Benedict Lowndes

Renaming and relocating

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 05:23:02 GMT

The big news on the Mac app front is that I've renamed the Pro edition of WindowFlow to Optimal Layout and taken it to version 1.0.

After a preposterous amount of work this is big news: Optimal Layout is stable, has a solid set of features and good user interface.

Along with the new name there's a new icon and website to match the new identity, check it out all out at http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/

So now I've got 2 distinct products: WindowFlow, the window switcher, and Optimal Layout, which is a more comprehensive solution for organising application windows.

I've setup a blog at http://blog.most-advantageous.com so if you'd like to keep up to date on the latest news for these apps subscribe to it there. I've also got a twitter feed for the Optimal Layout at @optimallayout or if you'd like to follow my personal tweets that's @benlowndes.

WindowFlow's flows on

Thu, 27 May 2010 12:33:05 GMT

From the look of this blog you could think that there wasn't much going on with WindowFlow but there's been a hive of activity behind the scenes:

The new UI has been released for the Pro version along with some updates for stability and bug fixes.
I'm exploring a new icon, which you can see to the right, and new website, which you can see here.
I've been getting loads of great feedback and have lots more improvements in the works.

The standard edition isn't being left behind either: I'm just finalizing the new interface before rolling it out to that edition.

I'm taking a short break with the family to Melbourne, I'll have the ipad but wont be online so much, so if you're looking for support, please be patient.

New WindowFlow UI Preview

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:47:35 GMT

The latest WindowFlow Pro update adds some much requested new features:

You can now choose how windows move around the screen: they can either move freely, snapping into alignment with other windows (as it always has) or it can jump directly to the screen edges filling half or quarter of the screen. Switching between these two different moving styles is as easy as using the option-command-/ shortcut, then using the usual keys to move the window around - by default this is option-command and an arrow key.
In the same way, windows can either be resized freely or they can push other windows as they hit up against them; I described this in the last blog post - watch the screencast if you haven't already, it's very cool.
Pressing the maximize shortcut repeatedly will cause a window to maximize and then return to it's previous size.
Activating WindowFlow and then pressing the shift key twice will stop WindowFlow from dismissing itself when the keys are released. This allows you to start typing the window name to select it and use the return key to activate it.

I'm currently re-imagining WindowFlow's user interface; here's an early preview, I'll leave it to your imagination what the buttons along the bottom do:

WindowFlow Pro with Dynamic Resizing

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:40:51 GMT

The latest release of WindowFlow Pro includes a unique new feature called dynamic resizing; this stops neighbouring windows from overlapping when they are resized. This dramatically improves the flexilbility of tiling; you may need to see this to really 'get it', so watch this short screencast.

Over the last week WindowFlow has seen many improvements with better performance, smoother moving & resizing, and better tiling on irregular display arragements. So make sure you are running the latest version by choosing the "Check for updates" menu item, or downloading it from here.

WindowFlow Standard hasn't missed out either: the latest release adds the option to hide WindowFlow from the dock and show it in the menu instead.

Stay tuned for more updates soon; I've got lots of great features in development and at this stage I'm releasing a new version every week or so.

WindowFlow Updated With A New Icon

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:14:27 GMT

WindowFlow is now up to version 0.9.4 and as well as a bunch of behind the scenes improvements you can see it's got a shiney new icon.

The contents of the window uses the Advanced Glow Effects method demonstrated by Collis. Thank you Collis!

Also big thanks to Shaun from Panga Produductions for helping implement the design. He also produced an awesome animated version, check it out:

Visualising The Universe

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:22:39 GMT

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. - Douglas Adams

I recently picked up Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything again and each night I'm enjoying dipping in to it and being wow'd for a little while before I fall asleep. Bryson does a great job of using language to convey the immensity of the universe, as did Douglas Adams in his own way. It is almost impossible to really grasp the scale of the universe, or indeed, anything that's really big (can you guess what a trillion dollars looks like?), so it's fascinating to see how it is depicted to us.

This image from Hubble has been described as the most important photograph ever produced. It's astonishing because it was taken whilst the telescope was focussed on a seemingly empty speck of space.

