The iNexus

Fixes and more

Brian — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:10:51 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, the 3.3 release of Compare Folders has been optimized for launching and memory usage during comparisons. There’s been additional performance gains since then but right I’d like to talk about some of the other improvements in store.

Without further adieu, here’s a couple highlights:

fixed: an unfortunate crash that could occur when stopping an in-progress comparison
added: the secondary difference for each difference type has its own color now, so you can have unique colors for every type of difference supported

Overall I think the release is shaping up quite nicely and I’m looking forward to getting it into testing next week and if all goes well start preparing for release the week following.

Stepping up performance

Brian — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:40:31 +0000

Compare Folders has dramatically increased how many items it supports in result sets over the last several releases and the next update, 3.3, will be continuing this trend in several ways.

The major changes to the comparison engine include:

optimizations made to the size of each item in the results to make them as lean as possible (switching from object to scalar types for the geeks out there)
optimizations made to how results are stored to make them as unique as possible (for geeks again: this would be form of database normalization)

Another huge win fixes a common source of pain for users - saving text results with large result sets would crash. I’ve rewritten how saving a text report works and it can write tens of thousands of results without a problem (and includes progress sheet to let you know its going.)

I’m in midst of the engine improvements right now but it’s looking really good so far and I wanted to take a minute to share.

Update: So far the normalization changes have netted a 10% reduction in memory usage for a comparison. More optimizations to come.

Update 2: I’ve been rewriting how all of CF’s components are put together which has netted a 25% reduction in the amount of memory needed at launch, and should be marginally faster as well. Even more optimizations to come

An iPhone Detour

Brian — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 01:52:39 +0000

By now I hoped to have DriveGauge 4 ready for release, but I got a bit distracted by the shiny new device and programming environment from Apple. Recently my friends at DeliciousSafari released an update to their iPhone/iPod Touch delicious client, Bookmarks. I’m proud to say I worked with them on polishing the look and feel throughout the app for consistency with (mobile) OS X and added the ‘Shake to Refresh’ feature.

If you use bookmarks with any frequency I recommend checking out both their iPhone and Safari clients which make it a breeze to access your bookmarks anywhere.

Movin’ Right Along

Brian — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:52:53 +0000

Today I get to share some exciting news - DriveGauge 4 is now feature complete and has reached feature parity with prior versions (I wrapped up automatic updating for gauges this afternoon.) More simply put, it’s much closer to release and will enter beta testing this weekend.

Now I’m working on polishing the rough edges and making it a great experience all around. I’ll post up screenshots soon of the new UI. Stay tuned!

Compare Folders 3.2 released

Brian — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:35:09 +0000

Today is the release of another really solid update for Compare Folders. This update removes .Mac/MobileMe support but also improves exclusions in the engine and polishes more of the UI. These are just a few highlights, there are many additional features and bug fixes throughout the entire app.

See the changes in in the full article

As always, you can find the disk image for download at: http://www.infinitenexus.com/cf/

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FYI: help is a bit outdated

Brian — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:57:16 +0000

A quick note for Compare Folders users - the online help at www.infinitenexus.com/support/cf/ is somewhat out of date, especially with respect to known issues and release notes. If you are curious as to what the latest changes are see the version history in the Compare Folders product section.

When the new site comes online officially the help will be updated to match the latest released version, I promise

Whatcha doin’?

Brian — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:15:04 +0000

As the news of late can attest, Apple has made the transition to MobileMe. I’ve already covered what that means for dotMac Menu (goodbye old friend) so it’s probably pretty obvious what the next step is for Compare Folders.

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dotMac Menu in the world of MobileMe

Brian — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:20:08 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you likely heard the news - Apple is recreating .Mac as a new service, MobileMe. It’s quite an impressive offering from what I saw in the guided tour and I look forward to trying it out soon.

The most common question I’ve received since Steve made the announcement has been - “when / will you be updating dotMac Menu for MobileMe?” To address this we’re going to look at dotMac Menu itself.

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Compare Folders 3.1 released

Brian — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:42:53 +0000

Today is the release of another really solid update for Compare Folders. This update brings better precision for file sizes, folder size calculation, and a new feature - merging (which was previewed in this post.) These are just a few highlights, there are many additional features and bug fixes throughout the entire app.

See the changes in in the full article

As always, you can find the disk image for download at: http://www.infinitenexus.com/cf/

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But does it break? Let’s see!

Brian — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:18:24 +0000

I’ve already discussed some of the improvements that have been added to Compare Folders for its next update and I’m excited to announce that its first round of beta testing started today.

There’s a crash related to saving large results as a text file that I’m going to work on getting in before release but by and large this update is complete. The help files are in need of refreshing and this is another issue I’d like to see wrapped up as well.

So keep your eyes peeled, as it were, Compare Folders 3.1 is coming soon!