Software

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picture credit: Apple, Inc.

What is ESSVideoShare?

ESSVideoShare is a framework Cocoa (Touch) developers can use in their projects to easily implement uploading videos to the popular video sharing services YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and Facebook.

With a few lines of code, developers can implement this functionality and the framework will do all the heavy lifting.

Now available for iOS, additionally to OS X Lion

Originally, I had designed this framework for OS X Lion only. However, since the code base is mainly dependent on the Foundation framework which is available on both the Mac and iOS, I figured it would be a) really neat and b) easy to bring this framework to iOS as well.

The actual process of implementing the framework in your iOS project is a little different than for OS X – on OS X, you build the framework from the source and then add that framework to your project, on iOS, you take the source files of the framework directly and copy them to your project. Other than that, everything else remains the same.

Sample Projects and Links

ESSVideoShare open source project on GitHub

OS X Lion Sample Project (~250 KB)

OS X Lion How To

iOS Sample Project (~3 MB)

iOS How To

 

Enjoy – and please let me know if you use this in your projects, I’d be happy to hear about it 🙂

 

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Hi, everyone.

I wanted to try something new, so instead of a blog post, I’ve recorded this ~6 minute podcast for your listening (dis-)pleasure.

Here are the relevant links and time codes in case you want to jump to a specific section:

00:00 – Intro
00:25 – New website (http://www.eternalstorms.at)
00:47 – Yoink (http://www.eternalstorms.at/yoink)
02:46 – ScreenFloat (http://www.screenfloatapp.com)
03:21 – flickery (http://www.flickeryapp.com)
04:06 – GimmeSomeTune (http://www.gimmesometune.com)
05:09 – New apps (http://www.eternalstorms.at)
05:39 – Outro

I hope you enjoy it 🙂

Podcast-download (best viewed in QuickTime Player or iTunes for chapter selection)

Take care,
Matt

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NewImage

Presenting Yoink 2.0

Screenshot of MarsEdit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A picture usually says more than a bunch of words.

What is Yoink?

Yoink is an created to make “drag’n’dropping” files easier.
It shows a “shelf” when you start dragging files or content from applications so you can drop them onto Yoink. This way, your mouse is free for you to move between Finder windows, apps, spaces, fullscreen applications, etc.
Once you are where the files are supposed to go, you can drag the files out of Yoink again to drop them to their destination.

What’s new in version 2.0?

I got a lot of feedback on Yoink 1.0 from customers (thank you very much, by the way) and the changes you see in Yoink 2.0 are a direct result of it.

As you can tell from the image above, there’s a new look – done by the very talented Dietmar Kerschner.

Secondly, you can finally drop content from application onto Yoink – meaning images, text passages or links from within websites, for example. Or files on a server from the FTP client Transmit.

Also pictured in the image image above is a file stack. New in Yoink 2.0, when you drag multiple files onto Yoink at once, they’re not separate items in the list but just one item so you can easily drag them out at once again.

I’ve added a hotkey so you can manually show Yoink’s window so you can drag files from a Dock’s stack or applications like iTunes or Adobe Bridge that don’t trigger Yoink’s window for technical reasons – they use a non-standard NSPasteboard instance to do their dragging duties.

There are four new positions available – left, pinned to the top, left, pinned to the bottom, right, pinned to the top and right, pinned to the bottom (additional to the already existing left center and right center).

Availability and Pricing

Yoink is available exclusively on the Mac App Store for $2.99. But as usual, there’s a free, fully functional 15-day trial available at Yoink’s website (direct download). There’s also a quick screencast that shows exactly what Yoink does, and how it does it.

Feedback Appreciated

I really appreciate your feedback, input and criticism, so please do not hesitate to write me if you have any comments on my apps. Thank you kindly 🙂

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Presenting: Yoink – taking the drag out of drag and drop

Functionality

Have you ever tried dragging something from, say, Finder, to a fullscreen app in Lion? It’s a pain. This is where Yoink comes in. Every time you start dragging a file, Yoink shows a window you can drag those files to. Then you just switch to the space or fullscreen app you’d like to drop the files to and drag them out of Yoink to the app. Very simple. There’s a video on the website which does a pretty good job at explaining what Yoink does, exactly.

The idea behind Yoink

The idea came to me while trying to drag a file from Finder to a new message in fullscreen Mail.app. I just couldn’t do it. Then I tried to drag images from Finder to Xcode in fullscreen. Not very easy either. Thus, Yoink was born.

The name

The original app for this little app was DragHelper. Yes, I know – why did I ever change it?
Well, I was watching the Simpsons, in the episode where Bart takes the last Doughnut or bearclaw or whatever it was from Kent Brockman’s plate by exclaiming “Yoink!” (to which Brockman asks himself: Yoink?!?) and I thought – that’d be a great name for an app that “yoinks” the dragged files.

Why Lion only?

The main reason is because I didn’t see the problem on Snow Leopard. The other reason is that I really wanted to try out the new NSTableView view-based APIs 🙂 They’re very nice and shiny.

The menu bar icon controversy

The number one request I get from customers is to put in an option to remove the menu bar icon (the black down arrow). Well, I didn’t want it in there in the first place.
The first time I submitted Yoink to the Mac App Store, it got rejected because it didn’t have a way to quit the app if Yoink’s window wasn’t visible (the rejection note stated (somewhat paraphrased) “The app can’t be quit if the window is not visible”).

So I thought to myself: what’s the least obtrusive way to make it quittable at any given time _without_ putting an icon in the menu bar. Because why for the sweet love of God would Yoink need a menu bar icon? It’s a background app, for crying out loud.
So I put in a global hotkey for quitting Yoink and made it clear in the splash screen. Submitted it again.

Another rejection followed. This time, the rejection note stated “There needs to be a menu bar or an application menu or a status menu to include a quit item” (why this wasn’t stated in the first rejection is beyond me, but to err is human, and I’ve erred quite a couple of times, so I’m not complaining). Since it’s a background app, the first two were not possible, since background apps do not have their own menu bars – the only thing that was left was the menu bar icon. So I put it in there, and that was that.

Since I was pressed for time, I didn’t implement an option to hide the menu bar icon, but believe me, the upcoming update will include such an option. As I said, I don’t want that menu bar icon either. I just don’t see it make any sense.

The no launch on login controversy

The second most requested feature was to add a “Add to login items” button in Yoink’s preferences.
I tried to implement it, but in the sandbox environment of Lion, in which Yoink is running, it is currently not possible to do. I’ll have to wait until Apple fixes this until I can implement it.

Pricing and availability

Yoink is available exclusively through the Mac App Store for $2.99/€2.39. A free 15-day trial is available at the website (direct download link)

As always, I very much appreciate your feedback, bug reports and feature requests, so please keep them coming 🙂

Thank you and enjoy,
Matthias

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