Fern 0.3 New Login System

This time and date marks the moment I replaced 2 labels, 2 text fields and a progress indicator with one button. The login menu now folds down from the top. Now on to Picasa!

Update: I decided to work a bit more on the login interface...

Delicious Library 2 Ships!

I’d like to say a big congratulations to Wil Shipley and his Delicious Monster crew for shipping version 2.0 of Delicious Library! I have been following this release pretty closely and being a big fan of Wil, I cant wait to write my review of it on my blog so stay posted for that. The screenshots look amazing and with over a 100 new features and fixes I think it will definitely be worth the upgrade (or purchase if you don’t have it...so go get it ya hear?) Ah yes the download is finished so now I’m going to play with it. Oh and this was posted with Fern 0.3 but it may not be called that for much longer :)

Iconic Introduction...

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.

The tear jerking and inspirational introduction aside, I'd like to introduce Fern 0.2 for developers and Alpha testers. Blogger now has a new, and free, home on your Leopard desktop. Please use, test and push Fern and then come back to the blog and tell me what you think.

Cheers
Alex Mills

Update: Fern 0.2 has been officially released! Check out my blog for more information.

Address Book Style Interface Test

A little hint for the Fern 0.2 Interface can be found in Address Book, the new layout is intended to replicate the effect of writing in real life. Instead of filling out text boxes in a form. This way it gives you more of a preview like feel of what your post will look like on your blog.

Progress update on Fern 0.2

It has been a big week for me with almost none of the time being dedicated to Fern but I have made some progress:

Title System now working
New Progress Indicators
Improved 'Deleting' Actions
'New Post' Feature (Not Finished but working)
Refined Application Messages (Not Finished)
Refined Login Interface (Not Final)
Refined Blog and Post tables, now look Leopardy

Possibly the biggest feature upgrade, one that would hold the release of version 0.2 was implementation of an NSTextView instead of the hacked NSTextField. What does that mean for users? You can now hit enter to move to the next line, spell checking and soon font control that will appear on the blog.

How long before you can get Fern 0.2? Hopefully this weekend as I work to add the finishing touches to it. You have to run Leopard and if you don't already have the GData Frameworks installed, please try Fern first as it should copy the frameworks across on first run.

Keep updated on my blog for more official updates.

Cheers
Alex Mills

Update: Development of version 0.2 is now frozen and I'm working towards putting together disk image together.

Fern 0.2 Interface Testing

Its late and I'm just testing the new interface revision for the next release, which I hope will be good enough to release to the limited public. The login details are still visible for now (I'm looking into how to make disclosure triangles) but are now located in a 'scope' like bar accross the top, leaving the sidebar for the blog and entry list. Nothing else has changed for now for the interface. In terms of finished code updates for Version 0.2 I now have the post title system working without fail, new progress indicators for deleting and posting, a 'New Post' option and some refined messages. It's still a work in progress but this update will not be released until the text field is replaced with a text view so that you can at least hit enter for a page break :) Releasing Version 0.2 to the public relizes the usability of Fern, you can post, delete and update without fail but just not with much quality, I'm working on it. If you are interested in testing Fern please drop a comment to this post or on my blog.

Toolbar Test

Making sure the nre toolbar is working

Entry List Overflow test

testing the entries list for when the list expands past the standard view

Entry List Overflow test

testing the entries list for when the list expands past the standard view

Entry List Overflow test

testing the entries list for when the list expands past the standard view

Post Progress Indicator Test

Testing a new progress indicator for posting

New Title Test

This test means that the title system is working

Fern Version 0.1

This was posted with Fern 0.1, a pretty big thing for me as I continue my journey to learn how to be a mac developer. So far I have rebuilt the google sample interface and added titles for new posts. I have successfully tested HTML links and images pre-coded from the web interface as you can see below. Here is a screenshot of the interface for this release but please keep in mind that it does not resemble the final version, it was built to test the basic features of GData underpinnings of Fern. Head to my blogfor more information and updates.

Image Test

HTML Link test

My Blog

What is Fern and why am I here?

If you are here you must have clicked a link from my blog over at alexmillsonline.blogspot.com or somehow come across this via your surfing :) Fern is my (Check my blog for more details on me) new and first cocoa project with the aim to build a full blown desktop editor for the blogger service, possibly for other services down the track. Fern is built from the blogger example included with the GData API. So why make another version of it? For a number of reasons. The sample is very simple and displays technical messages that the end user will think is jibberish and to get the app the user has to get the GData API, build the Xcode Project and most people wont want to do that. My aim is provide the functionality of Blogger with the advantages of desktop power such as offline editing. The version of Fern I'm using right now is 0.1, it basically represents eveything availiable in the google sample along with support for post titles as well as having a much nicer interface. The next version I want to have the title system working properly and a nicer text experience. Though I must note that other features will be built before advanced posting features such as fonts, links and images. Oh and by the way, what do you think of the name Fern??? Its the codename right now but I like it, I have a feeling I will change it to something more 'googlefied. Please note that this is no affliation with google. Please stay tuned as I will provide updates here (a good chance to test my program) and on my blog (which my program or the google program cant see????) as indicated above. And yes this was written with Fern! This is a good day :)

Interesting Test????

The title system is now working in Fern! Kinda...dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd. sadcsdcdsacdscadacdacacca.cscsdcvasvhhhsakjaCBKCBDJHB

Title Working!

The title system is now working in Fern! Kinda...