I downloaded on of the many Chrome OS torrents available and loaded it using Sun’s Virtualbox. (Techcrunch has a great article on how to do this.) I timed it at 11 seconds to boot up, and it will obviously be much faster when it’s not being loaded through a virtual machine.

I was asked to log in to my Google account once the OS boots up. Strangely enough, the mouse seemed to be disabled in this login screen, and shift-tab to move back from password field to username too didn’t seem to work when I accidentally typed the wrong username. (Anyone else seen the same problem?)

Google Chrome OS login screen

Google Chrome OS signing in.

Once signed in, it opened the Chrome browser straight away, and quite helpfully, opened Gmail and Google calendar for me. No complaints there; Gmail is usually the first thing I check after switching on my computer.

Chrome OS running Google search engine

The Chrome OS is just the Chrome browser running on top of a linux kernel; there’s nothing in it apart from the browser. There is an app menu that displays the available apps (all web based, to be accessed on the cloud) and that’s the closest Chrome gets to having a desktop screen comparable to one in a conventional OS.

Chrome OS app menu

Google Chrome OS is without doubt a great idea, but the way the OS depends on the cloud could render it useless in some conditions. Netbooks are mainly used for accessing the web, but they should be able to function even when there is no internet connection.

For instance, let’s take the case where I want to give a powerpoint presentation. Let’s assume I am one of those who live exclusively on the cloud, and create the presentation on Google Docs. I turn up for the presentation with my shiny Chrome OS netbook and — bam — internet connection suddenly dies. Bummer! I should have know Murphy’s law was lurking around the corner and now I wish I had OpenOffice or Word and a local copy of the presentation with me.

No matter how far we move into the cloud, I would still expect an OS to contain some apps that work even without an internet connection. Offline features are supposedly on their way, so it’s likely that the OS will have some offline applications available when it hits the market. With Google Gears, and also HTML5 having offline features, we might soon see Google Docs working on it even without an internet connection (and hopefully able to save files locally ad sync them later).

Like I mentioned before, Chrome OS is a work in progress and it’s not fair to judge it in it’s current form. I’m expecting great things from Google here, but haven’t been convinced so far that this could be a better alternative to Windows XP on netbooks.

Have you tried the Chrome OS yet? Do you think Google can really hope to grab a chunk of this market with an OS whose only major advantage is that it boots up incredibly fast? If you were to buy a netbook, which OS would you prefer?

Notepad++ has a great plugin called FTP_synchronize that allows you to edit your files directly on the server. With the plugin installed, editing files on the server doesn’t feel any different from editing files on the local machine.

Here’s a list of steps on how to set up Notepad++ to edit files through FTP.

1. If you don’t already have Notapad++ installed, download the binaries from here and install.
2. Download the FTP_synchronize plugin from here and install it by copying the DLL into Notepad++’s plugins folder. (You’ll have to restart Notepad++ to be able to use the plugin.)
3. Open the FTP_Synchronize interface by clicking the “Show FTP folders” button or from the Plugins option in the menubar.

   

4. Click on settings on the FTP folders interface, and enter the login details. The address is your domain name, and the username is the one your hosting provider gives you. (In Bluehost, for instance, it’s usually (not always) the first 8 characters of your main domain’s name.) Set the port to 21.

   

5. Now click on the connect button and choose the FTP profile you’ve created. The folder you’ve selected in the settings gets loaded in the FTP synchronize sidebar, and you can edit the files on the server the same way you would use an IDE to edit a project stored locally. FTP Synchronize automatically syncs your files when you hit Ctrl+S.

It’s been working great for me so far, and unless you’re editing unusually large files, Ctrl+S synchronizes the file almost instantaneously. The only thing that irritated me about the plugin was that it wouldn’t alert me when the FTP connection gets disconnected, so more than once I’ve wondered why there was no change on the site when I changed some code.

How do you edit files on the server? Is there a better option I could use? I’ve heard that the feature’s been added to NetBeans, but haven’t really checked it out. Should I be trying it out?

The F22 is a 21.5 inch widescreen monitor with a native resolution of 1920×1080, which means you can watch 1080p high definition video at 16:9 aspect ratio rather than the 16:10 available in most widescreen monitors.

So far I’ve been mostly satisfied with the monitor, and it is especially useful when I’m coding. Being able to use NetBeans with all that screen real estate feels great. This screenshot should give you an idea.

Apart from NetBeans, Photoshop is perhaps the only application I run in a maximized window. I’m not much of a designer, and I’ve only used it for minor tasks like slicing and resizing images, so I’m not really qualified to say whether or not it’s good for Photoshop work, but it’s definitely a huge step up from the two LCD monitors I’ve used at work (LG L1742S and Acer x153w) or my old CRT monitor.

Has it changed the way I use my desktop for browsing? I think so. I no longer run Firefox in a maximized window. Most websites out there aren’t really meant to look good at this resolution (including this blog) and some of them look outright hideous.

The only feature I can really use in a maximized window is the side-by-side multiple inboxes in gmail, but I stopped using that because I had to constantly switch it back because it looks terrible in the 1280×768 monitor I use at work. Now I’m resigned to using a window around 1280px wide so that the browser window looks the same as the one I have at work.

One category in which AOC definitely beats all competition is when it comes to the design and looks. The F22 monitor doesn’t have a conventional base like other monitors and instead has a base inspired by a photo frame with an adjustable single post stand that allows adjustment of the tilt angle. (see image below) This definitely has to be one of the best looking monitors I’ve seen.

When it comes to watching videos on this one, I’m happy with the colors and contrast. I played a high definition video to check what it would look like, and it exceeded my expectations in that regard. The clarity and the level of detail was stunning.

