In case anyone wanted to reference it, I have uploaded both the presentation I gave and the sample code I built during the last Syracuse CocoaHeads meeting.
For those not in attendance, I created and connected an NSCollectionView that was both searchable and selectable that could be used for viewing files.
Join us for the Syracuse area CocoaHeads meeting this Thursday, September 11th at 7pm. For more details go here: http://fruitstandsoftware.com/CocoaHeads/Welcome.html
I’ll be giving a talk this week, hopefully it will be a useful and enlightening look at NSCollectionView. It will be a basic how-to based on what I’ve read and learned from using it in Syrinx.
Hope to see you there!
[Updated with the actual day of the meeting.]
That’s right, on the heels of Syrinx 1.0.1 comes NameChanger 2.2. This is a solid usability update for NameChanger. I started by updating the UI, I’ve dropped both the “Original Text:” and “New Text:” labels that lived just under the toolbar since NameChanger debuted. They’ve been supplanted by default text within the appropriate text fields. This gives a nice tweak to the UI and really streamlines it. I have also changed some of the animations when dealing with Append/Prepend as well as how those fields behave during resize.
After that I integrated Quick Look. Pressing space bar will preview the selected file just as it does in the Finder. Unfortunately Quick Look is still a Private Framework, so I debated wether to include it, but in the end I went “Whatever is best for the app”. This framework gets loaded dynamically at runtime, and if it is not found for any reason(such as Apple moving it), NameChanger will continue to function normally albeit without the Quick Look ability. So all in all I think it was a reasonable and safe move.
Lastly I added inline name changing. For too long has NameChanger existed without the ability to individually change file names. That wrong has now been righted. Double clicking or pressing return on a row will now allow the user to change the filename in place.
This update is available through the built-in Sparkle updater and has been submitted to the usual suspects: MacUpdate, VersionTracker and Apple Downloads.
My website development has been put on hold as I work through bugs popping up in the latest Syrinx betas. I pushed out 1.0b1 on Monday. Today I have cranked out both b2 and b3, as two separate deadlock bugs appeared. The first was my fault as I had failed to properly initialize an array. The second was the fact that creating an NSAttributedString with HTML goes out to the run loop. While there it is entirely possible for Syrinx to accept more events, and then try to reacquire a lock that is already being held on that thread that was waiting for the string. While I thought I had cleaned all of that up during my refactor, I had overlooked one cause. I moved a line of code, added an if check and there we have b3. 1.0b3 is also the first release to be hosted on the new web server here at mrrsoftware.com.
Now I just need to finish up the website, which is very close to done. By then hopefully I can get Syrinx out as a full 1.0 and let the masses have at it. I already have a surprisingly long list of future features, plus lots of feedback from betas I have given out.