Image* Credit: Author (Bhavesh Rawat) | Designed on Previewed

When I read that Google has launched its Chrome OS for Macs & Windows PC, Chrome OS Flex. I was pretty excited to test it out as it’s based on the new Chrome OS v100 and it’s cloud-first, meaning, most of the computing is done in the back-end of the cloud server and your PCs resources are just being used to retrieve, and display that information, and that’s also how it goes easy on the PC too.

Screen Grab

I installed it just after the day Google made Chrome OS Flex available in their Chrome Recovery Utility extension. The whole installation process was pretty simple, I’d say. You can follow this tutorial, if you feel like breathing life into your old PC.

Performance

So, the main motive of this OS (Operating System) is to make old hardware more usable, and capable. Gotta hand it to Google, it does does pretty good job at that. Here I’am, on my MacBook Pro (Mid-2012); playing 5 Youtube videos in 1080p (one in YouTube Web App); Spotify in background playing lo-fi tracks, and surfing Reddit in background. Quite impressive, right?

Image Credit: lofi generator screen grab

Now, what if I told you that this was the second window of Google Chrome? The first window was running this Medium Editor, Google News, XDA Developers. And, from how I used to handle this MacBook, it’d have crumbled the moment I’d have hit the 4th new tab.

I never saw Google Chrome launch this fast, ever! Other Google web apps, although being based on the web, that came installed with Chrome OS Flex, also launch pretty quickly. The animations, while opening and minimizing a web app, are also pretty subtle.

Installed Apps on Chrome OS Flex

Experience

I’d consider talking about usability, reliability (it’s still in the beta, “unstable” phase), and accessibility in this section.

Usability

I’d like to say this right off the bat, “I won’t mind making it my daily driver”. It is indeed giving me a better experience than macOS in terms of performance. It is fast, customisable, and it supports Linux environments too. I’d consider myself a heavy user; tons of tabs lying around, multitasking, learning and practicing advanced CSS, and spends most of its time on the web, learning and curating stuff. So, yeah, the workflow isn’t getting affected in any way.

Now, the reason I emphasized on ‘my’ earlier is solely because of the application stack I use in my daily workflow, which mostly includes apps from Google. My go-to browsers are Brave browser and Google Chrome, and Gmail for replying and checking up on emails. YouTube for content consumption, to keep note of something; Google Keeps comes to the rescue. Google Docs for documentation, and Drive for cloud storage.Spotify and Bitwarden for streaming music and managing confidential stuff, respectively, and both are available as a web app.

Now, you may be using a whole a whole different stack that might not have web app support. So, that’s where things get complicated because you wouldn’t close all your work tabs and boot back to your OS just for that application, right? But the absence of that app might affect your workflow.

Image Credit: Author (Bhavesh Rawat)

Coming to the function keys, yep, they were working as intended. Some function keys, surprisingly, were mapped accurately, like the F3 (Mission Control) key, which is used to bring opened applications in a group overview. The gestures on the trackpad were working just fine.

Now, what wasn't working was the backlit of the keyboard, like, it was straight away turned off, and the other part was the microphone. Seems like the OS, can’t access the microphone’s data even after detecting and accessing it. The microphone was working flawlessly on my Acer Notebook while I was testing this OS on it. Google Assistant gets invoked, the moment you say the “catchphrase”, ‘Hey, Google’, or “Ok, Google”.

Reliability

Yeah, this Mac was not my first choice for testing this OS. I have an Acer Notebook I bought in 2015, running Windows 10 Home, and I tried the Chrome OS Flex on it. Everything was going great until it crashed, the whole OS freezes, and it happened every time after a certain time frame, which was 20–25 mins after booting up. But, this Mac was running Chrome OS Flex as if it was native. No UI freeze, no apps freeze, a pretty solid driver, for what its worth.

