8-bitDesign

No seriously, stop that ish. Increasingly, Google’s browser, Chrome, has gotten much, much, much better than our default go-to tool for web development. However, the tooling on Chrome has been pretty weak up until now, leaving us married to some odd combination of plugins, extensions and user scripts.

That’s slowly changing, and now there’s some solid extensions on the Chrome side to help you get your job done.

So, in no particular order, the extensions:

Pendule

This is the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox. In Chrome. Awesome.

Eye Dropper

• Gives you a color palette in your browser window, which is handy
• Lets you grab a current color from the page, and automagically copy it to your pasteboard.

Chrome Sniffer

This one’s interesting… this will add an icon to your URL bar indicating any particular JS libraries, CMSes, or whatnot that a given page is using.

Resolution Test

It’s a resolution switcher. Yaay! Not like we haven’t seen these before in various other browsers, but having it next to your URL bar may actually mean that you’ll use it.

RSS Subscription Extension

I have no sodding clue why this isn’t installed by default. It’s an RSS button, just like Firefox has had since version 1.5.

Install it, configure it to use Google Reader, and then forget about it until the next time you have to install Chrome.

XML Tree

Chrome doesn’t parse XML trees off the bat, opting instead to display them as plaintext, sans linebreaks.

This fixes that.

Google Tasks

Okay, maybe not a dev tool quite yet, however once Google opens an API to the service, this will become a very, very useful way to share tasks, to-do lists, etc.. Until then, it’s useful to keep your personal list of tasks close at hand.

So, I log in to play Fallout 3, being the wonderful little Alpha Geek that I am, and I hear that there’s some cool new expansion pack that I can download and play.

Awesome! I pop open the Games for Windows: Live account thingy, and… well, shit. I need to update it first.

So, I apply the update, which automatically quits the game for me (sans warning), and leaves no indication that it’s installed correctly.

After five minutes of reading blogs, I get impatient, load the game up again, and go back the the Games for Windows: Live… thingy. Great, now I can log in! Okay, so I go futz around for a bit, check out their really slick interface, and even IM some friends who are playing XBox games. All in all, very cool.

But I can’t find the interface to actually grab this expansion pack.

Back to the game, I see there’s a new item on the main menu, obtusely named “Downloads”. Okay, so I click that and up comes another menu with another obtusely named item, “NEW CONTENT AVAILABLE”.

…Sounds like what I’m looking for, I guess. I click on that item, and I get a Games for Windows: LIVE dialogue box, telling me that I’ll need to open another program to download this content. Fair enough, I click “Okay” and my game is minimized… and I get another dialogue box, telling me I need to apply a hotfix for WinXP.

Now, this computer is fully patched, according to Windows Update, so this is a bit odd. Additionally, this means I need to shut down my game, apply a system update, reboot my system, restart my game, navigate through the game’s menu to open another program, to view a page, to buy the fucking content.

Seriously? That’s just so… Microsofty.

Why can’t I just download this through Steam, which doesn’t require diddling with the core OS to function? Or, you know, just have the game point me to a damned webpage where I can fork over my cash all-bloody-ready.

UPDATE:
So I restart, I get the Games for Windows:LIVE program up and running, and I navigate to the Fallout 3 DLC section, and click “Buy”. Now, this is 800 Microsoft Points, and on my LIVE account, I have 240 points. This is really, really, really cool that points are shared on the account; I can add points on my XBox and they show up in Games for Windows: LIVE, and vice versa.

Being so very close to the end now, I click “Buy” and… well, I need to add points to my LIVE account, and apparently I can’t do this through the Games for Windows: LIVE program. The program tells me this, I hit “Okay”, and up pops… IE7.

I go to Add/Remove Programs, check the “Set Program Access & Defaults” tab to check what my system’s web browser is, because there’s no fucking way my default browser is IE7. Yes, it’s Chrome. Why IE7, a browser I never use, is popping up, is fucking beyond me.

So, looking at IE7, I need to log in again (can’t pass a security certificate back and forth?), add points, close the browser, go back to Games for Windows:LIVE, and close the “When you’re done buying points, click ‘Okay’” dialogue.

This is dumb.

Bethesda, seriously, cut your contract and just put this content on Steam for the love of all that’s good and holy.

So, on the off-chance that you read this blog, but don’t talk to me on the regular, here’s a quick update on the life of Paul: I’ve accepted a position with the rockin’ guys over at Gorilla Nation as their new Front End Web Developer.

They’re a very cool, and I really appreciate the chance to sink my teeth into more of the Front-End web work these days. Also, they’re in Los Angeles.

The next big bit of news is that I’ll be moving in with my LadyFriend™, the lovely miss Becky, by the end of the year, to parts unknown in the west side of LA.

So, if you happen to know a web developer looking for work, there’s a definite opening over at On the Edge, and if you happen to know any cool apartment complexes in west LA, give me a yell!

So, Becky’s TV show is about to go into production, so with the 4th of July up, we decided to take a trip out to Carmel-by-the-sea. Yes, that’s the town’s real name, and Google has made a habit of correcting me when I shorten it to “Carmel, CA”.

If you’re not in “the know”, Carmel is this gorgeous (and very shi-shi) little seaside village, just outside of Monterey, which is itself right across the bay from Santa Cruz. So, now that you’ve got that little bit of mental geography tucked away, the trip.

Carmel, is absolutely beautiful, and if you’re not careful, you could easily mistake it for any town in Italy or France, with cute little restaurants, galleries, and coffee shops. The town itself is tiny, and you can walk tho whole thing is a few hours. We stayed well-fed on pizza and pastries, downed in coffee, and did a wee bit of shopping (I picked up one of these things, and I absolutely love it), and when we got bored, we stopped by Monterey, to check out the aquarium there. 

Good times all around, and you can check out the photos on Flickr!