However, the brightness dips drastically at wider angles, and videos are almost unwatchable if I’m lying on my bed which is right next to my desk. I don’t really take the manufacturer’s viewing angle specs of 170/160 at face value, but unless I’ve really messed up the trigonometry calculations here, the viewing angle wouldn’t be more that 120-130 degrees at a 6ft distance from the desk. That for me is the major disappointment with this monitor. But then, I’m used to the CRT monitor’s viewing angle and that’s probably why I’m so harsh on this point.

Another drawback is that the pixels per inch is on the higher side at 102 PPI, (24″ displays have 91) which means fonts look smaller, but then that’s a trade off you have to make when you choose a 22″ monitor with 1080p resolution. This doesn’t normally bother me much, but when I visit websites that use smaller font sizes, I have to zoom in to be able to read comfortably.

AOC claims a dynamic contrast ratio (DCR) of 30,000:1 for this monitor, but in case of these specs, seeing is believing. (There are monitors claiming DCR of 1,000,000:1) There is a DCR mode in the luminance options of the OSD, but I would recommend wearing sunglasses to avoid being blinded by the extremely high brightness levels. I might be wrong here, but isn’t DCR all about reducing the illumination for the dark pixels rather than increasing it for the brighter pixels?

There are VGA and DVI inputs for the dislpay. Strangely enough, there is no HDMI port, which is fairly standard these days on monitors with this resolution. However, I don’t have any complaints ther as I only use it with my desktop. Also, it does not feature any USB ports, which are also standard on monitors these days.

Despite all that grumbling in the previous 2-3 paragraphs, I’m kind of happy with my choice of monitor. The viewing angle is the only thing that irks me about the display. The large screen area obviously helps a lot when I’m working, and it’s nice watching videos on it, even though I have to stay within a narrow viewing angle to enjoy it fully.

My rating: 8/10

I realized that setting up a Rails environment might seem a daunting task for a newbie. Here’s a list of steps to get Ruby on Rails working on a windows machine. I use NetBeans with MySQL because I found the least trouble to set up.

1. Go to www.ruby-lang.org and download the ruby one-click installer for Windows.
2. Install ruby using the one-click installer, and remember to select RubyGems when asked what components you want installed.
3. Download and install MySQL from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/.
4. You will need java to run NetBeans, so download java from http://www.java.com/en/ and install.
5. Download the latest version (6.7 at the moment) of NetBeans from http://www.netbeans.org/. You might choose the complete NetBeans package or the Ruby only version. Either of them will do.
6. Install rails for your ruby installation by using this command in the command line:

   gem install rails

7. You will also need the ruby MySQL driver to be installed to be able to use MySQL databases. For this, install the mysql gem by this command:

   gem install mysql

8. When I started NetBeans and created a new rails project, NetBeans asked me to update ruby gems from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2. Unfortunately, the one click installer is available only for Ruby 1.8.6 and contains gem version 1.3.1, so you’ll have to update rubygems using the command line:

   gem update --system

That’s it… you can now use NetBeans as a rails development environment. I know that was a very long list of steps to get a rails IDE working, but it’s worth the trouble. Using ruby on rails as your development environment will make up for the effort required to set up the IDE.

What IDE do you use for rails development? When you were new to rails development, did you have trouble setting up a development environment? And in case you’re a newbie rails developer, is that how you got here?

If you are a web developer, you probably hate IE6 as much as I do (or even more, if that much hate is ever possible). And like me, you are waiting for the day when the damn thing disappears off the face of the internet.

When I started this blog, I had planned to make it completely inaccessible to IE6 users, and instead display a message asking them to switch to some other browser. But then I realized that it’s too much effort to hack the template for the sake of spreading the message to the 1% of visitors of this blog who still use IE6.

Instead, I chose to leave all the IE6 bugs unfixed (this template looks awful on IE6) and added the banner from the IE6 No More campaign. “IE6 No More” is a campaign by a group of startups that are fed up with the ancient browser and want it to disappear. Do take a look at their website where they make a very good case against IE6.

However, there’s hope for us yet. Digg has restricted access to some of its features on IE6, Facebook is asking IE6 users to upgrade and YouTube will drop IE6 support very soon. If more big websites will also take steps in this direction, we won’t have to wait till 2014 for IE6’s death.

What browser do you use? Do you think all website should follow Facebook’s lead and ask users to upgrade?

If you are a developer, how much of you time is wasted fixing all those IE6 bugs? Have you worked on any website recently where you didn’t need to make it compatible with IE6?

PS. If you are a Firefox person and have your own website, why don’t you help spread the word about Firefox? The more IE6 users we convert, the better! ;-)

The jQuery website has a nice application called Themeroller that lets you customize the interface for jQuery UI widgets. There are also plenty of themes available in the gallery that you can download and use directly. Copy the stylesheet, images, the jQuery file and the jQuery-UI files into the appropriate directories and link them in the header of your HTML file.

Now let’s create a simple form that contains the text field that you want to convert into a datepicker.

<form action="index" method="get">
  <input id="date-pick" name="date-pick" type="text" value="" />
  <input id="date-submit" name="date-submit" type="submit" value="Go!" />
</form>

To convert the input field with the id date-pick into a datepicker, write the following jQuery code in the head section of your HTML.

$(function(){
  $("#date-pick").datepicker();
});

That’s it! The input field that you created now works as a popup datepicker. A calendar showing the current month appears whenever you focus on the #date-pick field and the date you click on appears as text in the field.

There are tons of options to customize the datepicker, such as changing the date format sent to the server or using a different language for the calendar. You can explore these options in the jQuery UI documentation for the datepicker.