What is new at MMISoftware?
Well, the blog is looking and feeling a little neglected of late. Several reasons for this but the main one is I have been very busy on a number of projects.
1. Work for Quartz
Quartz (http://www.qrtz.co.uk) is a company founded in the UK about a year ago. They provide highly specialised financing to industry (I won’t even beginning to explain how what they do as I don’t understand it – have a look at their website). Anyway, for the past 10 months or so (see an earlier blog entry) I have been designing and coding their website. The website has been through three or four different designs and I think they are now happy with the final version. With luck the site should go live in a week or so.
In addition, I have been doing some php work for Quartz. At this stage I can’t say what, exactly, as it is still not ready to go live. However, I can say that I have had to learn some rather interesting financial calculation methods. Some of these may appear in future MMISoftware products (see note on ‘widgets’ below).
2. MMISoftware program updates
iCalMaker: Work is still continuing on version 2 of iCalMaker. However, because of the ongoing work for Quartz and some of the work below, progress has slowed. Mind you, this has not prevented the list of suggestions and requests from users growing – thanks for the input, it should make version 2 a great release. Version 1.8 iCalMaker download.
It is anticipated that there will be one or two more releases of iCalMaker before version 2. One of the releases will address any ‘late issues’ with Tiger (see below) and add a new esellerate engine, the other will be a general maintenance release to address a couple of known, but rare, bugs I am currently working on.
Web Photos: Version 2 of Web Photos has been on hold for some time. This was mainly because of a bug/problem that could not be solved. It now looks as though I have a solution to the problem, although it may mean the program requires 10.4 or greater. Also, the addition of the esellerate sales engine still needs to be completed.
‘The new program’: There is a new program in the works. The original release date was planned for March. However, due to the work for Quartz, and impending release of Tiger, work has slowed.
3. Tiger, tiger, burning bright….
As you may be aware (!) version 10.4 of Mac OS X is due for release on 29th April 2005. At present all of MMISoftware programs (iCalMaker,Web Photos, Power on X, mailMaker, Tunes Menu, BMI Calculator, quickWebAlbum, JPEGCleaner and webSiteCleaner) function with Tiger. However, until 10.4 hits the stores, and some final testing is carried out, the new versions will not be released.
Four interesting things are in Tiger, from a developers point of view:
- Widgets – not sure what to make of these. They look useful although I haven’t spent enough time with them to be sure. MMISoftware will certainly be developing a few Widgets which will complement existing products
- ‘Core graphics/image‘ – This will have some profound effects on the development of Web Photos, JPEGCleaner and quickWebAlbum. Time will tell….
- WebKit.framework – This framework is used in a number of MMISoftware programs and basically provides ‘web browser like’ properties to the programs. The recent changes introduced by Apple, as part of the new Safari in 10.4, may have some interesting ‘knock-on’ effects for MMISoftware development. Watch this space!
- xcode version 2 – All programs produced by MMISoftware are written in cocoa using xcode. The new version of xcode in 10.4 will make life a lot easier.
