lI' Ghun Blog

Nymphicus for Windows 1.2 with Facebook out now

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-11-29T07:22:14+01:00

Today Nymphicus for Windows has been released. See the following video on what’s new:

So what is new in 1.2 compared to 1.1.4?

Facebook integration added
If Snarl is started after Nymphicus (or restarted during run time) app and classes are now (re)registered
Filter now can be applied on the sending application/client name (both Twitter and Facebook)
Deactivating a filter in a view definition now immediately brings back items which were hidden because of this filter
Buttons overlay for user image now with animation. This makes the delay until the main window is responding on mouse on startup much smaller
Pressing the fav button on a tweet now a background thread – user interface stays accessible
Account selector (e. g. in compose or search window) now shows the account color
On various points the full name instead of only username is shown (as Facebook username often is only a number)
Replying on item with multiple Twitter accounts being mentioned: done as reply all with the additional username selected to easily remove them by just starting to write
Conversation view: see the full conversation on replies and direct messages by pressing the small message type icon
Speed and performance optimizations
Snarl notifications on initial fetch now reliable not being displayed (no more screen flooding)
Smooth scrolling now disabled – now changing the current view is more or less instant and the filter box is back to filter as you type (you don’t need hit enter anymore.
This is a massive (!) performance boost but anyway if you liked to old smooth scrolling you can reenable it in the preferences
Compose window opens now at the same location as the main window
Fix: Recent tweets in UserInfo window was unreliable

Release Candidate of Nymphicus for Windows 1.2 / Homepage

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-11-20T12:06:14+01:00

Yesterday I have uploaded ~~the release candidate of Nymphicus for Windows 1.2~~. Get the final already on the download page!

While it has quite many improvements on the Twitter part (like conversation view) the one main great thing is that it is now a multi protocol client with also Facebook being available. Yes, this means you now can create views mixed of Twitter and Facebook accounts (and within a Facebook account choose between photos, videos, links and so on) and also filter them by sender, text content and (new) client name.

You can see your Wall including the likes and the comments and post to it, like a status as well as writing comments - great, isn't it?

And behind the curtain the structure of the Nymphicus for Windows is now extremely open so adding other services will be relatively(!) easy and fast - I am desperately waiting for Google to finish the Google+ API finally - the current state is practically useless (get only only public entries).

More details when I the final will go online (and which will be than available via automatic update).

Second and also quite important: Nymphicus now has an own dedicated homepage where I currently work on adding more screenshots, videos and documentation. Find it at www.nymphicusapp.com.

Soon: Nymphicus 1.2, Winslew 1.7.1 and Huntur

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-09-19T19:25:13+02:00

First of all I just wanna say I am back from our awesome vacation to Norway which has been the main reason I didn't post any update here in the blogs for quite some time. I just can say you should visit (northern) Norway if you did not already.

So being back now some days (or even weeks already) I want to give you a brief update on what we are currently working and what you can expect soon (more or less).

First of all Nymphicus 1.2: The Mac version is already in final testing stage and is mainly about the three points performance, stability and design which are the three most noted points user have been telling us we should improve. The performance is quite boosted in the new version as Michael did an own implementation of the Mac OS X listview control which is quite great in variability but can be some pain when it comes to scrolling with many and complex entries.

The Windows version 1.2 will take some more time but I am currently working (and have already made great progress) on its main new feature: different account types. By that I mean that you can then also mix your Facebook account(s) with your Twitter accounts which is one more point where the Views concept comes greatly into play. Having said Facebook I say it's the first non-Twitter account type - but the planings do include stuff like Google+ and maybe something like quote.fm - the now already implemented data structure in Nymphicus for Windows is quite open so I can add new account types by "only" creating there specific API calls and methods (e. g. Facebook means I need a like button, a comment section and so on). Also 1.2 will of course bring some new features of the Twitter part - the main thing wished by the greatest Nymphicus fan out there ;) is a conversation view.
I also think (since quite some time) to integrate Tweetmarker which means you can sync your current read state between different clients and computers (or smartphones). In fact I even think about making Tweetmarker an own intermediate release and postpone the Facebook part for the next release. Let me know what you prefer by contacting me on Twitter.

