Stairways Software
Excellence In Software For Over Ten Years – Only with a Mac
Stairways Software
Excellence In Software For Over Ten Years – Only with a Mac
Happy iPhone 2 Day to Apple and all our friends releasing iPhone apps.
Since it is iPhone day, it seemed appropriate to mention that you can control your Mac from an iPhone using Keyboard Maestro.
Keyboard Maestro’s built in web server lets you make public macros that anyone can use to access your mac in a very controlled way, as well as letting you login and execute any macro using your username and password. And you can access all of this from your iPhone.
Since macros can execute AppleScripts and shell scripts, that means you can do pretty much anything. For example, you can make the Mac go to sleep if you forgot before you left the office, or enable or disable services for temporary (and hence more secure) access. You could restart misbehaving servers, or have your office Mac check your email or launch applications before you arrive.
As usual with Keyboard Maestro, your imagination is the limit to what you can have it do.
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
I am going to try to write a few blog entries about some of my favorite macros.
First in the series is a fairly simple, but frequently useful, macro, Duplicate Line.
I have this macro triggered with control-D in BBEdit and Xcode and use it often when coding.
The macro is quite simple, a sequence of simulated keystrokes to select the current line (command-left arrow, shift-down arrow), Copy, deselect the line (down arrow), Paste, select the pasted line (shift-up arrow), and then restore the clipboard (Set Clipboard to Past Clipboard: 1).
Of course, you don’t want to have to recreate the macros that I describe, so I have also added a new Macro Library section to our web site. If it sounds useful, visit the library and download the Duplicate Line macro.
The library is pretty small so far, but we will be adding some more macros soon - let us know if you have any suggestions for inclusion in the macro library.
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Keyboard Maestro macros and actions can be executed via AppleEvents which means you can do anything Keyboard Maestro can do from most scripting languages, including AppleScript, perl, python, etc.
To make this even easier, in Keyboard Maestro 3.2, we added a Script pseudo-trigger. When you select it from the New triggers popup menu, it doesn't actually add a trigger, instead it shows you how to trigger the macro from various scripting languages, for example, for AppleScript, it might look like:
tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine" do script "B39812D2-DDA0-4309-BBA5-C9902FA5B164" -- or: do script "Paste Plain Text" end tell
So your AppleScript (or perl script, or whatever) can now easily perform any macro that you can create in Keyboard Maestro.
It is also possible to execute any action, but that is a little more tricky as you have to send the XML for the action. Still, it is useful if you want to create actions on the fly. See the documentation (or email me) for more details if you are interested in this level of control.
Posted Thursday, July 3, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
In versions of Keyboard Maestro before 3.1, when you used Insert Text to paste in some text, the current clipboard was preserved. The way this was done was:
The problem with this is the “unspecified amount of time”. If it is too short, the old clipboard would be pasted. If it is too long, you might have time to copy something new (and then lose that clipboard!). Typically this manifested itself on slower computers or slower applications where the old clipboard was sometimes pasted instead of the correct text. And nobody likes like inconsistent behaviour!
So in 3.1, we:
If you quite liked the old behaviour, you now have three options:
a) Accept that this is how the macro works, and use the new Clipboard History features (Clipboard History Switcher or the Paste Previous Clipboard macro that is installed disabled in 3.1) to paste whatever you want from your clipboard history.
b) Change your Insert Text macro to Insert by Typing instead of Pasting. This is ideal for the typical case of inserting short text.
c) Add a Pause and a Clipboard->Set Clipboard to Past Clipboard action after your Insert Text macros. If you have a few of these macros, you might want to change one and keep it open so you can option-drag copy the action to any other macros.
Hopefully this gives you some insight into how we work. The existence of unreliable behaviour drove the change, and the consequences of the change drove the design of new features that produced a more general and better solution than the original way of doing things.
Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Starting with version 3.0 of Keyboard Maestro and the just released KeyCue 4.2, the two applications work together allowing KeyCue to show all currently active Keyboard Maestro hot keys by just holding down the control key.
