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Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#651

Post by krick »

wlesieutre wrote: post #597
damian2000 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By chat clients you mean like WhatsApp for example? https://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture

SMS+Messages or SMS+Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kik, WeChat, Viber, LINE, BBM, Telegram, Signal, Sicher, and I'm sure I'm missing some. Used to just install a multi-protocol chat client and be done with it, but now everything's a fancy service with special clients to sync state across devices and whatever else they do.

> and I'm sure I'm missing some

Skype?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#653

Post by petra »

arturhoo wrote: post #394
Grue3 wrote: post #151

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them. Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now aba…

Give AOL Reader a try (I know) http://reader.aol.com/

Sadly you cannot register to AOL from outside the states, they require a us phone number.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#654

Post by sakisv »

atrudeau wrote: post #474
rmchugh wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it for the history search in the address bar, it seems to remember far more history than Chrome which is really useful when I'm looking for that StackOverflow thread I read the other day.

My was one issue with Chrome: it didn't have the magic history search in the URL bar that Firefox. UNTIL I discovered that if you disable "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs" option for the Omnibar it works PERFECTLY, just like Firefox. Type in any part of the URL or title of the page and bingo.

YES! Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#655

Post by krick »

Internet free from government officials and old people. And all other bad things (like facebook) that did happen to it later.

From more recent times — there was some nice hardware 5-10 years ago. All netbooks and such. Nokia N900. Simple portable music players, with sole purpose of playing music stored locally on it.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#656

Post by samstave »

apahwa wrote: post #401
degenerate wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use Paint Shop Pro 6.0 every single day. It runs flawlessly in Windows 7 if you set compatability mode on the EXE to "Windows 2000". Version 6 was the last good version before Corel muddled up the interface and made it bloated. I can still do some things in 2 clicks that my coworker needs 5-15 clicks to get done in Photoshop. It surprises me to know some things are still so "complicated" in photoshop, just by…

was there a mac version?

Can I ask a question: is there a way to run a Windows container on Mac just to run such programs?

Rather than a full Windows VM on whatever?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#657

Post by Razengan »

School-Cotton wrote: post #190
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still quite stable for me, I can run a single chrome session for months on my desktop. But, thank god that desktop has 32GB ram and a fast, QC i7 because damn is it bloated and slow! I remember switching to chrome years ago because it was so much faster than Safari, and, yes, while I'm 100% sure Chrome is just a bloated slow mess now, I can't really pinpoint any time when it happened.

Are you sure you're not just browsing more complex sites? Modern rich web applications can use a surprisingly high amount of cpu, gpu and ram

Running those same web apps feels a lot less sluggish and less taxing on Safari these days, even with a lot more tabs open.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#658

Post by jschwartzi »

akerro wrote: post #239
Grue3 wrote: post #151

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them. Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now aba…

After removing tab groups I see literally zero reasons why anyone should use firefox. It's slower, more buggy copy of Opera and Chromium ;/

I use it instead of Chrome because it doesn't burn through my laptop battery by spawning threads that then consume all of my CPU.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#659

Post by Millennium »

avar wrote: post #116

A few things: Everything not being 4:3 screens. I found it better for programming than everything being cinematic screens. Back when monitor manufacturers were racing to make better / higher resolution monitors, instead of just leaving it at 1080p / 4k / whatever the current standard good enough for movies is. The GMail interface before it started auto-converting the textarea to HTML when edited externally. Console g…

I miss 4:3 screens for coding on laptops and all-in-ones. But on anything where the screen can be rotated, I love them.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#660

Post by Someone »

hobs wrote: post #423
Someone wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That description doesn't do it justice. You didn't have to open an executable from the Finder; you could call it from the command line, as in >commando ls That popped up a dialog box with checkboxes for -l, -R, etc., with a text field for file names, a button that allowed you to pick files, etc. There were two ways to exit the dialog. One executed the command, the other entered it in your shell for further editing, c…

Your comment reminds me of the show-command verb in powershell, which automatically infers all the options available and maps them to a gui, and then has a run or copy option(though it does need a paste.) Its really nice when you are exploring new stuff or just forgot which flag it was again and dont feel like reading the get-help. eg http://i.imgur.com/xOrLdYS.png

Didn't know about that, but that is similar to commando, yes. The GUI seems to be generated, though. The dialog in MPW shell were human-designed, as in http://school.anhb.uwa.edu.au/personalpages/kwessen/web/soft...

(commando invocation in the bottom left)

Edit: http://web.uvic.ca/~ncs/406/HTML/Targeting_MacOS/IDE140_Tool... has a few more examples, including the commando dialog for commando, which is a lot more spartan.

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