Fluid

Reflecting upon yesterday's little ramble about the distractive nature of the web, I decided to streamline my workflow a little by turning those websites I use most into isolated desktop apps, using the rather handy little tool Fluid. As well as stripping away most of the buttons and levers of the browser, it allows you to launch sites form the Dock.

Thing is, once I'd thrown a few down there to sit alongside my usuals (InDesign, Safari, evil evil Entourage, plus a couple of folders), all the icons started to look a bit messy. So I made my own, using a handy little utility hidden in the Mac called Icon Composer (with a little help from Charles and Ray Eames and William Mulready). The sites that I've Fluid-ised probably say a lot about my working habits: Gmail, Designspiration, TeuxDeux and Twitter.

So far, it seems to be working, and it's a treat seeing the beautiful layouts of Designspiration and TeuxDeux full-screen. And yes, I realise that doing all of this – and then posting about it – was a great big distraction in itself …