
John Resig uses this - robin_reala
http://john.resig.usesthis.com/
======
dailo10
I thought the most interesting part was his wish list at the end.

"I wish my MacBook had built-in 3G capabilities, I wish it was easier to type
on my iPad, I wish Chrome was a better browser, I wish SABnzbd+ was smart
enough to not re-download files, I wish my iPhone was faster, I wish I didn’t
need a dongle to do a presentation with my MacBook, I wish Boxee didn’t crash
so much, I wish my car accepted audio input, I wish Dropbox could backup my
Google Docs and Mail."

~~~
revorad
Regarding typing on the iPad, a thumbs layout keyboard as previewed in this
Windows 8 video would be great -
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13628154> (skip to 00:40). Is there
anything like this for iPad now?

~~~
notatoad
i tried swiftkeyx on my android tablet, with its split layout. couldn't stand
it and went back to a full-width layout very quickly.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
The split layouts are meant for when you're holding the tablet. If you've got
it on a table or such, you're going to find a traditional layout much more
usable. SwiftKey has a toggle button for split/solid on the main keyboard
because of this.

------
bronson
"I wish my car accepted audio input."

I just used a Grom adapter to add bluetooth to my 1999 daily driver. It
doesn't have whizzy features like voice dialing and A2DP audio quality is not
excellent but, for podcasts, pop music, and phone calls, it's great.

<http://www.gromaudio.com/>

~~~
jeresig
Very interesting, I'll have to check into that! I use a Griffin FM transmitter
right now, works OK, but has frequent problems with competing radio stations.

[http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Griffin-RoadTrip-
iPhone...](http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Griffin-RoadTrip-iPhone-FM-
Transmitter-and-Car-Charger-Refurbished/5229147/product.html)

~~~
middus
Why don't you just buy a new car stereo? The last one I bought was less than
€100 and features a line-in, USB and Bluetooth.

~~~
bronson
Because (with few exceptions) you lose steering wheel controls and thieves
become a lot more interested in smashing your windows. Also, my radio is
nonstandard size and the adapters are fuuugly.

------
runjake
usesthis.com is such a guilty pleasure.

I pour over every detail of their articles while at the same time reminding
myself "it's not about the tools, it's about the person".

~~~
sourc3
This is the programmers' version of the celebrity clothing/bags pages with the
latest trends : )

At the end of the day, use what makes you happy not because a programmer rock-
star is using it.

Disclaimer: I love apple products developing on the .NET framework, it may be
ironic that up until last week I was running win7 on a macbook pro to develop
for WP7 :)

~~~
aeontech
A little, but not really. I've learned about a number of really useful tools
that I use every day now from usethis articles. Clothing is just clothing
after all, but tools make my life easier and help me become a better
programmer.

------
baconhigh
John is one of the most on to it people i've ever met. He arrived in NZ after
a delayed, long flight from the US and went from the airport to a presentation
(to over 400 people) without fault.

He'd already adjusted his sleep patterns to match NZ time.

Awesome dude.

------
Symmetry
I was surprised at how lightweight his .vimrc was:
<https://gist.github.com/955547>

------
throwaway240
> Specifically for Usenet I use SABnzbd+, running on one of my Mac Minis,
> connecting to Giganews, and pulling from NZBs.org or Newzbin

Did he just openly admit to illegally downloading media via Usenet?

~~~
thirsteh
No, just like saying you like µTorrent doesn't implicate you for piracy.

~~~
sltkr
BitTorrent does have many legal uses (it is used to distribute World of
Warcract, Linux distros, independent music/movies, et cetera) but there are
also many private trackers designed specifically for the illegal distribution
of copyrighted materials. If you admit you are a heavy user of one of those,
you practically admit to participating in this.

Similarly, USENET is completely legal, and there isn't anything intrinsically
wrong with binary newsgroups either, but NZBs.org and Newzbin specialize in
illegal content distribution. If you have a subscription to a site like
Giganews and need a tool like SABnzbd+ to automate the downloading process
then you aren't an incidental user either.

So let's not play games; we both know how the internet works. "There might be
one or two legal-to-distribute files on that site." or "Filesharing may not be
illegal in his jurisdiction." are good points to bring up in a court case, but
in reality we both know what it means when you are "running SABnzbd+ [..]
connecting to Giganews [..] pulling from NZBs.org or Newzbin". It's sad that
that throwaway240 is downvoted for just explicitly stating it.