ChromeOS Flex on MacBook Pro | Credit: Author (Bhavesh Rawat)

I was connected to Wi-Fi the whole time, and there were no disconnections, or drops in Wi-Fi signal. But, it’s only showing 2.4G channels, even though, this MacBook Pro's modem supports 5G channels. Bluetooth also works flawlessly. I had this connected to my Android smartphone, and with JBL TWS was able to receive battery status, notifications right in the OS’ notification center, also connected, streaming songs.

Sharing images, videos, and all sorts of files has never been this easy. Nearby Share works great with all sorts of Android smartphones. I’ve been sharing images, GIFs, and PDFs back and forth. It is fast, and reliable. There were no disconnections, transmission fails, or slow transfers.

I wouldn’t make statements like, Chrome OS Flex is stable, and all that because it’s definitely not, yet. But, what I can say is that it is running smoothly on this MacBook, and hasn't died on me.

Accessibility

Oh, I forgot to mention that I’m running this OS through a bootable USB drive itself. I haven’t installed it on the MacBook, and I don’t think I will. There are two reasons to that.

Image Credit: Author (Bhavesh Rawat)

First, currently, dual booting this OS is not possible and it gave bootloader error upon doing so. If I install it natively, it will wipe the HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and initiate a clean install which I certainly don’t want.

Second, the OS installation gives us the choice of either installing it, or trying it from the bootable drive, which is quite good, I’d say. Next time you want to boot Chrome OS Flex, just plug in the bootable drive, turn on the PC/Mac, and hold the option (⌥) key. It will then take you to a screen from where you’d choose where to boot from.

So, to sum it up… except microphone, and backlit of the keyboard, everything is working just fine. Performance is better than ever on this Mac. Sharing files is bliss.

Google hasn’t said anything about Android Apps support for Chrome OS Flex but I’m really hoping it to have Google Play Store support in the stable build, or in the near future because that will make these budget Windows PC, and old Macs capable and useful.

That’s been it for now. Let me know your thoughts on this. I enjoyed testing and writing this. If you enjoyed reading the story, consider following me (Bhavesh Rawat). Peace ✌.

If you’d like to support me, you can do that here. Many thanks!!

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*Image used for the MacBook Pro is just for illustration purposes. It is not the accurate image of the MacBook Pro (Mid-2012)

Image Credit: Author

Last night, I spent my time turning my blog’s theme to dark mode. After lots of CSS tweaks, Google searches, Reddit questions, and learning few tags, it finally came to life.

You can check out the blog here:

Well, this led me to learn, more like, revise CSS positioning, and I thought, well, why not make it easy for others too. Here we go!

Positioning

Ask yourself, what you think of ‘positioning’ something. You’re basically telling it where to reside, right? Now, a webpage is made up of combination of boxes.

Image Credit: Facebook

Positioning in CSS means, to set the position of an element in the webpage.

P.S: This is the code I used to show these blocks

* {
    outline: 2px solid #1a1a1a;
  }

Ever noticed how the top nav bar stays at top even when you scroll the screen. Yep, that’s because it is positioned to act that way.

Let’s see the first one, shall we?

position: static;

This is the default position for all HTML elements. It is positioned with the normal flow of the webpage just like these texts. You can’t use top, bottom, left, right properties with this.

div. static {
  position: static;
  border: 3px solid #73AD21;
}

W3Schools

That was easy, right? It makes element static with respect to the webpage.

position: relative;

Now, what if you want to specify directions to a particular element while being static, well, this is where relative position comes into play.

div. static {
  position: relative;
  left: 30px;
  border: 3px solid #73AD21;
}

W3Schools

Note: Other content will not be adjusted to fit into any gap left by the element.

In a nutshell, relative without any direction property acts like static.

position: fixed;

The name gives it away, doesn’t it? The element stays fixed at the specified place on the viewport, no matter what!

The browser’s viewport is the area of the window in which web content can be seen. This is often not the same size as the rendered page, in which case the browser provides scrollbars for the user to scroll around and access all the content.

• MDN

Viewport is basically that area of the content you see on the screen, it varies across devices.