It reminds me of the old saying that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth. Thinking this might just be one of those things people say I did a quick search and found that the consensus is that this is true: Australian astronomers reported that there are 10 times more stars in the visible universe than all the grains of sand on the world's beaches and deserts. It's fun to see people justifying the claim with back of the envelope calculations. I'm not doubting it but it seems we really want this to be true, in some way it's re-assuring to be a something small in something so overwhelmingly massive.

There are loads more great shots from Hubble here, well worth checking out, as are the photos of the Hubble's final servicing mission, the tools might not be Star Trek but they really strike a chord with my inner geek.

This is a full scale model of Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, or JSWT, is scheduled for launch in 2014.

I know nothing about astronomy and the technology behind all this, but damn if its looking a lot more sci-fi than it's predecessor and it's exciting to wonder what kind of images it's going to give us.

The know universe by the American Museum of Natural History (AMHN) takes the viewer on a journey out from Earth, view it in high definition on YouTube for the best experience.

These kind of videos are pretty common here's another, this one has a commentary, but I think the AMHN version captures it better, you don't really need a commentary filling your ears to be wondrous at it, just a little spacey music.

The original video exploring the relative scale of the universe must be the Powers of 10 by Charles and Ray Eames from 1977. Even the Simpsons has satirized it in the opening sequence of a show.

But if we are looking at fictionalized interpretations then the opening of the film Contact does a great job of creating that Wow! experience, cleverly using silence to create space to feel that, err, space. Just watch it:

The Universcale is a very slick interactive visualization created by Nikon. It's a Flash application and you can sit and watch it slowly move in, or you can accelerate it by clicking the numbers near the bottom, start at the far right and click back one by one from 27. Take your time with this one, and click on the item in the grid to see a nice reference on it, or just go crazy and jump straight to the low numbers.

I don't know the origins of this one, it got really nice zooming motion to it that makes it feel more like a game and, hey, who knew earthworms grew to be so big?

Perhaps we enjoy looking at all this is because it helps put our lives in perspective: being something so young and small in amongst something so old and big could have the effect of overwhelming us, but as it's all so non-negotiable there's nothing to do but accept it and be humbled by it. Helping any temporal problems we've got seems slightly less dominating.

The history of the Universe has been summed up thusly: 'Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.'
John P. Wiley Jr., quoting Edward R. Harrison (a cosmologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Smithsonian Magazine, December, 1995.

Why not Slipstream? Getting the name right.

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:50:35 GMT

Today I recieved an email from someone asking why I'd dropped the name Slipstream for WindowFlow and I thought it was worth blogging it:

Doing a US trademark search turned up too many other technology related uses of the term Slipstream.
There's already a software product out there with the name Slipstream and the .com domain is in use by it.
In the MS Windows world, Slipstream is a technique used to update a Windows install disk with more recent patches and most web searches for Slipstream refer to this technique. Given how wide spread this is I thought it would be difficult to penetrate these search results.
When I asked on the super helpful Mac Small Business mailing list the consensus was that it wasn't worth risking using the name and having to change it later. Here's a recent example of 37Signals having to drop their Haystack name for Sortfolio.

It was a tough decision to make, I was very attached to Slipstream, but with WindowFlow I've got the .com domain and it gives a stronger indication of being able to control and move windows in a flow, so I'm happy to settle on it.

Removing a feature to do it right

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:20:54 GMT

With the latest release of WindowFlow I had a bit of a dilemma: I'd previously added a feature which allowed you to remove WindowFlow from the Dock and hide it's menu bar; this is actually a pretty common feature for this kind of app and turning it on makes WindowFlow feel like it's much more integrated into the O.S. But the problem is that with the menu bar hidden there's no easy way to quit the app, access help or any of the other things that are listed in the menu.

The normal solution to this is to make these menu items accessible from somewhere else within the application, here you can see Google's Quick Search Box, clicking on the arrow opens up the menu where I can access preferences and quit the app. Google have compromised here though: there's no 'Send Feedback' option which can otherwise be accessed via the menu bar.