~~~
MostAwesomeDude
It's sad that people have to hide their actions. Downloading copyrighted
material is legally in the clear in .us and his particular setup sounds highly
oriented towards downloads, not uploads.

Additionally, as somebody that highly seeds Linux distros through torrents,
I'd like you to go back to your Jump to Conclusions mat.

~~~
robin_reala
_Downloading copyrighted material is legally in the clear in .us_

[citation needed]? I’ve never heard that before. Mind you, I’m not in the US.

~~~
tedunangst
The uploader is the one doing the copyright infringement. I've never heard of
anyone being prosecuted for downloading.

~~~
esrauch
If you are using bittorrent, you are almost certainly uploading.

I'm also not sure that they never prosecuted anyone for downloading is
actually a sufficient amount of evidence that it is legal. I've never heard of
anyone get prosecuted for uploading just one song or one movie, that doesn't
mean that it would be legal to do so.

~~~
w1ntermute
He's using Usenet, which means there's no uploading.

------
look_lookatme
Pretty good, but:

"I wish Chrome was a better browser"

John can you elaborate on this?

~~~
jeresig
Off the top of my head, three things that've bugged me:

I use a _ton_ of tabs in my browser, in Firefox the tabs go off to the side
and allow me to scroll through them (while still allowing me to read the
title) whereas Chrome squishes the tabs into tiny micro-sized pills that are
completely unreadable.

Additionally I use App Tabs in both browsers - but only in Firefox does it
highlight when I've received an update (such as a message in Hip Chat or an
email in Gmail).

The lack of integrated extensions in Chrome makes for a weaker overall
experience. I use PasswordMaker to manage my passwords - works great in
Firefox, can enter passwords into any field, but in Chrome it frequently
doesn't detect a password field - and since it doesn't have context menu
access I can't fill in my password. I end up having to open up Firefox just to
get to my password.

So yeah, I still use Firefox for daily browsing, and Chrome for dev.

~~~
romey
Have you tried using tree tabs in Chrome? It isn't quite as slick as the
Firefox tree tabs, but still nicer than the little nubs that are the default.
That's interesting though, I always do dev stuff in Firefox because of how
anemic firebug is in Chrome, and casual surfing in Chrome because it feels
faster.

~~~
etherealG
I find the developer tools in chrome actually better than firebug these days.
Do you have any specific features that you miss with the current builds of
both?

~~~
altano
I find they are all lacking in major ways and I have to jump between IE,
FireFox, and Chrome. Anyone that swears by a single browser's dev tools isn't
making much use of them.

    
    
      - Only Chrome lets you set a breakpoint on JS event listeners.
      - Only IE let's you change the next line of execution in JS.
      - You *can't* edit the value of a local variable in the Chrome console!
      - Only IE9 & FF search multiple JS files when doing a text find.
      - IE doesn't refresh the dev tools representation of the DOM without clicking refresh.
      - Only IE has a "format JavaScript" for minimized, obfuscated JS.  And it allows you to set breakpoints on the formatted lines!
      - Only Chrome has tools for finding memory leaks (see dev channel for big improvements in that).
    

Etc, etc.

~~~
Groxx
Only IE (so far) has lied horribly to me in its debugger:
<http://cl.ly/012t192A2s3Y1A3b3j3H> . How in the _world_ does that happen? For
the record, `FireEvent` doesn't exist, but `fireEvent` does.

And then there's the worthless "{...}" object display from the Javascript
console...

~~~
altano
The horrible "{...}" output for almost everything (and proper callstacks when
using named function expressions) are all fixed in IE9. That still puts it
dead last for MOST visualizations behind all the other browsers OTHER than
IE8, but some things, such as the profiler call tree, are still the best.