Winslew also will get a smaller update quite soon out of a user request: You can disable the caching and only fetch the more and less versions directly online. That said the plans for Winslew 2.0 are already in my mind but it will take some time as I need to go to the office every day ;)

Finally the work on Huntur has started. Huntur is a new tool (in fact two: online and desktop) for quite a small group of people: those who do dog agility (like I do) and want to host a tournament and/or take part at one (register online, get confirmation and so on). To let the possible buyers group become even smaller I currently only plan to do it in German and so the dedicated Huntur webpage is German only and will possibly stay German. Anyway a short description here in English: Online system to advertise tournaments for clubs, administer the registrations of starters and some more now secret features plus a desktop application (Windows only for now) to administer the tournament itself (entering time & errors, creating lists, calculating winner and so on). Personally this is my learning project for Ruby on Rails which is (I can already say that now) an amazing language for online systems (did PHP only before).

So stay tuned - I know I do want to do to much at the same time but I'll try (and even have already a deadline for Huntur ;)).

Nymphicus for Mac 1.1 out now

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-07-24T22:05:55+02:00

Nymphicus for Mac 1.1 just hit the Mac AppStore and it got not only stability updates and bugfixes, but several new features:

1) German localization has been added.

2) Support for ReadItLater, Instapaper, Delicious and Pinboard: Send URLs in Tweets to these services

3) TwitLonger support added: Send Tweets which are longer than 140 characters. View complete TwitLonger-Text as tooltip.

4) Support for key shortcuts:
⌘N for a new Tweet
⌘I lets you upload an image
⌘S shortens all URLs in your Tweet
⌘+Enter to send Tweet
⌘S to open search window
⌘R to manually refresh tweets
⌘, to open Preferences

5) You can now configure your Growl notifications for every single account, list and saved search

6) Not new but not mentioned until now officially: Nymphicus for Mac is fully compatible with Mac OS X Lion (this has been true for 1.0 already)

Winslew 1.7 has been released / lI' Ghun next

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-07-19T19:27:31+02:00

After all the work on Nymphicus 1.0 und 1.1 it was time again to finally bring out a new version of Winslew which covers most of the current user wishes and fixes a bug I found during work on Nymphicus. So what's new this time?

First and most important change is a full browser control available for the content window. This means an address bar, stop, reload, previous and next buttons. So if you want Winslew 1.7 is now a more or less complete WebKit based browser. Also small but nice change: There is now a small progress bar on the bottom while page is loaded so you see that Winslew is working.

When I changed to WebKit I saw many new possibilities (like the full browser) and one of them is the option to easily integrate a print button. Those of you having used some older Winslew version know there has had been one in the past part in real world it was far to unstable so I removed it. It's back now and this time it is stable :)

Next to some minor bugfixes there has been a quite huge one I never saw as my own Windows setups don't cover that case: When you installed Winslew on a Windows Vista / 7 and your current user did not have administration privileges the setting where not stored correctly on first start and even worse the start menu entries have not been created. This is fixed in 1.7 - sorry for the inconvenience.

Finally some word to the future of Winslew. Oh, I think starting a paragraph like this might create some fear but no, the future is bright. I think about going to something like a 2.0 with a quite improved interface (I have learned so much with Nymphicus...) and I also think about adding Instapaper as second option - what would you think...?

One more thing: Those of you following me for quite some time (also on my open source projects) know having finished a software means I want to start the next one. So here are my next three things I want to do (in order of when I plan to start them):

An online dog agility tournament administration system with an offline application for administration of the tournament when it is running (both fully out of the pain I do have myself as being the guy responsible for such things in my club).
A full featured Google Reader client (my open source one Desktop Google Reader is "only" for unread items
A text editor based on Git meaning unlimited going back in old versions with a text centered interface.

Nymphicus for Windows 1.1 has been relased

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-07-13T07:48:20+02:00

The first update of Nymphicus for Windows has just hit the download server and can now be installed by you. And here are all changes in this update:

1) Read It Later, Instapaper, del.icio.us and pinboard.in sending of single links or complete tweets has been added to the enhanced context menu

2) Twitlonger is now integrated - so if you write a tweet with more than 140 characters it is automatically shortened. The other way round if someone write a Twitlonger text it is shown in full in the list window directly - no extra clicking on the (cont) link needed

3) In general there are quite some new context menu items - e. g. the possibility to decide which of your accounts you want to use to retweet a tweet.