By combining Keyboard Maestro with KeyCue, your Keyboard Maestro macros speed up your work, and KeyCue speeds up executing your macros - what a great combination!
Better yet, you can purchase KeyCue at a 25% discount until June 15.
So if you find yourself having trouble remembering all your Keyboard Maestro hot keys, give KeyCue a try and see how it helps.
Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Microsoft Office 2008 shipped without support for VBA which caused a lot of angst among a section of the Mac Office community. The Mac BU has just announced (via Daring Fireball) that VBA will make a return in the next major release. But that release is presumably a long time away. What are users to do in the mean time?
MacTech offered a very useful VBA to AppleScript Transition Guide which provides one solution, and is certainly good reading for any VBA users.
Another way, was suggested to me recently: “Keyboard Maestro is an alternative way for to get my ancient macros to work in Word since Microsoft Office 2008 has dropped support for VBA”.
So if you are an ex-VBA user of Microsoft Office, there is good news on the (distant) horizon that VBA will make a return, and in the meantime, AppleScript and perhaps Keyboard Maestro may be some help.
Posted Tuesday, May 13, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Since Keyboard Maestro allows you to move & click the mouse at specific locations but does not have an easy way to get the position of the mouse, people have often asked me how to determine screen coordinates.
I have generally recommended either the Pixy widget (which I cannot seem to link to sensibly) or just to use a Move Mouse action and trial and error.
But Leopard introduces an addition to the screen capture command which shows the mouse screen coordinates, so simply press command-shift-4 to start capturing a portion of the screen and Leopard will display the screen coordinates as you move the mouse around. Press the escape key to cancel the screen capture when you are done.
Posted Tuesday, February 12, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Nolobe just released Interarchy 9 with some fantastic new features.
My favorite, and probably the flagship feature, and the last feature I implemented for Interarchy is quite amazing, and I hope people take it up - basically it uses SSH to connect directly to your server and then runs perl scripts on the server to perform the actions (list, upload, download, etc).
What makes this amazing is the results you get with a compressed listing. My personal web site has over 5000 photos on it, that makes for 10000 files (with thumbs). That makes a directory listing around 1.5Meg of very compressible text. Since most mirrors result in a directory listing and then a handful of small changes, this means my typical mirror time went from over two minutes to under 20 seconds! Nearly an order of magnitude improvement!
And that is just one of the cool new features of Interarchy 9. A Fantastic first major release for Matthew & Nolobe - next comes Iris!
So go download Interarchy 9 now.
Posted Thursday, January 10, 2008. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
This really is historic.
Six different teams completed the three missions of the DARPA Urban Challenge, driving autonomously in a simulated urban environment, avoiding other traffic, and following road rules.
Absolutely amazing!
Our congratulations to all the teams that competed in the challenge, and especially to the six teams that completed the course. A fantastic effort.
Posted Saturday, November 3, 2007. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
The Leopard Dock shows folders as a layer of icons, which is crazy for folders as you cannot easily recognize a folder based on its contents. Especially crazy when the folders have recognizable icons already!
Of course, here at Stairways we prefer to find solutions to problems rather than just grumble, so here is a trivial solution. Simply create an alias to the folder, name it to sort as the first icon, and put it in the folder.
We’ll use the Applications folder as an example. First, open the Applications folder, then command-up arrow to get to the parent folder. Select the Applications folder and option-command-drag to your Desktop to make an alias. Rename the alias to add a space or two at the start of the name. Now drag that alias into the Applications folder (you will need to authenticate). Done. Now the dock Applications folder looks like it should, ie like an Applications folder with applications inside it.
When doing this, make sure you rename the alias before moving it in to the Applications folder - the Finder will ask for authentication to move the item in, or to delete it, but will simply refuse to allow it to be renamed.
Hopefully Apple will come to its senses and add the folder icon to the top of the displayed stack, but in the mean time, this is an easy trick to fix it yourself.
Posted Saturday, November 3, 2007. Permalink. 27 Comments. RSS. Digg This
As far as we are aware, there are no issues with Keyboard Maestro running under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
We will validate it fully as soon as we get our hands on the Leopard GM, but we currently have reports from Leopard users that it works fine, and no reports of any problems.
Posted Monday, October 29, 2007. Permalink. 4 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Last week our friends at Nolobe released a teaser of Iris, their upcoming Image Editor for Mac OS X. Ironically, and coincidentally, the announcement came on more or less the same day as Acorn 1.0 was released.
Having used GraphicConverter and Photoshop, looked at the very black screenshots of Pixelmator, tried out Acorn (which I found extremely slow in the few things I tested), I have to say I'm looking forward to trying Iris out, and it looks like I’m not alone as Matthew tells me around 10,000 people signed on to the Iris announcement mailing list within a few days of the Teaser going out.
I asked Matthew for some hint on what Iris will be like, and he just said this will be one-window image editing with ”no crazy palettes flying everywhere”.
I haven’t looked forward to a beta release this much since System 7!
Posted Monday, September 17, 2007. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
John Gruber notes on daringfireball.net the Ney York Times article which reports that Universal will sell DRM-free music through RealNetworks, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Google, and others, but not through iTunes and asks why?
I suspect the cause of this is simply the dominance of the iPod. To sell with DRM on any other site means iPod owners cannot buy the music. The only way an iPod can play music is if it is a) DRM-free, or b) bought at iTunes. The latter option means Universal has much less incentive to offer DRM-free music through iTunes, since all the iPods can already play iTunes DRM-protected music.
So do we finally have a case where Apple’s dominance actually causes them a problem? What a change a few years can make!
Updated Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 4:22 PM. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
It strikes me time and time again how few companies understand anything about simplicity.
I was looking to replace my wife’s Nokia 6230i that decided it did not want to come home after a recent holiday. The Nokia 6230i is a simple block phone that does just the basic stuff, and Nokia don’t do a bad job on the user interface. And don’t mention “iPhone” to those of us who live in the “Lucky Country”.
A quick check of the Nokia Website reveals that there are an astounding 55 current Nokia models. 55! And Nokia’s web site offers a way to exclude phones without certain features (eg Bluetooth), but no way to exclude phones with features (eg Dual Camera (which I had to look up in Google to learn)). There is also no way to sort by price or limit by price range making it nearly impossible to figure out what might be an appropriate replacement for the 6230i.
In the end I gave up in despair and ordered a used one from eBay.
Which brings me on the eBay. For buying something, eBay isn't too bad (or maybe I have just gotten used to it over the years). But for selling something it is mind boggling. I’ve got an old computer I want to sell, and even aside from the horrendous hassle of having to package the computer up and figure out postage issues, just trying to understand getting started as a seller on eBay is a nightmare.
So instead I went to that paragon of simplicity, craigslist. Ok, clearly they need to find a web designer, but it took me all of five minutes to have my classified post, and I no longer have to worry about shipping. Well worth the lost potential revenue of a higher price on eBay. Although I then discovered that gumtree seems to have a larger user base than craigslist in Perth, so I posted there too (another couple minutes).
Now while craigslist and gumtree could certainly still improve the experience, putting up a basic ”for sale” ad for a first time seller is much much simpler than trying to figure galleries and subtitles on eBay.
Posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
I have a network printer in the other room, but while it prints envelopes it does not detect paper sizes. If an envelope is in the extra paper tray, it will be used the next time anything is printed. So to print an envelope, I first have to walk over to the printer, insert the envelope, walk back, print the envelope, walk back and get the envelope. Now this is all good exercise, but it’s a bit of a nuisance.
So I set up Keyboard Maestro to execute the actions “Pause 20 seconds; Click the Mouse”. Now I can print the envelope, stopping just before clicking the Print button, leave the mouse hovering over the button and trigger the macro. Then walk over to the printer, insert the envelope, wait a few seconds and take the printed envelope back to my desk.
Having used Keyboard Maestro for many years, it is amazing to still come up with new uses, but I had not thought of this solution before so perhaps it gives others some ideas.
Posted Thursday, July 5, 2007. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Steve Jobs’s recent Thoughts on Music posting in favour of DRM-free music from the Big Four raises the question (at least among some observers) of why then cannot Indie music currently be DRM-free? Why is it all or nothing?
The answer is pure Apple through and through. The tyranny of choice. Think about the consequence of iTunes Music Store offering some music in FairPlay, some in unprotected MP3 format. Now every song needs to be clearly marked as which format it will be purchased in! No longer can I just click the Buy buttong and know what I am getting.
But how would this be communicated? A special “flag” icon to indicate format - that would not likely be noticed. A dialog box on purchase - people do not read them, and already ignore the current ones. The net result would be confused consumers wondering why some music they purchase works with their Zen and other purchased music will not play. Lots of angry customers. The result: a degrading of the iTunes Music Store experience and customer loyalty.
It is not going to happen. It would be bad enough for music to be DRM-free and videos to be DRMed (and what of music videos, who knows!). At least this is much easier to explain to the customers. But even here, I would think that it is clear that removing video DRM is part of Apple’s strategic agenda initiated by Thoughts on Music - first get rid of DRM for music, then watch the music sales shoot up. then say to the video industry ”Would you like some of that too?”.
Regardless, it should be clear that Apple really needs this to be an all or nothing deal. Probably the worst case for Apple would be for two of the Big Four to come out with resounding Yes and two with resounding No, leaving Apple in an unpleasant position of having to deal with this issue or look to be blowing smoke.
Posted Monday, February 12, 2007. Permalink. 6 Comments. RSS. Digg This
As you have probably heard, Nobloe Pty Ltd, founded by Interarchy lead developer Matthew Drayton, acquired Interarchy from Stairways Software today in what is essentially an employee buyout.
The reason for this happening now is that I was looking to semi-retire in a few years, but where would that leave Matthew and Interarchy’s loyal customers? This buyout resolves both of these problems nicely, not to mention making my semi-retirement sooner!
For more background, you can read the Daring Fireball interview and Stephen Withers’ iTWire article.
Matthew has driven Interarchy development for some years so customers should have no concerns that Interarchy is in good hands, and, of course, all existing licenses remain fully valid, and will be eligible for discounted upgrades when Interarchy 9.0 is released later this year. Indeed, Nolobe has already released Interarchy 8.5.
I would like to thank all the folks who have written me personally offering congratulations or thanks for what Interarchy has allowed them to do over the years, it has been a real pleasure hearing from many of the folks whose lives we have touched!
Many also have been asking about what is in store for me in the future. Currently I do not have an answer for this, but our third child is due yesterday, so I expect that will keep me busy in the short term, after that, perhaps I will update Keyboard Maestro or Greebles, or perhaps something entirely new.
Thanks again for all the support over the years, and to all the friends I have made along the way!
Posted Thursday, February 1, 2007. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Scott Lowe performed an informal performance comparison between Interarchy, Fetch, Transmit and Cyberduck, with Interarchy coming out the clear winner in performance, as well as Scott’s preferred choice for FTP client.
When transferring a large file in his setup, Interarchy finished 25% faster than Fetch and Transmit and 95% faster than Cyberduck.
I have always said that in raw performance terms, Interarchy is very fast. We have spent a lot of time and effort on a highly tuned, hand built, transfer engine, and it is certainly nice to see an independent test confirm this quite clearly.
Of course, I have also always said that raw performance is only one measure, and the true measure is in how fast you can get your job done. Naturally, we believe Interarchy easily wins on that score too!
Posted Sunday, January 28, 2007. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Many independent Mac developers have gotten together to offer Mac users a special christmas present from MacSanta - 20% off software from almost one hundred companies. So if you have been putting off purchasing Interarchy, or any of the many other programs available, treat yourself to a Christmas pressent.
Whether you are after professional software like ours, or BBEdit, Sandvox and the like, or something a bit more fun for the season like Ambrosia’s new SketchFighter, there is bound to be something you might be interested in. Congrats to MacSanta for putting this together!
Posted Wednesday, December 20, 2006. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
Recently a user asked me how they could use Interarchy to edit files in two different applications. They knew that each extension can have its own editor (for example, .txt files can be edited with BBEdit and .css files can be edited with StyleMaster), but in this case they wanted to choose on the fly which editor they wanted, for example choosing BBEdit or TextMate depending on the particular action they wanted to perform.
AppleScript allows you to get the selected URL list in Interarchy and also to edit a list of URLs and specify the editor, so the solution is to create two AppleScripts, one for BBEdit and one for TextMate, and then assign them hot keys (perhaps using Keyboard Maestro). The AppleScript is:
tell application "Interarchy"
set sel to selection of window 1
set urls to }
repeat with e in sel
set urls to urls & url of e}
end repeat
ftpedit urls editor "Rch"
end tell
BTW, do not let the ftp in “ftpedit” fool you, this will work with any protocol.
The editor code is the creator type of the application, “Rch” for BBEdit and “TxMt” for TextMate. If you do not know the creator code for the application, you can look in the application’s bundle, in the Contents folder, for the PkgInfo file, which consists of 8 characters, “APPL” (for Application) followed by the creator code.
You could, of course, create a single AppleScript which asked for the creator code, or provided a set of possible applications, or whatever. That is the beauty of AppleScript and scriptable applications - you can speed up your workflow by customizing to exactly how you work.
Posted Thursday, December 7, 2006. Permalink. 2 Comments. RSS. Digg This
One of the newest features of Interarchy is its ability to transparently encode or decode files on the fly. We provide some basic ones, such as gzip and Backup, and you can write your own - people have already written encryption scripts that use gpg or OpenSSL.
File Converters are set like any other preference, and just like any preference in Interarchy, it can be set (using AppleScript or /usr/bin/defaults) on a per protocol, server, user and path basis. So for example, you can set Interarchy to use the gzip file converter on everything in your /path/compressed/ folder on your SFTP site like this:
tell application "Interarchy" set contents of preference "FileConverter:sftp:remotehost.com:remoteusername:/path/compressed/" to "gzip" end tell
After that, everything uploaded into that folder (including via a mirror) will be transparently compressed. Everything downloaded will be transparently decompressed. You can even use "Edit With" to edit the remote file in BBEdit even though the remote file is stored compressed.
As mentioned, we also wrote a Backup script which encodes all the meta data in an open format, including resource fork, BSD flags and weird things like ACLs and HFS+ extended attributes (I wish we did not have to write our own format, but there simply is not any existing format that supported 64 bit and all the meta data). So if you want to backup a folder onto Amazon S3, just set up the remote folder to be encoded with "Backup" and set a mirror up as normal.
tell application "Interarchy" set contents of preference "FileConverter:amazons3::/mybucket/mybackup/" to "Backup" end tell
You can write your own file converters as well, so if you have some specific encoding that needs to be done everytime you upload files to a specific place, write your own encoder and it will happen transparently. The next version of Interarchy will even allow you to chain encoders, so you can chain "Backup,gzip" for example and have your uploaded files first encoded using Backup and then compressed, and decompressed and then decoded when downloaded (in the mean time, you could write your own converter to do both).
Combined with the proliferation of mass storage solutions for WebDAV and Amazon S3, this could be a great solution for a low tech backup system (but remember that a real backup system entails far more than just keeping a copy of your files, things like full coverage, version history, and integrity checking. But if you happen to be one of the large numbers of people with no backup strategy at all, then quickly sign on to Amazon S3 and set this up before your harddisk crashes, then go and by a good backup program as well.
Posted Wednesday, November 1, 2006. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
We released Interarchy 8.2.2 yesterday, fixing a "fix" we added for 8.2.1 to handle Microsoft FTP server listings with spaces at the start of directory names - unfortunately the fix was not quite right and so we have 8.2.2.
Also of note, we received 4.5 mice in a recent Macworld review - nice to see!
8.2.1 should also have file converters working nicely now, so I will write up something about the Backup File Converter and other converter options shortly.