With WindowFlow I really didn't want to ruin the clean layout by adding an arrow or toolbox icon. There is a menu which the user can access by right clicking on a window name, but that menu is context sensitive and is intended for the user to indicate that WindowFlow should ignore a window or application, cluttering this up with quit, help and feedback items didn't seem obvious or right.

So I've removed the feature: the option to hide WindowFlow's dock icon and menu bar is no longer present. I'll re-add it when I've got an appropriate solution.

The other negative side effect of this is that you are now stuck with the icon, at least until the new design is finalised, which is a current work in progress.

Slipstream is dead, long live WindowFlow: The Mac window controller

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:17:25 GMT

It's been a very tough choice to make but I knew I had to let go of the name Slipstream because of legal concerns...

And so, after many weeks of browsing the thesaurus and looking for a unique name which descripes the utility of the application I've settled on WindowFlow with the website at windowflow.com

The process of coming up with the name was an interesting one: I had a pad in the kitchen where I wrote out all the names that came to me, I'd then check the names in Google to see if there was a software product using the name, this was the most disheartening step as so 95% of the names I liked were already in use. I'd then browse the thesaurus usualy looking at groups of verbs and how they could combine with the words screen or window, which are the nouns appropriate for my application. Then I'd be back at the pad writing out my ideas.

It grew to be quite compulsive, I'd wake up in the morning with words bouncing around in my head waiting to be connected. The runner up names were ScreenCore and WinGuru.

I'm really happy with the name, it's a big shift from Slipstream, which is a cool name but doesn't say anything about what it does. WindowFlow is also unique in the search engines and there's no single coherent group of search results for window flow (with separate words - Bing wants to autocomplete the search to "Window Flower Boxes") either. It also fits in with my broader plans for the application: beyond providing controls to switch between windows and resize windows I'm working towards making it as intuitive as possible, fitting with the idea of keeping you in a state of Flow.

The next job is to get the icon sorted. The current icon is something I put together as a temporary solution and I was happy using it in development as it hints at the idea of a slipstream but now it seems quite out of place. Watch this space!

SlipstreamApp.com Live

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:54:54 GMT

After months of work, Slipstream is in commercial beta and the product website is live at slipstreamapp.com

The app has evolved and includes lots of great new functionality including

Window tiling, which is a really easy way to rearrange a group of windows to fill your screen space.
Much smoother and smarter window resizing and moving.
Preferences, Help and Quick Start Guide.

I've also added a screencast on the web site where I run through the basics of Slipstream.

The Mac Developer Network has continued to be a great resource to test and provide feedback.
I'm very impressed with the time energy people put in to give constructive feedback and that's been a huge help in getting Slipstream to where it is at now. There's still more to do but I see this product as evolving over the coming months with continual improvements, refinements and enhancements.

It's very exciting to have it all coming together so well. The website resources are hosted on Amazon's CloudFront which is their content delivery network, this means that my site is duplicated across Amazon's own hosting locations around the world ensuring visitors get it delivered to their browser as quickly as possible. This is important for slipstreamApp.com as it's quite heavy on the images and so could be slow to load for visitors with slow connections. Anyway in the geekiest of ways it's extremely cool that I can so easily take advantage of Amazon's network resources to support my own work.

So if you haven't already download and try Slipstream and, of course, if you like it, buy it.

Creating a Mango Blog Theme

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:04:35 GMT

Having just created, or adapted rather, my first Mango Blog theme I thought it's worth noting down the process for creating a theme:

First create a static HTML version of the theme you want to use, if you are adapting an existing theme then it's as easy as saving the theme locally through your browser by selecting "save page as..".
Create a new directory for your skin in mangoblog/skins/
Copy the saved index.html as index.cfm in your skin directory.
Copy the images and styles for your theme into mangoblog/skins/your-new-theme/assets/images/ & mangoblog/skins/your-new-theme/assets/styles/.
Now open the index.cfm of your new theme and the index.cfm of an existing Mango Blog theme; I used the cutline example from the mangoblog/skins/ directory as it uses the latest features.
Identify the corresponding page sections between the existing cutline and your new index.cfm, e.g. typically you'll have the elements in the HTML head, the body head, the posts, the sidebar and the footer. Copy across the mangoblog custom tag calls and adapt the HTML to match the new theme.
Create the skin.xml for your theme. Again, copying and adapting the cutline example is easiest. See this documentation for details on the meaning of each element. For now you'll probably want to keep the <pagetemplates> element empty as these define alternative templates.
You can now enable the theme in the Mango Blog admin section and view your index page. If it errors just comment out sections until it works then gradually remove the comments to identify the area causing the error.
Refine and perfect your index page. If you need to make more use of the custom tags than is in use in cutline, e.g. for conditional statements, just look at the source code in mangoblog/tags, it's all very easy to understand with the attributes at the top of each file.
Once you are happy with the design, copy your index.cfm as post.cfm and open the cutline post.cfm and begin migrating the custom tags across. Repeat this for all the required templates.

Other resources:

The Mango Blog documentation on using your own design.
If you are migrating an existing blog to Mango Blog then this tutorial from Brian Rinaldi has lots of good advice.
Here's a recording of an online meeting on Mango Blog skinning from start to finish by Sid Maestre where you can see him walking through the code changes step by step.

New Mango Blog Theme: Vigilance

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:52:00 GMT

I run this site on the excellent ColdFusion blogging platform Mango Blog and I wanted something different than the standard themes provided. However, user interface design is not one of my strengths (I'm better working behind the scenes on the code) so I went on the hunt for a theme to suit my needs, and if you are reading this on my website you should see the new theme in action. It's adapted from a WordPress theme called Vigilance by Jestro who describes it as:

A lean and clean theme featuring friendly SEO optimized code.

If you are running Mango Blog and would like to use this theme on your own site you can download it here.

Slipstream Update & Thanks to MacDeveloper.net

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:46:37 GMT

When I released Slipstream for testing I registered the application with MacDeveloper.net, a service which cleverly connects developers with testers. It works like this: I setup a profile for my application and offer a discount on the final price to testers. In the first 24 hours I received 30 pieces of feedback which were largely concise, accurate comments and it gave me a lot to think about. This is really useful as there's no way I can test on all the different possible configurations and paying for professional testing isn't an option for a project like this. So if you're building a Cocoa application and looking for testers, then MacDeveloper.net is a great option.

Based on all this feedback I've updated Slipstream with a wide range of changes, the latest version is available for download here.

Scratching an itch: Introducing SlipStream

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:37:37 GMT

Here's a Mac application I've had on the back-burner for a while. SlipStream is task switcher with a unique way of showing you your open application windows: it provides a preview of the window and it's location on the desktop. It also gives you keyboard control over the size and position of your windows.

This is really handy if you are a developer who uses large or multiple displays and prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard, which is why I built it.

Download Slipstream.zip here (614 KB) OS X 10.5+

To use

First you'll need to go to your System Preferences, open Universal Access and check the box "Enable access for assistive devices."
Launch SlipStream by double clicking on the icon.
option-tab to cycle between windows, shift-option-tab to reverse cycle.
control-option & arrow keys to move window against screen edges.
control-option-shift & arrow keys to resize window.

It's currently in an 'alpha' state with a couple of key features missing (such as preferences to change the keyboard commands), but I'm putting it out there to see if there's any interest and then I'll decide where to take it.

The options, as I see it, are:

Commericalise: Once complete I'm thinking I'd charge $15 for it.
Open source: I'd take this route if there were other Cocoa developers interested in working on the code with me.

So try it out and give me some feedback: Does it work for you? What would you pay for it? What features do you need? Or are you a cocoa developer interested in helping out?

Setting up a Railo ColdFusion VPS from Start to Finish

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:26:48 GMT

There are many guides that describe different aspects of setting up a VPS but I couldn't find one which brought it all together to create a ColdFusion host. So in the great internet tradition of building on others work, here's my contribution. The focus here is to provide a specific recommendation for each step, link to a definitive guide in setting it up, and also briefly mention the alternatives.