4) Links in info boxes are now always clickable

5) And here the rest of the changelog:

Streaming interface error handling greatly improved
Sending in compose window not triggered by presseing Return but Ctrl+Return now (to write multiline tweets)
Update available window now more polished
Startup account verification now background thread -> windows stays accessible and its faster
Search in search window now a background thread -> window stays usable during search
Create view window of First Start Wizard greatly enhanced and now used also when adding a view in preferences

- select all
- invert selection
- select all of one kind at once

Update check is now a background thread and does not slow down startup anymore
New list creation window nicer design, name textbox max length 25 chars (limit from Twitter) and if an error occures the info about is shown in a message box
Number of items in the main window is now limited to save RAM - for now to 500 items in maximum (if more the oldest are not shown)
Compose window now has TopMost-flag to be (if possible) in front of all windows currently open
Fix: Setup did not create start menu entries and first start was done on wrong user account if using non privileged account on Vista/7
Fix: Edit lists window did not show correct list of lists directly after opening
Fix: Filter were not applied on items directly loaded on startup but only for updates
Fix: Retweets done using the actions menu in a Snarl notification were not shown (updated) in list window
Some more smaller bugfixes

Nymphicus for Mac 1.1 will follow in a few days...

Nymphicus for Windows videos added

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-06-18T19:14:18+02:00

After the upload of the videos about Nymphicus for Mac yesterday I today uploaded the videos showing Nymphicus for Windows (installation and first use, daily use and preferences) to our new video section.

First start

(includes installation)

Daily use

Preferences

Nymphicus for Mac videos added

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-06-17T20:03:56+02:00

We just created and uploaded some videos about Nymphicus for Mac so you can see what it is like to work and play with it without needing to buy it in advance.

Nymphicus for Mac: First start

Nymphicus for Mac: Daily usage

Nymphicus for Mac: Preferences

Nymphicus for Mac 1.0 available in the Mac App Store now!

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-06-15T19:51:48+02:00

Last night at round about 2:00 AM local German time the important email hit our mailboxes: Nymphicus for Mac 1.0 has been reviewed by Apple and is now available in the Mac App Store. So exciting to see all our work from over half a year now getting out on the street to you.

We wouldn't be programmers by if we wouldn't already working on the first update which will be Nymphicus 1.1. This update will bring the last features we originally planned already for 1.0 (mainly Read It Later and Twitlonger) as well as some nice new ideas and for sure some bugfixes which will for sure come by the time more people use it and find some issues neither we nor the beta testers found.

But now I am dancing to "On the floor" by Jennifer Lopez just feeling good :)

Nymphicus for Windows 1.0 out now!

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-06-11T13:44:16+02:00

I can't believe it but just a few seconds ago I uploaded the official final Nymphicus for Windows 1.0 setup to my webserver and it can now be downloaded, tested and purchased by everyone.

After more than a half year of concept, development and testing we are very proud that it is done now.

If you wonder where the Mac version is - be patient as we need to be patient too. Also Nymphicus for Mac 1.0 is done and ready to download - as soon as the Mac App Store review process is completed. We can't say how soon that will be but I think within the next few days I can add another blog post here... :)

Also the website has been updated in many places - the most important changes are:

Beta testers all get a free license code as a big thank you. I already added hopefully all of you to my central license database so Nymphicus should pick up the license automatically. Please send me an email if not.

We already have a roadmap for 1.1 and will start working on it now :)

But for today I think both of us are ready for some kind of party.

Nymphicus Teaser V: Notifications

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-06-03T17:45:54+02:00

As we are getting very close to the release of Nymphicus 1.0 there is one last of the important features I do wanna feature here in this blog.

So let's talk about notifications. For Mac users the concept of Growl is widely known. On Windows Snarl does something similar (and is now compatible with the newly created Growl API which still waits for its start on the Mac itself). So Growl and Snarl are central notification providers. They offer applications (like Nymphicus) to use them to deliver notifications to the user.