Posted Tuesday, October 31, 2006. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
There is was a nice Interarchy review on the popular theappleblog blog - “The Verdict: Interarchy is one of the most advanced and well-written native OSX applications available, let alone FTP clients.”. There were also some nice comments from users, like “Interarchy is one of the best programs there is. ... Interarchy is invaluable. We would be lost without it.”
Last month, on the same blog there was a good article Mac OS X FTP Clients Throwdown which compared eight(!) FTP clients for the Mac. Of course, we know Interarchy should really have been placed first, not second, but then the review did say ”Interarchy] is clearly an advanced app, but it’s very good at what it does - everything.” so we can live with that. There have also been quite a few comments, many praising Interarchy, but my favorite by far was “We regularly transfer *very* large directories with Interarchy, the biggest at the moment contains 368892 files.” Transferring 368,000 files! It was not that long ago that you could not get more than 65,000 files on a harddisk.
There is also an TidBITS Talk thread (click the All button or you will miss some messages) going asking “Is there really a feature so great I should pay for Interarchy instead of sticking to open source?”. Naturally, we know there are many reasons to use Interarchy, and it is nice to see some of our users outlining them!
It is always nice to see some positive press, but doubly so to see our loyal users speaking about what makes Interarchy valuable to them. Thanks!
Posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006. Permalink. 1 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Frequently we have to send large files to people (for example, beta versions of Interarchy), and it is not practical or desirable to send large (larger than say 1Meg) files to people via email. Typically I have used YouSendIt.com for this purpose, and indeed there are over fifty such services available.
But it is not really desirable to store private files on a third-party web server, most of these services have to figure out how to make money which means either subscriptions or advertising, and I would never give a third-party web site someone else’s email address (I always use my own email address and then manually forward the link).
But recently I’ve developed a better way, by writing an AppleScript droplet that uploads the file to a bucket on Amazon S3, using a randomly generated directory name as a ”password”, and displaying the resulting HTTP URL at the end so I can email the link to the recipient.
The result is that while I pay a few cents (actually approximately half a cent for a 10Meg file that is uploaded, downloaded once, and deleted after a month), there are essentially no limits - I can keep it as long as I want, it can be downloaded as many times as needed (costing 0.2 cents for each 10Meg download), I can have as many files as I want, and using a CNAME (see this article for details) I can even make the files appear to be on a site I control, like files.stairways.com.
So I cleaned up the AppleScript a bit to make it nice a general and easy to configure, and made it available for download. You will need an Amazon S3 account, and Interarchy, and need to create a bucket (top level unique directory name, optionally which is a domain name that is a CNAME to s3.amazonaws.com), and then double click Sender to configure it, and then drop a file on it to upload the file and display the URL). You will want to periodically use Interarchy to display the directory and clear out old files (otherwise you’ll be paying 0.2c per month for every 10Meg you have stored, and that could mount up, well, probably quite slowly really).
Posted Monday, August 21, 2006. Permalink. 7 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Amazon S3 is a great new service from Amazon offering very cheap, very reliable, very scalable Internet storage. It is not an end-user facility, but a back-end service that developers can build on. However, Interarchy supports direct access to it, and you can make the files on there publicly readable, and taken together, that means you can have your website hosted there for next to nothing. Throw in a few Google ads, and your personal website could easily be revenue positive.
Rather than write a blog entry about how to do this, I figured I would just go ahead and make a simple website hosted by Amazon S3 showing how to make a simple website hosted by Amazon S3 using Interarchy. Very recursive.
The site is called How Do I Make It, and is set up to allow other tutorials to be added in later, but really the site’s main purpose is to demonstrate hosting a website on Amazon S3, so you can read the article directly.
Posted Tuesday, August 1, 2006. Permalink. 4 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Marc Liyanage posted a neat use of Interarchy and BBEdit’s AppleScripting capabilities to open and edit a bunch of selected files from Interarchy in a single BBEdit document window.
The article not only shows a useful script in itself, but also shows how useful AppleScript can be in enhancing productivity applications like Interarchy and BBEdit.
