiled result)

2.) Run this in terminal, or use an SVN client. “svn checkout http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/trunk WebKit”

3.) Run the “build-webkit” script, which builds webkit2 by default: “./WebKit/Tools/Scripts/build-webkit” —This takes a while

4.) Make an Automator action, choose “run shell script”, paste this code, and save as an application: “

#!/bin/sh
~/webkit2/WebKit/Tools/Scripts/run-webkit-app /Applications/Webkit.app
exit 0

5.) Enjoy the fruits of your compute cycles. You can verify it worked by checking your user agent string at a site like http://whatismyuseragent.dotdoh.com/

Friend got an evo and showed me live 4g streaming on Qik, so I had to try it. This is from an original iPhone on wifi: http://qik.com/video/6959319

Danube posted this on their blog, it’s got a bit of insight to clarify how scrum works for planning software projects.

http://blogs.danube.com/scrum-is-not-something-“it-does”

A recent onslaught of meetings has brought me to suggest “No Meeting Monday”, Inspired by this article. I’ll also add a personal productivity booster for me is to put on headphones and fire up Blitz. This little app helps me work faster in two ways, by blocking fast access to applications and boosting performance to what you’re working on, which helps me stay focused. For instance, I can focus on a graphics app and a code window, which pauses mail, IM, browsers, etc.

Using the display control panel, the resolution options usually don’t include 256 colors. Here’s how to get it. Click Settings tab > Advanced > Adapter tab > List all modes. You’ll see a list of all options, from which you can pick your favorite 256 color resolution. Enjoy!!

ps. If your mouse cursor’s get finicky, just enable (short) mouse trails and that forces the cursor to refresh.

Software with restrictive licensing is released to protect the Intellectual property of the organization who nurtured it out into the wild, and wouldn’t be competitive without that protection. I for one am a pragmatist, so this doesn’t give me a false sense of entitlement. I don’t want to rebel against commercial software, because some of it is great stuff. I do have a soft spot for purity as open architecture, and am a proponent of progressing open source.

Although there are countless advantages to using restricted software, let’s support our developer community first. Drive change in trend to further FSF community causes whenever practical. Advocate the use of open source projects in your own family of colleagues when the alternative shows no significant advantages.

This can be done in small amounts by leaning to the community for daily software choices in business and personal endeavors. When you rebuild a PC, mention Linux even if you don’t install it. When you build a new website, try an open framework. If you buy hardware, support the vendors that support us as open source developers. And make a concerted effort to contribute something back instead of only using open technology! Then it goes full circle.

Previously mentioned in Pt1(where is that?), a software vendor by the name of Superspeed offers a program called RamDisk and RamDisk Plus. As long as you have plenty of memory, and they have a formula for calculating that, great gains can be seen by moving your Virtual Memory allocation to a RamDisk. This further keeps your hard drive from hampering performance.

After all of these considerations are met, do the obvious things like disabling extra XP eye candy that slows your system down. These include indexing, unneeded services (be careful) system restore, menu fades and effects, etc. Google around and you’ll find everyone’s opinion of these minor performance enhancements that I consider optional.

edit: This doesn’t really work as well as I had hoped on Windows, but there is a neat virtual memory trick for Mac OS X.