Thursday, October 20th, 2005
I’ve always liked tooltips, the ingenious little popups that fade in and out of existence when users place their mouse cursor over certain hotspots on the screen. Generally, they give you more information about a link or describe the purpose of an obscure icon. And recently, in reading an interview with
Shaun Inman (of
Mint-fame) in the free
Treehouse PDF, I noted that the beta-testers for his product Mint noted that data should not be presented to the users in the form of tooltips. I can understand this point of view but then again, tooltips can be an invaluable resource in the GUI toolbox for saving space, so long as they are not used exclusively for delivering the information they highlight.
I’m developing the next version of my bread-and-butter FileMaker solution (tooltip image above) and I’ve implemented a tooltip feature that provides deeper insight into real-time statistics. I like it and it works well. I think my users will like it as much as I have so far and response has been positive thus far.
Along comes Apple with their new digital photo workflow app Aperture (which rocks btw, but more on that in a subsequent post) and there in Apple’s own nifty new app is the feature that customizable tooltips instantly display EXIF and meta data for the image currently being viewed - see http://www.apple.com/aperture/quicktours/ for more info.
Thus my question comes back to how to use tooltips well? One could simply put icons and have the tooltips offer the descriptive purpose of the button, but given that a lot of processing ability is available to FileMaker developers for tooltips, using the calculation engine, it’s possible we are missing a golden opportunity by not exploring the larger options possible with customizable tooltips. How’s that for run-on sentences! I’m also wondering if these tooltips translate when a database is web-published i.e. if FileMaker will automatically translate them into HTML TITLE attributes, ALT attributes, or some JavaScript blend of code?
What are some of your thoughts on the new tooltips feature available to FileMaker users?
Posted in Design, FileMaker, General, Software | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
The Unofficial Apple Weblog over at tuaw.com has an interesting post on a possible quirk of using FileMaker Server 7 and the ability to backup to a mounted network or external hard drive. The issue may actually be limited to the blog poster, but the solution using AppleScript and folder actions is certainly worth noting. Take a look here.
Posted in FileMaker, General, Software | No Comments »
Monday, October 10th, 2005
I’m certain I’m not the only one who has hopes and desires for FileMaker. But without skimming the FileMaker newsgroup, other forums, or being privy to the submissions of suggestions by users to FileMaker, it’s difficult to know exactly what FileMaker users and developers want.
I’ve assembled a list and I’m willing to add more and more and communicate it to FileMaker, but for the time being I need your input. And here’s your chance, so post a comment.
Posted in FileMaker, General, Software | 2 Comments »
Saturday, October 1st, 2005
It beckons the thought that at least some OS X users have a moderate amount of foresight, but it does something that is nearly unheard of in the Windows world: provides free virus protection. As a question though, if there are no Mac viruses, what exactly is it searching/scanning for? The only answer I can assume is Word/Macro viruses resting on a Mac as well as other email-spread viruses resting in a Mail user’s Inbox.
ClamXav is here, go check it out.
Apple, Virus Protection, Mac OS X
Posted in General, Software, WWW | 1 Comment »
Saturday, October 1st, 2005
No pixelation or traces of Photoshop are anywhere on this image which only leads me to believe that it’s true! I’m referring to the images and post on the Error 404 site.
He links to the original blogger, who posts detailed instructions and also mentions a 4 hour boot time… talk about a productivity enhancement. It’s cool nonetheless.
Mac OS, Apple, Sony PSP
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Friday, September 30th, 2005
In keeping pulse on Apple, you will no doubt, continue to hear about the recent dispute brewing between Apple and music companies seeking to kill the 99¢ price on iTunes for all songs. It’s easy to follow on the NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, MacWorld, PlaylistMag, and I’m sure a slew of other publications.