The main thing about using a centralized system over own implementation is unity. You have one single place where you administer all your notifications from different apps - like the used layout, the display time and so on. Some examples of different styles can be found here and here.

That said I today want to focus on the Windows version as its notification support is more advanced currently than the one of the Mac version (this will be true for 1.0 and they will get equal in a later version) as me being a long time supporter / contributor of Snarl (more or less all my apps use Snarl).

So Nymphicus for Windows uses the latest features of Snarl which have started working in Snarl 2.4.1 (which is round about one week old). But step by step.

In Snarl you have the concept of notification classes for different types of notifications. The user than is able to define to have different behavior on different classes (e. g. show search results only 5 seconds but show direct messages sticky, blinking red and forward them to your iPhone). Nymphicus registers a class for any possible notification type meaning every account has own classes for timeline, mentions, retweets and direct messages plus every single saved search has its own class and every single subscribed list has its own class. As an example see my Snarl setup - I have many, many classes and treat them quite differently.

One of the big features of both Growl and Snarl is the possibility to forward notifications. The two most important ones are for sure the possibilities to forward them to your iPhone or Android phone as push notifications.

And finally one of the newest features of Snarl 2.4 are actions - this let's the application define an own context menu on each notification for commands the user can start right out of the notification. Nymphicus registers the four actions "Reply", "Retweet", "Write Direct Message" and "Favorite". So you can initiate those actions directly out of the notification without Nymphicus even being in foreground.

I want to thank Toke for providing state of the art .NET functions to use the newest APIs and fulfilling my wishes about how actions are handled. And in general want to thank Chris for Snarl itself which was my own personal starting point in developing desktop applications.

The Mac version uses Growl integration:

Nymphicus Teaser IV: Views

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-06-02T11:04:24+02:00

As the release of Nymphicus 1.0 is getting closer quite fast the today's teaser is about the "top secret" feature of Nymphicus which makes Nymphicus different to all other Twitter clients.

The starting point of Nymphicus has been me being very unhappy with all available Twitter clients if you have multiple accounts, saved searches or lists. You either have clients where you always click between different lists of items (e. g. the official Twitter client / Tweetie) or have quite big windows with multiple lists which fill more or less your entire screen (like Tweetdeck).

So my idea has been to create a new way the user can customize easily what is the most important to him (or her) to get exactly those items displayed in one single list at once while hiding the not so important stuff in another view. I think I'll start by giving you two screenshots of the view preferences in both the Mac and Windows version to give you a first idea what it looks like:

So the concept of a view is to collect all the different types of tweets from all you accounts, lists and searches and view them together. To give you some examples I list here some views we already use ourself:

All main data: All timelines, mentions, direct messages and retweets from all our accounts
Chat: All mentions and direct messages from all accounts (so in this view you have everything together you may need/want to answer
Nymphicus: Here we collect all from the account @liGhun plus some searches like "#Nymphicus" and a list with all beta testers of Nymphicus to not miss news about Nymphicus
Snarl: As me being contributor for Snarl on Windows I have a view which combines @TlhanGhun, @SnarlNotifier and some searches like "#snarl" plus I do have some lists where I collect users known to be power users of Snarl
Lists: A collection of all lists I am subscribed to

I think you got it now. On daily use I am now able to see fast all the items which I am interested right now without having to fill my screen with a big client or needing to click to different accounts and subtypes all the time.

The main window has a dropdown where you can choose to change the currently displayed view easily.

As a bonus point Nymphicus also has the ability to filter within views - so you can define which accounts and/or words you don't want to see in you view while they might be interesting in another view.

Nymphicus Teaser III: Links and Images

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-05-15T19:27:22+02:00

Just in front of a new week in the office teaser 3 of the upcoming Twitter client Nymphicus is here.

Today we'll have a look at the link and image management in Nymphicus. So let's start with the links:

Nymphicus supports some different link shortening services to shorten links in your tweet.

(Mac)

(Windows)

This one part of the link management. On the other hand Nymphicus is able to decode most of the available link shortener and you get a tooltip over the link about its real destination.

