Archive for the ‘Programs’ Category

Changing Colors

Friday, September 27th, 2019

For those customizing their details view it’s always been a request to be able to change the background color of the image well and the color of the banners that appear over the image to indicate a status, so that they match their main window style.

Matching the Pro Look Dark Style

It’s now possible! With a hidden preference for now. With the beta version of the programs you can use the program called Terminal (located in your Utilities folder) to change the colors. It’s a window were you can give your Mac written commands. Here are the commands you would copy paste with little tweak:

To change the background color of the image use:

defaults write com.bruji.cdpedia "Image Background Color" -string "{200, 200, 200}"

Restart the Pedia and the background of the image will be the above color. The above is a gray. What are those numbers you ask. The numbers are the amount of Red, Green and Blue from 0 to 255. Must color tools will give you those values for a specific color, including Apple’s own color tool in the RGB sliders. Also it’s Pedia specific, be sure to change cdpedia above to the Pedia name you want to modify.

For the banners it’s the same, but they have a gradient, so there are both a top and bottom color (also no restart needed, simply change items in the view).

defaults write com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Coming Soon Bottom Color" -string "{255, 126, 76}"
defaults write com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Coming Soon Top Color" -string "{255, 237, 76}"

More yellow pop for those around the corner releases.

The other two remaining banner keys are as follows for the four colors:

Banner Borrowed Top Color, Banner Borrowed Bottom Color, Banner Overdue Top Color, Banner Overdue Bottom Color

If it becomes very popular I can then expose these options in a preference in future version. The good news is you need only change them once and they will stick around forever.

If you ever want to go back to the default colors, here are the reset commands to copy paste into Terminal.

defaults delete com.bruji.cdpedia "Image Background Color"
defaults delete com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Coming Soon Bottom Color"
defaults delete com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Coming Soon Top Color"
defaults delete com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Overdue Bottom Color"
defaults delete com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Overdue Top Color"
defaults delete com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Borrowed Bottom Color"
defaults delete com.bruji.cdpedia "Banner Borrowed Top Color"

Pedias 6.0

Thursday, June 20th, 2019

With the release of 6.0 the age of the big cats has come to an end. From now on Pedias will run on MacOS Sierra and beyond. I know we are way behind in catching up to Apple and dropping support for yesteryear’s OS, but we like to keep compatibility as long as possible. Yet the future doesn’t stop and we were spending half our time fighting Xcode to support the older MacOS.

Version 6.0 sports a whole new core, thoroughly tested for several months by our dedicated beta testers. Thank you so much to everybody that downloaded the beta and has been helping out. 6.0 is a faster and more robust program yet with the same interface you love. Changes in interface, Dark Mode and a few adjustments for Mojave users coming soon.

The really good news, 6.0 is a free upgrade to all 5.0 Pedia users. I want everybody who has access to new hardware and the latest MacOS to be able to enjoy the best that the Pedias have to offer in terms of stability and future updates. It does mean that updates on version 5.7 effectively cease today but will be available for download for all those with older MacOS versions.

Up next, resurrecting Spotlight for Mojave and Dark Mode. As usual if you run into any issues or have suggestions on the latest version don’t hesitate to write us an email with feedback.

Pedias Updated for Amazon US.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2018

If you are having trouble with the Amazon US returning no results for searches please update to the beta version of the Pedias. This will have the nice side effect of increasing the beta testing pool as well as let me know how many users roughly are having issue with the search. The beta version is very stable and will soon become the 6.0 release of the next version. There is one small caveat, it’s 10.12+ only. So you need MacOS Sierra or High Sierra installed on your computer for the version to run. Here are the links to each pedia beta version:

Please feel free to rename the beta and use it as your regular version. It will update more often as I close in on the release of 6.0 and then will update to 6.0 automatically a few days before the release. If you run into  bugs, do send me an email so I can get those fixed

Also working on adding a few enhancements to the fix and will port it back to the old version and release one last official update of the old version to leave it with all the updated search plugins for users who do not have Sierra or High Sierra.

MacOS High Sierra

Wednesday, November 1st, 2017

Sierra

All the Pedias have been updated to version 5.6. Although we had rolled most of the MacOS High Sierra changes into 5.5.2, there are a few tiny fixes that trickled in as more users moved to High Sierra. There are still a few rough edges, for example in the web view when browsing links, that will be fixed in a future version. Which brings us to the announcement that this version or one close to it will be the last version to support MacOS 10.5 (Leopard).

The era of the big cats is dead and with it soon support for those older systems in the future Pedias. We have been working on a parallel version that will only support 10.12+ and above. This is why some of the rough edges exist in High Sierra with 5.6, as we need to drop older system support to modernize the web view and bring all the new enhancements to the new version.

In short if you are on an older MacOS, be sure to grab this version to stay with the latest version that will run on your system. Soon the open beta will move to the 10.12 only version and that will be announced here, for those that want to test the new version early.

As usual the self update should take care of updating for you, either our own or the Mac App Store. Otherwise click the links below and replace your current version:

Bookpedia
CDpedia
DVDpedia
Gamepedia

Pocketpedia 3.4.4: The Move Edition

Tuesday, January 24th, 2017

Version 3.4.4 brings the ability to select covers while editing from your own media library. So that you can select those images that you took a quick snap of while at the shop. Also has the ability with tap and hold to use copy paste, if you are bringing in an image from a website without having to save it into your own media library.

Pocketpedia Swipe Gesture

A common feedback is that the move button is buried in the footer of the edit screen. Which means tapping edit, scrolling down and then using the move button, when doing several items this quickly becomes tedious. The move is now available directly from the swipe options, instead of just delete. Also the ability to mark something as played, seen or read. Should an entry currently be borrowed the read button will become return, giving another quick access to a common action.

5.5.1 Pedias, The macOS Sierra Version

Sunday, November 6th, 2016

Version 5.5.1 is now live and ready for download.

macOS Sierra

This is mainly full of smaller fixes for macOS Sierra that were hard to catch before the final release of the Sierra gold master. We ran the Sierra betas and added any fixes into version 5.5 and released this before Sierra so that users would not even notice any issues when the the Sierra release came.

But bugs are always lurking around corners and a few drawing issues and edge cases made it through the cracks or were introduced in 10.12.1. All that is now fixed in this release.

As usual the self update should take care of updating for you, either our own or the Mac App Store. Otherwise click the links below and replace your current version:

Bookpedia
CDpedia
DVDpedia
Gamepedia

Thank you to the all the beta testers and all the users that wrote in reporting Sierra bugs. We consider 5.5.1 our 100% Sierra version, but if you do run into any issues do be sure to write in and will get it fixed.

Pocketpedia Links and iOS 9

Wednesday, September 16th, 2015

In iOS 9 Apple has made opening links from Pocketpedia slightly better but also slightly worse. The good news is that linking to another app now displays a small text button on the top left hand corner of your screen that lets you quickly back track to Pocketpedia without having to go through the home screen or use a multi-touch gesture. So digging deeper into an HTML, IMDb or PDF link from Pocketpedia is faster and more natural and has a quick return.

Peter iPhone Search

Peter iPhone Search

The bad news is Twitter was abusing the ability to open links with other apps to detect what apps were installed on your device and then targeting advertisement based on this information. Apparently the list of apps checked was as big as 2,500 different apps.

Apple makes a fuss about the need to approve and control the App Store to prevent malicious behavior, yet they didn’t simply ban the Twitter app, instead they put the burden on all the other developers. We are now required to list within our app all possible link types that you might want to open.

This new information goes inside the apps info.plist file under the key LSApplicationQueriesSchemes. Luckily there is no restriction on the number of links that can be listed so far. Pocketpedia for iOS 9 has included a smallish list of the most common types that our users use, such as pdf://, epub://, iBooks:// and imdb://. The problem is that our users are a varied bunch and use all kinds of apps. So if you find that a link to your favorite app from Pocketpedia is no longer listed, please drop us a note with the URL scheme to the name of the app and we will be sure to include it in the next release.

A single person using a single app means we have to list that URL scheme in Pocketpedia for all users. If only a small percentage of users are using a unique app, soon our exception list will grow quite large. But as I said, for now there are no limits and hopefully Apple reviewers will not start complaining that we are listing too many URL schemes.

Apps not updated for iOS 9 have a little leeway of being able to ask for 50 random URL schemes. We petitioned Apple to make this the default via an Apple bug report, but it never came to fruition. Each individual user is likely to only use a few favorite apps from Pocketpedia so a lower limit such as 20 random links would have been a perfect solution and it would have solved the abuse issue from Twitter without any code changes required for other third party developers.

Out of Africa

I find it discouraging that an iOS 8 app gets better support and treatment than an app developed for iOS 9. Especially since the technology exists and is implemented to allow a small number of URLs and could have worked beautifully paired with the new exception list. But on the upside, we now get full Spotlight integration, so you can search your media directly in Spotlight.

Welcome to the Media Search Party Spotlight in iOS 9

Wednesday, September 16th, 2015

You have always been able to search your movies, books, albums and games inside Pocketpedia with the integrated search field at the top of the collection view. Now you can also initiate searches directly from the Spotlight search in your dashboard thanks to third-party Spotlight integration in iOS 9.

The Spotlight search will not only list all the matches across multiple apps but also across multiple media inside Pocketpedia. Spotlight even knows the last item you were viewing in Pocketpedia, giving it more relevance in the search results.

Robert Redford

Apple wants to limit the amount of data that it is forced to index so only the main fields are listed with Spotlight. When you need a deep search (for example searching the awards field) you will have to perform that search in Pocketpedia’s regular search bar directly.

Peter iPhone Search

Peter iPhone Search

Searching directly in Spotlight will list a number of results from different sources and three results from an installed app. There is a small “Show more” button that will expand the Pocketpedia results to include all the matches in your media.

Clicking on the results will take you straight into Pocketpedia’s details view. Linking inside Pocketpedia has also been improved so that you can now easily get back to Pocketpedia after opening a link, using the button at the top left of your screen. Moving between apps now feels natural. (Unfortunately links have also become a bit more limited.)

Peter iPhone Search

Peter iPhone Search

Siri does not yet integrate with the third party index so you can’t ask your phone, “Search for The Princess Bride in Pocketpedia” or even more convenient “Do I have The Princess Bride in Pocketpedia?”. Looking forward to this improvement in iOS 10. It would cement iOS as your one and only private assistant.

Pocketpedia 3.3.3: Sorting Sections

Friday, July 3rd, 2015

The latest Pocketpedia version, 3.3.3, is now live in the App Store. Among a few bug fixes the biggest change are new section headers for the current sorting selection. These allow you to see what group of the current sort an entry belongs to right away without having to tap deeper into the details. For example the genre sorting on any of the Pedias.

genre

Useful in several other fields as well that will be enabled for the new sorting, such as rated.

Rated

Although director/author/artist/platform are visible in the item listing view we still included the section headers as it helps to group all the items visually together. The section headers are simple so that the effect is not too distracting.

Author

Hope you enjoy the new version and let us know what you think!

Pocketpedia 3.3: The iPhone 6 Version

Friday, April 24th, 2015

Collections in Pocketpedia iPhone 6

Books in Pocketpedia iPhone 6

 

The latest version of Pocketpedia is out and includes support for iPhone 6 and iPhone Plus.

We apologize for the delay in getting this update out there for users sporting the new iPhone sizes. It took us only a month to get the iPhone 6 sizes ready and tuned up, but then we also wanted to add a few extra features that we had been working on. Specifically swiping between details and covers views without having to go back to the list view. We ended up having technical issues with the animation but because we felt close to a break through kept delaying the release.

But now we have gone ahead and released the iPhone 6 update and held the swiping and other updates so that we can work on them some more.

Hope you enjoy all the extra space on the new iPhones as well as not having to look at slightly blurry icons that where being upscaled to fit all the real estate on the iPhone Plus.

Update: 3.3.1 is out with a quick fix for a crashing bug on the iPad. Apple granted us an expedited review, so no wait on the review queue.