MRR Software

Yet another release from MRR Software.  As with most 1.1′s, this is the “things that should have been in the 1.0 release” release.    It’s a curious thing, though.  People will try an app, tell you what they don’t like and go back to using something else.  I wonder if they ever come back to try the app out again once things have been fixed or improved.  Once you lose a user, are they gone forever?  This would fly in the face of the ”release early and often” and “you should be embarrassed of your 1.0 release” theories.  After all, if every 1.0 waited until they thought everyone would be satisfied, 1.0′s would take much longer to release, and many might not make it there.  Perhaps the people that will be lifelong users of an app will be so regardless of initial feature set, but if they like the general idea you’re trying to express.

Enough philosophizing for now, here’s a quick rundown of what’s new:

• Reduced Footprint - The UI has been slimmed and tightened resulting in a significantly smaller minimum window size.
• Hide Current Status - Hide the current status and user information to reduce the necessary UI footprint even further
• Growl Integration - Receive your tweets through growl messages.  Click a growled tweet to bookmark it, reveal the message in Syrinx or simply dismiss it.
• Remove Read Tweets - Option to remove read tweets older than 12 hours, 1,2 or 3 days.  Tweets that are still bookmarked remain untouched for as long as needed.
• Faster Message Parsing - Parsing messages received from twitter has been significantly simplified.
• More Robust Error Handling - Rather than bothering the user each time twitter fails to return updates, Syrinx silently attempts the request again.  This has resulted in many fewer errors and warnings.

The smaller UI footprint was by far the most requested enhancement, so I made sure to get it in here.  Second most requested was the Growl integration, and next was the ability to hide your current tweet.  No one actually requested robust error handling, but there was a lot of complaining.  It turns out that telling users exactly what’s going on behind the scenes is not always a good idea, and this case it’s better to try some more heroic efforts in the background before notifying anyone.  Since implementing this, I have been error and warning free.  The ability to remove read tweets older than a specified age serves two purposes.  The more important being that Syrinx, apparently due to it’s use of NSCollectionView, slows down during scrolling and searching after many, many tweets have been added.  Removing older tweets works around this issue for those that choose to.  It also solves the problem of Replies and Direct Messages than can be weeks or even months old depending on how frequently you receive them.

I still have lots of enhancements and features to add, so stay tuned.