Say Aloha to Hana
Just the other day, I read an article that told me web application use is on the rise. “Duh!” I exclaimed (since I’m new around here, I should explain that I’m a guy who keeps most of his life online, so this was not news to me).
The article did get get me thinking though. With so many applications moving online, how do you separate your web apps from your general browsing?
If you’re like me, you keep everything in a single Safari window; all my web apps on the left side of the tab bar with leftover space devoted to general internet stumbling. If you’re exactly like me, you find yourself quickly running out of tab bar space. Because of this, you constantly close web apps when you don’t mean to, and you find it impossible to focus on your work with all that internet staring back at you. So how do you reconcile all this? You download Hana, that’s how.
Hana is a web-app app. That is, it’s a desktop application specifically designed to let you focus on your web-apps, without all the internet distraction. Hana is based on WebKit, so all my apps behave exactly as they do within Safari, but Hana’s simplicity and clutter-free interface keeps me focused on my work and not on the rest of the internet. Because of this, I’m much more efficient and productive while using my web apps within Hana than in Safari.
In fact, as I type this, all my web apps have been moved into Hana. More than that though, Hana’s memory footprint is paltry compared to Safari’s; Even more so since I can hide Hana when I don’t need my web apps, but want to keep stumbling. My web apps are now independent from my surfing, and I think it makes a huge difference.
I do have two minor warnings for anyone wishing to try it: Hana currently does not run in Leopard and, because it uses the shared instance of WebKit, the Safari 3 Beta can cause some anomalous behavior. I’ve spoken with the developer; however, and I’m told that both issues are actively being worked on.
Version 1.0.2 of Hana is currently available from All Out Software for the paltry sum of $19.91 (or you can use the coupon code MACAPPER until the end of October to receive $5 off!). So go grab your copy of Hana and start getting more from your web applications…you are using web apps, aren’t you?
Sorry guys but this app is a joke.
I can imagine it might be useful for people with ADHD or the one who dosen’t know about alternative browsers like Firefox, Camino, Shiira, etc but I can’t imagine myself paying 20 bucks for stripped down Safari 2 (which is not compatible with Gmail for example) and is not able to use nightly builds of Webkit.
I agree, $19.91 sounds like quite a lot for such a feature-limited app. Especially when its limited feature set is entirely drawn from Safari (which is naturally free)!
Does it do anything else for you? Such as open your selected apps and log them all in automatically when you open the program? That might be nice.
BTW, you can remove the toolbar items and bookmarks bar in Safari and get the exact same clutter free look… if that’s the only advantage on offer here.
@Pete
Yes, Hana keeps you logged in to your web apps between launches, which I really like. As for the clutter, sure, you could remove the clutter from Safari, but you’ll have to put it back to browse around, and I don’t like all the back-and-forthing.
I like that Hana lets me silo my web apps from you regular browsing; it helps keep me on task. Sure, it’s a personal preference, but for someone like me who’s fairly ADD while on the internet, it’s nice to have something like Hana to help me keep the blinders on.
@Pete
Yes, Hana keeps you logged in to your web apps between launches, which I really like. As for the clutter, sure, you could remove the clutter from Safari, but you’ll have to put it back to browse around, and I don’t like all the back-and-forthing.
I like that Hana lets me silo my web apps from you regular browsing; it helps keep me on task. Sure, it’s a personal preference, but for someone like me who’s fairly ADD while on the internet, it’s nice to have something like Hana to help me keep the blinders on.
Well, you can use two safari windows — one clutter free for web apps and one for general browsing. Then the only difference is setup time (none at all if you tend to leave your mac on).
Might be interesting to try it though, I suppose.
@Pete
True, but I like that I can hide Hana (and by extension, my web apps), and still use Safari to stumble around. Even better, though, my web-apps are already loaded and never more than a quick Cmd+Tab away. However, like I said, all this is a personal preference, but it works well for me.
[...] in the middle of working knows how frustrating this can be. That’s where Hana steps in [via MacApper]: Hana is a web-app app. That is, it’s a desktop application specifically designed to let you [...]
I must admit, it is quite a strange product just for web-apps, but I do like the bit where you can select which browser to use, seeing as not all support Safari. Nice little feature.
Why not just use saved sessions or multiple home pages in a portable browser? Heck, even Vienna has more functionality.
this seems to be not much more than a wrapper for webkit. Maybe if it could separate the web apps into different “applications”, give each one a dock icon etc it might be more usefull.
But as it stands it seems like something a cocoa programmer could whip up in 5 minutes. (im not so I can’t ,but im sure there is someone out there who could.)
Personally, I would just use a separate install of Camino to do the same thing for free.
@henry
Actually, it took me a little more than five minutes but I did almost the same thing more than a year ago.
My app had all the Google web app hardcoded on a button bar but a preference would probably be very simple to code. Also, my app was a multiple window application, witch in the end I prefer.
Anyway, nice Idea but I soon lost the interest of having yet another browser on my Mac.