(Mac)

As an alternative you can choose that the extracted link shall be displayed direct in the tweet display so you can see it directly.

(Windows)

As with link shorteners it is quite similar with the image services. You can choose several of them for image uploading:

(Mac)

(Windows)

And also images are extracted and are displayed in a tooltip for a short first look at them.

(Mac)

(Windows)

In general I want to note that Nymphicus can extract much more servies (both link shortener and image uploaders) - not only the few it can use to shorten / upload. The architecture is quite open open - if the ultimate service may occur we can be fast to use it :)

Nymphicus Teaser II: Lists

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-05-12T20:34:59+02:00

As promissed on my last blog entry I will continue to feature some of the features of Nymphicus every few days. Of course the main unique feature itself will be the last one. Today we'll have a look at the lists support built into Nymphicus.

Lists are one of the Twitter features which nearly nobody really uses as nobody knows about them and most clients just don't really support them. This was true for myself too - I had a typical "TestList" on my account, added some users and never came back.

While implementing the list features (remember the promise that Nymphicus will support all available new features of Twitter?) and thinking where I could need lists in my client I simply added it everywhere where it made sense to me and just right now I started using lists personally as I just can reach them quite easily and fast.

Nymphicus has a complete lists management - meaning you can create lists, remove lists add users to lists and also remove users from lists. This is where I started - implement all available features in one list configuration window. But now I add lists support to all places where it makes sense to me (and I might find some more over the time). The main thing is that I have a user info dialog showing all about a users (number of tweets, following status and so on). In Nymphicus you can directly out of this window add this user to one of your lists. Or even better: you can create a list right there and add the use instantly to it.

The main thing why lists are more fun than with any other client (or even the Twitter homepage) is the main concept of Nymphicus which is called "Views". But this feature will be explained another time...

Follow @liGhun to stay informed about all the current progress - less than a month until planned release date...

Nymphicus 1.0 to be released in early June - Teaser I

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-05-08T15:52:20+02:00

Long time no blog post. But the reason is we have been focused in getting both Nymphicus versions (Windows and Mac) ready for a 1.0 release. I am today happy to officially tell you that we have the plan to release them in early June to the public. Here are the two official icons - first the one for Windows, second the one for the Mac

Until then I will give you some short teasers in various blog posts about some of the main features that make Nymphicus that special.

Let's start today with filters. In Nymphicus you can define both blacklist and whitelist filters to be applied on all your views (what a view is will be explained in a later blog post). Every filter can search for texts within the username, the text or both. If it is a blacklist filter the tweet won't be displayed - if it is a whitelist filter is is shown regardless if a following blacklist would hit it.

Filters are serial - you can apply as many as you want in a row.

If you want to get access to a beta version we will be happy to give you access to a test version. Beta testers filing at least one bug report will get the final release with a 50% discount on Windows - I hope we can do so on the Mac too but we are new to the App Store and first need to figure out if / how this might be done there.

Open letter to Twitter

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-03-13T12:08:31+01:00

Hi Twitter and especially hi @rsarver,

Yesterday you decided to kill Twitter. Sounds dramatic? Yes, but it is the truth! I am one of the early adaptor users who has seen many fail whales in all the years all of the time I loved Twitter for its simplicity, its openness and its reduction to the minimum.

And I loved to have many choices on how I can access Twitter. I never really liked the website but always used several different clients on all my platforms (which are Mac, Windows and the iPhone). As with me personally having different clients used in a wild mixture depending on daily mood and current needs you have many million users with many different ideas on how they want to use Twitter.

Then you started to say "one client to rule them all" and acquired Tweetie and made official clients for the iPhone and the Mac. OK, in this moment it just made the options better than before as one new client means another idea on how to use Twitter. But already than all the developers of iPhone and Mac Twitter clients got upset because of a free of charge opponent. Anyway, I bought several of them as Tweetie / Official Twitter client never matched my needs.

Now you decided to go a step ahead and want to stop those other existing and upcoming Twitter clients by changing the API rules and to simply forbid them. Sorry, but this the worst thing you could have done. Never forget who made you as big as you are today - it have been all the users using all the many clients with their many ideas on user interfaces. