Released! PackRat 0.8. Editing has begun

I just released PackRat v0.8 (build 187). The much awaited editing functionality has started to arrive. Here's the info:

New Features

• View->Home command and Home toolbar item


• Now downloads information about images and files (but doesn't display them yet)


• Lists are now editable. Add new items and new lists. edit them, delete them. Then sync with Backpack and your changes are uploaded


• Inline images (not attached images) are now displayed, but only if they are in your cache.
  

Bug Fixes

• Backpack doesn't properly escape list titles and PackRat now does a better job at reporting these sync errors due to quotes and html tags in titles


• The Close Window command is back.


• I found another sync problem when SSL is turned on. If you've been having problems syncing that I haven't been able to help you with, I think this fixed might have done the trick.

Known Bugs

• Tags browser can crash PackRat when dragging sizer


• Help needs finishing


• Still problems when syncing pages with "bad" characters, and HTML tags or quotes in titles


• Inline images are not displayed properly if not in cache

PackRat Update

I'm really close to a release. I was hoping to get one out last weekend, but the weather was nice and I was having too much fun. I just need to do a little more testing and then I'll release it. You can't edit everything yet, but you can edit your lists. I've decided to release editing features as I go. I'm not excited about the UI, but I can tweak that later. The important thing is to get the editing functionality into your hands, because you need it.

How much for a Cocoa developer?

I've been doing Cocoa development on OS X for about the last 3 years in Salt Lake. There doesn't seem to be a lot of Cocoa development going on in Utah. If you know of some, I'd love to hear about it. I'd also like to know what hourly rate Cocoa developers are making. I make most of my income doing Cocoa contract work and I sometimes feel like I'm getting the short end of the stick here in Utah. It's great to work in Cocoa and I enjoy my client's project but it would be nice to make something comparable to what I could make doing boring Java work. So, if you know what Cocoa developers are making, let me know. And if you need some Cocoa work done, let me know. Ruby on Rails work as well.

One Week To Go

As most of my friends know, Alias is my favorite show. It hasn't been great the last few years but I still get a kick out of it. The first episode in ages is coming out next week and I'm getting excited. Nothing excites me more on TV than seeing an Alias promo or the start of another episode. Hopefully, the writers have done their job and Alias will have a proper finish to its run. I will always remember Season 1 as simply my favorite show ever.

Sydney! Run!

and wait for me :)

PackRat Update

More progress on editing. Now you can edit items and delete them. Don't quite like the UI for this though. So, I still need to improve that. I made some improvements to the code that should make writing the rest of the editing code a lot better.

I still want to make sure the database format is complete going forward as well. This isn't necessarily critical as you can easily just delete your local database and then sync to do a database conversion. However, you could lose local edits that you've made if you don't first upload them to Backpack before deleting your local database.

I'd really like to get some feedback here. Would you rather see me release PackRat with editing features as I go along or would you rather see me get everything done first before you see a new release?

Blog of Note?

For some reason Blogger listed me on their Blog of Note list after my West Wing post. It's the first time I've ever mentioned the West Wing on my blog. Is that why my blog is of note? What about the PackRat posts? If somebody from Blogger knows what the deal is, I'm curious.

The West Wing Election Tonight

The West Wing is one of my favorite shows and is in its last season. I'm really enjoying it. Tonight is the election night on the show. I predict Santos will win. I'm also looking forward to seeing Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe's character) again. The West Wing lost a little when he went away. I don't know if he is on tonight, but he will be in some upcoming episode.

PackRat Progress

No release this week, but I'm making progress on editing. So far you can check/uncheck list items and create new ones. I'm currently working on a good interface for editing and deleting list items. Uploading these changes works as well, but I want to work with it myself to make sure I get the bugs, minimize database changes going forward, etc. It's going fairly slowly, but remember I only have the weekends to work on this and it's fairly involved. If you'd like to see it done faster, just buy a license. The more income I get from PackRat licenses, then the less time I need to spend making money from other sources. I'd much rather spend my time on PackRat.