Posted Wednesday, July 26, 2006. Permalink. 1 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Matthew asked me this, so I imagine others are not aware of this simple trick.
Suppose you have a local folder containing your website that you mirror up to your remote web host (using Interarchy, of course!). You probably preview your local web site to check changes. But what happens if you have absolute paths in your web site (eg /img/header.jpg)? These will break when you preview them locally.
But a simple trick is to create a symlink from /img on your harddisk (ie, in the root of your harddisk) to your local web folder’s img directory. You can do this in the Terminal like:
ln -s /Users/peter/WebSite/img /img
Of course, this will only work for a single user on the machine, and only for a single web site (at a time!), but that is pretty common for many people. On Mac OS X, you do not even need root permissions to create the symlink (although you do need to be an admin user).
The same trick can be applied for other folders, like perhaps your css or javascript folders, that tend to be referenced by absolute paths from many pages.
Of course, relative paths are preferred in general, but that is not always easy/simple, and this trivial solution can help in those cases.
Posted Sunday, July 23, 2006. Permalink. 2 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Matt Henderson describes how he is using Interarchy and Amazon S3 to backup his important data.
Posted Wednesday, July 5, 2006. Permalink. Post a Comment. RSS. Digg This
The Interarchy plug-in for Quicksilver is ready to go. It should appear in Quicksilver's list of plug-ins soon. But if you can't wait you can grab it here.
The Interarchy plug-in will give you access to your bookmarks and Net Disks from Quicksilver. It will allow you to open bookmarks; upload files and folders to bookmarks; and mount, unmount, and sync Net Disks.
Updated Monday, July 3, 2006 at 7:46 AM. Permalink. 4 Comments. RSS. Digg This
We just released Interarchy 8.1.1. It addresses a few issues that slipped through the cracks:
Enjoy!
Posted Thursday, June 29, 2006. Permalink. 1 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Looks like we are getting a JavaScript debugger in WebKit.
Over at Surfin' Safari Dave Hyatt has announced Drosera—a JavaScript debugger.
I think it is safe to say Drosera is not ready for the prime time yet. For example the variables table doesn't work. But it does show a lot of potential.
I am particularly excited by this:
"attach and debug JavaScript for any WebKit application"
This should make debugging Dashboard widgets a lot easier. Hopefully I won't feel like bashing my head against a brick wall next time I have to debug a widget.
Posted Wednesday, June 28, 2006. Permalink. 1 Comments. RSS. Digg This
I suppose it is naive to think we would not get bogus spam comments, but we’re generally optimistic people. Oh well.
Given the spam we’ve received, I have set comments to be invisible to other users when posted until we’ve had a chance to review them (usually the next business day). The comment system will remember you (using a cookie ID that will live for a few days) when you post a comment, so you will be able to see your comment (with a lovely pink background to show it is not visible), and we will be able to see it, but no one else will see it until we approve it.
If you discover any problems, please let me know.
I’m just happy I don’t have a Skype phone - the thought of getting audio spam is far too frightening!
Posted Monday, June 26, 2006. Permalink. 4 Comments. RSS. Digg This
A big part of our job as developers is to make complex tasks easy. Each new version should be taking existing things and making them easier. But can this be taken too far?
We released Interarchy 8 a couple months ago. In the last couple weeks, I’ve received several support emails complaining that Interarchy automatically updated itself without warning. Now this is somewhat interesting because Interarchy doesn’t auto-update, it never has.
User perceptions are never invalid, as such. They may be inaccurate (as in this case), but perceptions, like feelings, are never invalid. So what’s going on?
Interarchy (like many modern programs) alerts you to the existence of a new version and offers to download it. The user can choose to download it or not. But this hasn’t changed since any previous release, so it alone is not the cause of this new “auto-update” confusion.
After the download, the disk image opens up in the Finder. The user must manually drag the Interarchy icon to the Applications folder. The Finder will dutifully warn about the fact that the old version will be overwritten. But none of this has changed since the last version either.
So what has changed? The users have clearly forgotten the initial dialog in Interarchy as well as the dialog in the Finder. No real surprise there, we all know no one reads dialogs.
