Michael Bianco

How Much Is Too Much

I like os x because its UI is pretty & functional at the same time. OS X does have it’s fancy visual effects, but in most cases the effects are done well enough that they don’t get in the way of your work. Expose is a great example of this. The zoom effect always take the same amount of time no-matter how many windows you have open, and its done quick enough that it doesn’t get in the way. Sheets are an example of when Apple (in my opinion) slowed things down for the sake of coolness. Don’t get me wrong, I love sheets, I think they are an awesome UI element. Apple just made the default fold out speed way too slow!..

Gear Icon & Add Menu Icon

The last set (at least for now) of my common icons for Cocoa development are the gear/action menu icon, and the add menu icon. You can download the tiff images and Pixen source files here. Feel free to use these icons in any of your projects. These are all the icons I have to release to the community right now. I have a some custom UI classes that I’ll be releasing soon that you can use these icons in.

Apple’s Javascript Debugger: Drosera

I was doing a little web-work, and came across a bug in my javascript code. I spent a couple minutes trying to find it using the javascript console in Safari, but quickly gave up and decided to give Apple’s Javascript debugger (Drosera) a try. I tried it a couple months ago but couldn’t get it to work, but I decided to download the latest nightly build and see if it had improved. It did. Drosera attached to the webkit browser fine, and inspected any page that I looked at in the webkit browser…

Back From C4

Well, yesterday I came from C4. C4 was the first developers conference I have attended, and it was well worth going. I met lots of cool people: some who already have some apps out, some who havent released anything – yet. The Funny There is, at least for me, two pretty funny & memorable moments of C4. Before Brian W. Fitzpatrick gave his talk on the future of subversion he said “All information in this talk is under the NDA.” I immediately got really excited, I’ve never heard NDA information before, and this was about subversion, software I actually use! He follows that up with “Yeah, it is ‘Not Decided Apon’.” That gave me a good laugh 🙂 Aaron Hillegass was the guest speaker at C4…

Plus & Minus Icons

Continuing the trend of releasing common icons used in application development, I present you with the ubiquitous plus and minus (or add & remove as they are known in some parts) icons: You can download the tiff images and Pixen source files here. Feel free to use these icons in any of your projects.

Adding Methods to Core Flash Classes

Every once in a while I get an email that looks like this: I tried using your Object, Function, and String method additions. When I tried to compile I get a bunch of error messages! What do I do?! Yup, this is because the method definitions are not in the Class definition files that flash looks at when compiling. The core class definitions that Flash looks at are located here: [code]~/Library/Application Support/Macromedia/Flash MX 2004/en/Configuration/Classes[/code] That “Classes” folder will contain all the method definitions for all core Flash classes (MovieClip, Object, Button, Color, etc). To make my method additions compile correctly you’ll have to edit the corresponding Class definition files and add the method definitions in…

Green Check & Red Cross Circular Icons

One of the most annoying things about software development on os x is duplicating the look and feel of those cool ui widgets that Apple wont let us use. You know, those icons and widgets you spend hours on trying to get them to work like the “real thing”. For an application I’ve been working on I wanted a little green check icon (ala software update) and a red cross icon. Took me a little photoshopping but I think I got two small icons that look pretty good. You can download a zip with the tif & psd images here. Feel free to use the icons in any of your projects.

WWDC Announcement Thoughts

The announcements this year are not as impressive as last year. Probably the most exciting thing for most people this year is the new Mac Pro: 16GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, dual 64 bit 3GHZ processors. Wow, I want one. I am sort of disappointed with the end-user Leopard features. The time machine idea sounds and looks cool, but I’m wondering how useful it will be and how much it will slow down my computer. The improvements to iChat are very welcome, and the screen sharing feature looks incredible. Spaces looks awesome, finally we are going to get built in virtual desktops. I really don’t use Dashboard or iCal, so changes to those areas of the OS don’t really affect me…

Here Goes Nothing

A couple days ago I went ahead and bought my first guitar, a Fender DG-8. Hopefully with this guitar, a couple teach-yourself DVDs, some books, and some help from my guitar-playing friends I’ll be able to become half-way decent at the guitar. Wish me luck!

XASH 1.3

XASH 1.3 has finally been released!..

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