This is my viewport

position: fixed; makes an element acts like an overlay. It is positioned relative to the viewport, which means it always stays in the same place even if the page is scrolled.

‘fixed-position’ elements are also removed from document normal flow which makes them act like overlay.

Example:

Freemium Stuff

position: absolute;

Remember, how in position: relative; the element resides at the specified space but holds the normal area to itself. Well, in absolute-position, just like fixed, element is removed from document normal flow which means, for other elements, it doesn’t exist in that webpage. Again, power of overlapping.

An element with absolute position is positioned relative to its closest positioned ancestor. It looks up for relative parent, if any. If not relative, then it becomes relative to . div.relative { position: relative; width: 400px; height: 200px; border: 3px solid #73AD21; }div.absolute { position: absolute; top: 80px; right: 0; width: 200px; height: 100px; border: 3px solid #73AD21; } position: sticky; Literally every nav/top nav has this as position. This is a hybrid of fixed and relative/static. Let’s break it down and see what it brings to table. So, the quirks this position element gets from static/relative is that it follows the normal flow of the webpage till it hits the specified mark, and the moment it hits that specified mark it acts like an overlay, fixed on that place. div.sticky { position: -webkit-sticky; /* Safari */ position: sticky; top: 0; background-color: green; border: 2px solid #4CAF50; } live example of sticky position sticky. Now, sticky does makes you feel like playing with it and there’s nothing wrong with that. Go ahead and do it. But you probably should read this amazing story by Elad Shechter. He has break down the sticky position in a very easy, and understandable way. Well, that’s been it for this story, hope this story was worth your time and you enjoyed it. Consider following me here if you did. Did you know, by holding on the clap icon, you can give more than one claps, easy, right! Peace. If you’d like to support me you can do that here. Many thanks!! More Stories https://mirror.xyz/0x8F8340370C547A830Fe93660dafda2d92670A880/uWmutmlJT6qc3VC0Dt424U6l5LhuiAUnIPkMAl1A13c

The way NFTs took over the trend is still unbelievable to me. How a 5-word tweet was sold for $2.9M, how funky apes JPEGs are starting from $200K. I read all of it and tried to breakdown NFTs, the good and the bad.

What is NFT?

So, transactions usually take place digitally or physically. You spend money and buy goods. Recently, the purchasing behavior has changed and the transaction over digital platforms have too. Now, you purchase a cool-looking skin (digital good) in your favorite game and that brings a change in purchasing nature.

Now, let’s say you’re an artist who wants to sell a landscape you drew on a canvas. The chances of that painting getting pirated are pretty less, many various methods can easily identify the original one. But if a digital artist makes the same art, exports it as JPEG, and uploads it on the internet for sale. Pirating that is just as easy as a right click, and checking the authenticity of the actual art is next to impossible. NFTs are trying to change this by creating ‘Token of ownership' that is owned by the creator. So, when you’re buying or selling NFTs, you’re basically buying or selling the ownership of that product.

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Tokens. When something is fungible, it means it is interchangeable, like cash. NFTs work on blockchain technology, just like cryptocurrencies, which helps them verify the original creator behind a digital product.

Advantages

NFT also brings various helpful opportunities to the table like,

Earnings

NFT brings a new way of earning that lets the supporters support the creator by letting them buy a piece of share in their art rather than just donating through PayPal or any other service.

Screen Grab: I’m a Puzzle

Smart Contracts

NFTs have helped with the contracts by making it more easy and streamlined so that creator can leverage and make rules for its assets to be accessed. No more long, hard-to-read contracts.

An artist can make it so whenever a painting has made a profit, the artist gets some sort of commission from the profit.

Collection

Collectors love one thing for sure, and that’s rareness of a product. To collectors, NFTs provide that adrenaline punch to collectors because they know they can own something rare, and that too authentic, thanks to the fool-proof system of the Blockchain.

Take this Charizard pokemon card as an example, sold for $220K not because of its fighting abilities, but how rare it was.

Image Credit: Mr.WhosetheBoss

Investments

NFTs allow not just creators but investors to earn from the digital content too, because NFTs can be traded, it holds a market value. Just like this CryptoPunk NFT which was originally bought for less than $30, but ended up selling for $11.8M.

CryptoPunk #7523

Community

No matter where you are, you want to feel relevant, right? NFTs do that by making you feel you belong to a community you have an interest in. Take this Bored Ape Yacht Club for an example, where people who own these NFTs are part of a club and they use this as a sense of pride.

Image Credit: BAYC

Disadvantages

As much as I cherish new tech and the benefits it brings, there are some downsides to it too, like,

Low-Effort Content

While the major purpose of NFTs was to support the digital artist without harming their assets, business people took this opportunity to make money by creating random bunch of JPEGs in bunch and tweaked them a little, and are ready.

Take an example of the ‘Lazy Lions’, another collection of 10,000 “unique”, expensive avatars, just as ridiculous as ‘Bored Apes’ but in the Lion form. Seeing how ‘Bored Apes’ were selling like hot cakes, someone created 50, or so unique characteristics and then use a piece of code that simply picks these 50 inputs, randomly combines them and creates 10,000 random outputs. No creativity, no thought process, just a way to benefit from the trend.

Image Credit: Lazy Lions

Greed

The extent to which people have gone to cash-in themselves in just ridiculous. There’s a project called ‘Next Earth’ where it’s mapped up the entire planet, and allows the users to buy digital land for a certain price. I’m sure the creators must’ve thought, ‘Now that everyone’s interested in digital content, let’s sell digital land.’ But physical land has a purpose. One may wanna live there, rent it out, do farming, etc. What can you possibly do with a digital land, other than brag about it? No one wants to hear someone brag about themselves.

V. Taj Mahal — Image Credit: Next Earth

Also, who has given these ‘Next Earth’ creators rights to sell the land that already someone owns? And that’s just one platform I was talking about. There are other platforms like Earth 2, SuperWorld, so even if someone tries to buy Taj Mahal on one of these platforms, it isn’t even that you possess something rare, as that land can be bought in any of these platforms.

Celebrities

Things have got so worse that people are using deceased persons for their NFTs. Stan Lee, creator of Marvel Comics, was used to promote a NFT collection of a superhero. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what he’d have wanted, asking his fans for money for some JPEGs.

Image Credit: Stan Lee’s Tweet

Another one is Bob Ross’s NFT, the post talks about his legacy of creating and investing in the art of painting, which is false. He wanted people to buy the paint and make the art. He said that he didn’t want his name to be endorsed in any kind of unreasonable marketing tactics or profits, but his name’s goodwill is being used for every dollar that can be made.

Image Credit: Funko’s Tweet

He was also an environment and nature lover, and NFT’s not helping in that either.

Environment

Every transaction that takes place for buying or selling NFTs is powered by Ethereum which is bad for the environment, it uses a security mechanism called proof of work which is incredibly thorough and is a big part of what makes NFTs so fraud proof but the problem is that this kind of security requires a lot of computers around the world to be contributing their power to this network and that uses a lot of energy.

Illegal Activity

People are copying copyrighted stuff, manipulating a bit and posting as theirs and then they have the audacity to debate on which one’s real.

Image Credit: TheVerge

Someone has created a portfolio of Marvel Characters, except Marvel didn’t have any intel on this, this isn’t official listed on Marvel’s listed, Marvel hasn’t licenced them.

Image Credit: Open Seas

If you buy any NFT from packs like these, not only you’re spending your money on a non-legit thing, but also committing a crime by buying copyrighted stuff.

I believe one should only invest in the NFTs created by legit creators that even if market comes or even crashes any day, you’re happy with your purchase.

That being said, let’s wrap it up here! If you enjoyed reading the story, consider following me (Bhavesh Rawat). Peace

If you’d like to support me, you can do that here. Many thanks!!