------
jarek-foksa
There is also an entry with RMS <http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/>

I wonder if he is still browsing the web with wget.

~~~
lamnk
I find it a bit ironic when RMS chooses to use a Chinese manufactured device
to ensure his software freedom.

------
axemclion
No, John Resig uses $(this) :)

------
ConstantineXVI
Curious, why vim /and/ TextMate? And on the former, console or MacVim[1]?

[1] <https://github.com/b4winckler/macvim>

------
krmmalik
Not seen the website or concept before but i really like it. Its a very good
way of opening people up to new apps and whatnot. I'd like to see more tech
celebrities on that site.

I too wish it was easier to write on the iPad, and that multi-tasking was an
actual possibility.

~~~
waferbaby
Feel free to suggest people, btw.

~~~
krmmalik
\- Andrew Warner from Mixergy is the first one that comes to mind. \- Second
one is Derek Sivers. \- The guy behind TheOatmeal comic. \- Salman Khan from
Khan Academy

They're all very accessible people from experience.

(i realise they're not ALL true techies, but still)

------
cormullion
"I wish Boxee didn't crash so much."

Sadly true. And Plex, the main alternative, crashes as much, but in different
ways. No more Front Row in Lion. I think Apple want us to buy Apple Tv...

~~~
ojilles
Ever tried using Plex? (Not saying that's perfect, but in 2,5yrs of usage, and
24/7 on, it has yet to crash on me).

<http://www.plexapp.com/>

~~~
damncabbage
From the comment you're replying to:

    
    
      And Plex, the main alternative, crashes as much, but in different ways.

------
thirsteh
Short version: Apple! Apple! Apple!

~~~
ecaron
That's pretty much 95% of the posts on UsesThis. Which I wrote off at first as
being elitist, but the more top tier developers you meet the more you realize
that it is actually the norm. The interesting thing is that for those not
using a Apple laptop are always on a Lenovo.

I'm working on a infographic, or something along those lines, that shows a
breakdown of what it used on UsesThis, but the pie charts are going to mostly
be Apple flavored.

~~~
larsberg
I assume the reason they're on a ThinkPad/Lenovo is that there is a well-
deserved reputation there for running Linux well.

I recently picked up one of the new Toshiba Portege models to run Linux, and
stock Ubuntu is giving me flashbacks to the circa-1999 Linux experience -- it
doesn't detect when a monitor appears over HDMI, randomly will run up to 100%
and freeze (kernel patch coming soon!), power management settings seem
basically ignored with the display dimming when that is both disabled and I'm
typing... and the worst part? Mentioned it to the local department Linux
people, and they just said, "oh, yeah, you should've bought Thinkpad."

~~~
angryasian
if you're looking for a mac book like experience with Ubuntu you should buy
approved hardware, or from vendors that offer pre built machines like
<http://www.system76.com/> or
<http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x>

~~~
larsberg
Thanks for the tip! I really wish I'd known about the approved hardware thing
beforehand.

~~~
angryasian
well its less approved and more known to work because hardware vendors provide
proper drivers or support, etc.

------
antihero
I wish I could afford a MacBook. Unfortunately in the UK even refurbished ones
seem to be far more expensive than equivalent hardware :(

------
kayoone
When i was young i wanted to know every detail of the configs pro gamers used
in quake, tried their settings, bought the mice they used, etc. Today its the
same with top coders, only difference is that i know now that tools alone dont
make you great, but still i can always take a thing or two away from such a
list.

------
nrj
A Mac user and no mention of Quicksilver?

~~~
robin_reala
I don’t use Quicksilver. Spotlight since Leopard has done everything I used to
use Quicksilver for.

~~~
rimantas
I went Quicksilver -> Launchbar(paid)->Alfred.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Alfred is my launcher of choice these days as well. Even paid for it, though
it's super-rare that I (knowingly) actually use the paid features.

------
neovive
I wonder if John figured out a solution to the "Home" and "End" keys not
working properly in Gmail for Firefox/Mac. This issue is a bit frustrating and
compels me to use Chrome. If anyone has a solution for this it would be great.

------
cantbecool
Did anyone else check out _why's set up? It's an old Compaq Presario V2000.

------
hamidnazari
He probably is now looking for a new VoIP service since Microsoft has acquired
Skype.

------
zobzu
"I wish Chrome was a better browser,"

that's easy, just use Firefox

 _whistles_

