ThinkMac Software2007 App Roadmap
There hasn’t been a huge amount of noise from me lately regarding my various apps so I thought it was time to spell out what’s going to be going on for the remainder of this year:
InstantGallery
Version 2.0 is slowly marching towards completion, there is still quite a lot to do though. Getting big updates like this finished is always a laborious task. There are so many changes in this release it’s taking a lot longer than I initial projected. Still it will rock when it’s done so please be patient! I’m still hoping to get it finished and at least in beta by the end of this month.
iKana
I finally got around to releasing 1.0.1 today which is a fairly small update with a few new features and some bug fixes. There will be a more significant update to iKana during the summer. High on the list of features I want to add is a full screen mode and a dashboard widget.
NewsLife
I’ve neglected this a bit lately and for that I apologise, I want to get 1.0 out before the end of July. There really isn’t too much more to do so that shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve got some ideas I really want to work into NewsLife but they’re going to require Leopard so they may not show up until around 1.2 or later.
Future Apps
- iKanji – a tool in the same vein as iKana geared towards learning kanji. This will be significantly more than a re-badged version of iKana however because learning kanji is a whole other ball game to learning kana. The hope is to have this at least semi-ready by the end of September.
- InstantBook (provisional name) – a tool for quickly producing PDFs from sets of images formatted for use with eInk based eBook readers such as the Sony Reader and iRex Iliad. I’ve got a technology demo of this already up and running but it needs lots of spit and polish before I’m willing to release it.
- iPhone apps – *if* Apple allows us to write dashboard widgets or Cocoa apps for the iPhone then look out for versions of iKana and NewsLife for that platform.
InstantGallery 2 update
I really should stop promising software in ‘x’ amount of time because I’m a bit hopeless with deadlines when it comes to software. Needless to say InstantGallery 2 will be fashionably late. It will however seriously rock your world if you want to make amazing photo gallery based websites. I’ve put together a quick videocast to demo how I’ve incorporated lots and lots of new functionality into IG 2 without cluttering the interface or creating a bazillion palettes and dialogs.
Sneak preview: InstantGallery 2.0
I’ve been hard at work on InstantGallery 2.0 for awhile now and I’ve decided it’s time to start revealing a few bits and pieces. I’m hoping to have IG 2.0 ready for beta testing by the end of this month. InstantGallery 2.0 will be a free upgrade for existing customers – 2.0 will be slightly more expensive though to reflect its growing feature set so if you want it at the current price then now is the time to buy.
First up – new icon:
InstantGallery 2.0 offers much more flexible theming and I wanted to get that idea across in the icon, so here the gallery has a wooden framed border. The icon is still a little rough around the edges and will see a bit more refinement before 2.0 is released. It was entirely drawn in Lineform by the way. All of the icons in InstantGallery are being refreshed for 2.0 so it will look like an entirely new beast.
Speaking of themes in IG, 2.0 ushers in the Theme Designer. This basically lets you take all the pain out of creating your own CSS theme by using an entirely visual interface for tweaking all the properties and you can see in real time how your changes effect the design.
So there we are for now, more details a bit later this month!
NewsLife Beta 3 is here
Beta 3 has been a long time coming, mostly due to a crush of icon work that has refused to let up since January. But finally today it’s out. It’s not a massive update by any means, but now the Sparkle update framework is in there it should be easier to roll out incremental updates every few weeks. Beta 3 addresses the most common complaints, like making the side bar resizable/hidable, adding a contextual menu to the source list, fixing the Atom date bug and so on.
Download NewsLife beta 3 [obsolete download link removed]
InstantGallery is continuing to prove popular and it will be getting its own updates in the not too distant future. InstantGallery is very nearly 1 year old now (it will be in 8 days to be exact). InstantGallery 2 should be released by the early summer, it will feature such niceties as more advanced theming and built-in FTP.
iKana too is turning out to be much more successful than I originally thought, there is a bit more I want to do with it and I’ve had some great suggestions. One of the most common is to add kanji support to it. The problem is you can’t really learn kanji in the same way you learn kana, which makes it a bit tricky for me to just bolt that functionality into iKana. So I guess I’m kind of pre-announcing that I will develop an iKanji to compliment iKana, but that probably won’t see the light of day until much later this year.
What are they smoking?
Posted on March 10, 2007 by Rory Prior
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I was just checking my referrals (as you do) and I noticed a bunch of people visiting from the Disco blog. Curious I thought, so I clicked through to see where I’d been mentioned. Turns out it’s midway down a very narrow long blog post about the development of Disco and its humble beginnings. What I read next was something of a surprise and I’ll reproduce it here:
The piece I wrote on the death of the HIG is linked from the word ‘handful’ and next the one TUAW article which didn’t sound like a PR piece for them and Paul’s piece on the delicious generation. They go on to mention that they got some excellent feedback from some ‘smart developers’ but they neglect to link to any of them.
What’s shocking is they consider this ‘hating’. Apparently when someone points out the elementary UI flaws in your app or criticises you for your wall to wall media coverage and hype of a buggy beta that’s now called ‘hating’. For the record I don’t hate Disco, hell I even bought a license because I wanted to support their efforts. That doesn’t mean I have to join the chorus of people ooing and arring over their pretentious UI though and to be called a ‘hater’ for offering constructive crticism frankly makes them look like the unprofessional ones. Any app that gets put in the spotlight as much as Disco was is going to be picked to pieces – and rightfully so – that’s the job of the media and frankly the PR echo-chamber Mac media failed miserably on this count and it was left to the blogosphere to even the balance. It’s thanks to the so called ‘haters’ that Disco is a better app today than it would have been if no one had criticised it. Not one of us developers writes perfect code or produces perfect UIs, the way we improve our software is through criticism, be it from our users or from our peers. Hopefully Disco’s developers will realise this and understand that trying to polarise people isn’t helpful.
Note the title of this article is obviously a play on the fact that Disco smokes I ain’t accusing anyone of using drugs 😛