But one thing has changed. Like any field, there are always new “best practices” coming along, and one of the recent ones involves the layout of the disk image. Modern disk images include a symlink to the /Applications folder (an idea attributed in TidBITS Talk to James Thomson’s PCalc).
This allows you to simply drag the application icon in to the Applications symlink, both in the one disk image window, significantly simplifying the installation process. Previously, you would have to open another window, move to the Applications folder, and then drag from the original disk image to the new window, or alternatively turn on the toolbar and drag to the Applications entry on the side.
Now I don’t have proof this is the cause of the confusion, but it does fit. The act of installing the update now consists of OKing two dialogs and a single drag. It is easy to see how a user could forget doing this when eventually prompted to register some weeks later.
The interesting thing is that, if you assume the user will not read the dialog boxes (a good assumption), the only solution to avoid the confusion would be to add more steps to the install process (such as sending the user to a web page instead of downloading the application directly).
Should we make a change? Probably not, but it is curious that making things easier has actually caused a perception problem for at least some of our users.
Posted Tuesday, May 23, 2006. Permalink. 3 Comments. RSS. Digg This
On Saturday, May 13, Matthew married the lovely Natalie at the Royal Perth Yacht Club on the Swan river.
Many of Matthew’s friends and family had flown in for the occasion and the ceremony and reception were very moving with several speeches bringing a tear to many eyes (ok, mine included!).
I’ve been privileged to know Matthew for five years, so I’m certain Natalie is a very lucky girl, and while I’ve known Natalie for a shorter term I’m already certain that Matthew is also very lucky! They make a great couple and I have no doubt they will have a wonderful life together.
Matthew and Natalie are on their honeymoon for the next couple weeks, but feel free to leave any well wishing comments and they will read them when they return.
We wish them much joy and happiness for the years ahead!
Posted Monday, May 15, 2006. Permalink. 3 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Over on A List Apart, Ryan Carson has an interesting article advocating a four-day working week as the solution to always having too much work to do.
Given that no matter how many hours you spend working there will always be more work to do (especially if you work for yourself and enjoy what you do), it does make a lot of sense to control your working hours to ensure a reasonable life balance.
When I first founded Stairways back in 1995, I worked seven long days a week. It didn’t really take long to realize that your productivity drops when you work this much. Your brain needs time to recharge, time to think and plan and solve problems, and for the most part it does it better when you’re not looking. I didn’t go as far as Ryan, but I did restrict myself to working a more normal 9-6, five day working week and was much better for it.
So whether you take Ryan’s challenge or not, if you’re currently working crazy hours (like my brother!), seriously consider restricting yourself to a more sensible work/life balance. No one ever wanted their tombstone to say “He worked a lot”.
Posted Wednesday, May 10, 2006. Permalink. 2 Comments. RSS. Digg This
Well, we finally created a blog.
It’s a shame we didn’t have it a few days ago, then I would have had a place to rant about DNS denial of service attacks taking out our web site (although, of course, no one would have been able to read about it at the time...).
Like most things we do at Stairways, this blog is hand crafted. Sometimes, that is a bad thing, it means everything is new and it can take a few goes to get perfect.
But mostly it is a good thing, it means we can fix any problems, make things exactly the way they should be, and are not constrained by limitations imposed by others.
The comment system is currently open, we’ll see how that goes to determine if we need to restrict things. To try to avoid that, we’ve allowed you to request any comment be deleted (if you do, it will be temporarily removed until we can look at it).
I’ve also added some nice “Web 2.0” live previewing to the comment system. Simple but effective.
If you have a problem, leave a comment, or use the feedback link, or just email me.
As for content, well, like most blogs, it’ll be fairly freeform, probably talking about Stairways and what’s happening with us, talking about Matthew’s upcoming wedding to the lovely Natalie, and perhaps some bits on the joys (and otherwise) of parenting and toddlers. And if we’re lucky, Matthew will grace us with some of his spectacular rants.
Posted Tuesday, May 9, 2006. Permalink. 17 Comments. RSS. Digg This