The initial setup

1. Choose a VPS host
Features to consider when choosing a host are bandwidth, RAM, processor share, the servers physical location, reliability and reputation. I went with Linode selecting a VPS in Freemont, CA, as it's closest to the pipe connecting to Australian, while still servicing the U.S. market well. Here's the getting started guide for setting up a Linode VPS and choosing the operating system, very simple.

Alternatives: Slicehost is very popular and has a great community, but currently the value for money on the plans isn't so competitive. Rackspace Cloud offers better server resources but you are charged by the hour that it's powered on and you purchase the bandwidth separately, making it a good option if you're starting out with a low bandwidth site or require backup or test servers.

2. DNS Setup
First go to the the site where you registered your domains and update the nameservers for the domain to point to your VPS provider. Then in your VPS control panel define the DNS records for the domain. Here are the instructions for Linode, if you are using a different host check in their support section.

Note: From here on the title of each step links to the clearest setup guide I could find.

3. Operating System : CentOS
These instructions describe the initial setup and securing of your VPS. They come from Slicehost but they'll serve you even if you are using a VPS from a different host.

Alternatives: You can't really go to wrong with most of the established Linux OS's. Stick with what you know and make sure there's support for it: The Slicehost Articles site is an excellent resource.

Installing the services

4. Web Server: Apache
An easy choice, ignore the PHP section in the tutorial if you don't require it.

Alternatives: Your Java Application Server (such as Tomcat or Resin) could function as the webserver. Or there are lightweight, high performance web servers which offer excellent performance like nginx and lighttpd but if you are setting up your first VPS then going for one of these is probably overkill.

5. Database Server: MySQL

Alternatives: Postgres is actually my preferred option but there are a couple of applications I'm using which don't support it, so I've gone with the safe bet.

6. Java
Required by which ever ColdFusion engine you use, so not a lot more to say here.

7. The ColdFusion Server: Tomcat & Railo
Railo is a high performance open source ColdFusion engine which is seeing very good community support.

Alternatives: Open Blue Dragon is an alternative open source ColdFusion engine and, of course, there's the commercial option of Adobe's ColdFusion.

8. Mail Server: Google Apps
Why give yourself the extra headache of managing a mail server and spam filters with all the risks involved? For me there was no question: using the Google Apps is by far the simplest option. Note that when setting up the Google SMTP server in the ColdFusion Administrator you should set the port to 587 and select the TLS option but not the SSL option.

Alternatives: Postfix

Keeping an eye on it

9. Statistics: AWStats & Google Analytics
AWStats is a Perl script which analyses the webserver logs directly, giving you real time statistics on all activity. It's also useful for being able to highlight missing and error pages and hack attempts. Google Analytics provides more in depth analysis on what it collects but will miss those who have JavaScript disabled.

10. Uptime Monitoring: Pingdom
Being alerted when your server goes down is essential to keep your clients happy. Pingdom provides a nice clean interface, charting and sms alerts.

11. Backups : rsnapshot
This a remote filesystem snapshot utility, based on rsync and I've got this setup on a separate server to take scheduled backups from the VPS. It's not too complicated to setup and very flexible, supporting backups of MYSQL databases, you could even run it from a server at home if needed and when you need to restore some data you'll be very happy to have it setup.

12. Keep It Updated
It's important to keep your system and the installed packages secure and updated. On Centos this means running "sudo yum update" when there's an update that needs to be applied.

You'll also need to individually update other packages you've installed manually. Railo makes this process very easy: simply login to the server administrator and select 'Update' which is under the 'Services' menu.

Generally it's a good idea to subscribe to an RSS feed from whoever provides the software you are using so you can be alerted if there's a security patch which needs to be applied.

Need More Help?

There's loads of great resources out there: the first step should be a web search. If you are seeing a specific error message then search for the text of the message along with the application name.

Then there are the blogs, forums and IRC channels for the service you are having trouble with. Twitter can also be very useful here too, tag the topic of your question with a # and someone will pick it up, e.g. #railo or #centos. The trick is figuring out a concise and accurate description of the problem; once you've done that you're half way there.

Finally, there are wiki-like question and answer websites which can be very helpful. For server setup issues Server Fault is emerging as a great resource. Its sister site Stack OverFlow does the same thing for programming problems.

Good luck!