The general tone is that the music industry could band together to remove their libraries from Apple and iTunes store availability and choose other distribution methods. The critical blow everyone seems to be worrying about is whether a major, or couple of major, or maybe even all big record labels do it at the same time, Apple will take a kick to the pants and be forced to listen. The obvious problem to this is that this is a form of collusion and that, without question, the music industry is already fighting a PR battle and pissing people off en masse is always great for business.
How has industry been working?
They have simply curtailed the supply of easy to find, high-bit, downloadable music by flooding the internet with blank tracks which show up in the results for popular music. The song “Don’t Cha” by The Pussycat Dolls comes to mind. If you search for the song on just about any file-sharing app, you’ll come up with hundreds of results and most will download but hardly any will work or be an actual song. On the opposite end, they want to charge you $1.49 or more for the group’s one song and milk you while they can simply because, at least according to the CEO of the Warner Group, they are not sharing in the profits from the iPod. Hmmmm… really? Lets see, you expect a company (Apple) to simply giveaway some of their profits on a device they invented long before their popular music internet store had ever materialized with your merchandise (the music of record companies).
I reckon (sorry, I just had to use that word), that such an action really would precipitate your untimely death. Because in the same tone that record companies could rebel from the Apple Store/iPod handshake, couldn’t musicians forego the companies and go directly to Apple or to smaller more indpendent labels that would put them on an iPod for 99¢ ?? I reckon so.
Signal vs. Noise has an interesting post on this, as does, Playlistmag.com. UPDATE:You can also read the Washington Post article on the mattter.
Apple, iTunes, Music, Apple Store
Posted in General, Music | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
An informative article passed through the ‘Labs recently c/o Stephen de Vries via Slashdot, who mentions a whitepaper, privided by Corsaire, on securing Mac OS X Tiger. It’s an informative read and I recommend taking the time to read/scan it. Some of it is not new, but it is certainly useful nonetheless. You can find the PDF whitepaper here.
Another piece of interesting Apple media news that seems to have gone remained under radar (pun intended - it’s a slow Friday…) is that the Army.mil site is now hosted on an Xserve! wOOt As per the Apple page about the Army’s endeavor:
As the public face of the U.S. Army on the Internet, www.army.mil is a vital tool for education and public relations. It’s also the target of hundreds of attacks every day. That’s why the Army hosts the site on an Xserve running Mac OS X Server.
You can read the rest here.
Apple, OSX, Apple Security, Web Serving, Webstar, Apple IT, IT, Xserve
Posted in General, WWW | No Comments »
Monday, September 5th, 2005
I’m feeling waves of ease as I no longer have to bite my lip on FileMaker 8 because of a big NDA agreement. To my delight and surprise, I was able to preview FileMaker latest incarnation at the NY FileMaker Group meeting two months ago. Software companies always deliver the sales pitch that “Now is really the time to upgrade from your version, which is 2 versions old” e.g. PhotoShop 7 (which I still use) is beginning to pale relative to CS2, or more relevant was the proposal by FileMaker that all the holdouts from version 4, 5, and 5.5 should REALLY upgrade to 7 as it was more than a single generational hop.
Finally, I believe that nearly every user of FileMaker (other than those content with running systems on OS 9/Win2000/Win98/Win95 systems) has a compelling reason to make the move to version 8. (more…)
Posted in Design, FileMaker, General, Software | 12 Comments »
Friday, August 12th, 2005
For the users that saw the brief presentation I gave tonight on Spotlight and FileMaker, email me for the demo file: denis [at] secretweaponlabs . com
I’m still writing up the full description of the technique for other users.
Posted in Design, FileMaker, General | No Comments »
Thursday, August 11th, 2005
Being done from the Apple Executive Center in NYC. Doesn’t that make me important? Actually, I’m in an underground bunker just testing the connection speed.
Update
Ok, so I’m not REALLY in an underground bunker. But I am in the home offices of Apple in NYC. The reason and occasion? The regular meeting of the New York FileMaker User Group. There’s a reason I mention that, see the post I’ll be putting up just after this.
Posted in FileMaker, General | No Comments »
