Categories
Debated

Steam OS X Release Coming?

Yesterday, Valve unveiled the first major overhaul to Steam‘s UI since the service launched. It’s gorgeous, even as a beta.

Within the release notes was a note of particular joy to me:

> Now using a WebKit based rendering engine for the client and in-game overlay web browsing components (replacing Internet Explorer)

As people have been digging around through the data files for the new version, they’ve noticed OS X window graphics, OS X menu files, dock icons, and strings about platform availability.

Moving to a cross-platform web rendering engine certainly doesn’t hurt this argument, either.

While a Steam port to OS X (or Linux) doesn’t mean that every game on the service becomes available to OS X gamers, it could mean that those games that are already cross-platform (Popcap’s stuff, some of EA’s recent titles, and plenty of indie games among others) would be.

I look forward to finding out what this all means.

(via Brad Shoemaker)

Categories
Puzzled Over

Best Error Message Of 2009

Google Chrome was finally released for OS X this week. There’s plenty of ongoing debate about usability concerns, such as placement of tab close buttons.
While I don’t have a lot to contribute to those arguments, I’d like to inquire as to why upon attempting to open an HTML file from the OS, I would be given an alert that reads:
The document 'index.html' could not be opened.  Chrome cannot open files in the 'HTML document' format.
Chromium issue #14808, “Double-clicking a local html file with Chrome as default browser doesn’t open the file”, has been open since June 20th of this year. It is rated with a priority of 3, which translates to “Low. Resolve when time allows.”
Did I miss some critical moment in time where opening HTML files locally became passé?

Categories
Endured

WWDC 2009 Keynote Thoughts

It was odd to be back in Moscone for my fourth WWDC. I was too busy draining my laptop battery and breaking my fingers for the benefit of my colleagues during the keynote, but now that I’ve had a few hours to digest, here’s some more nuanced thoughts.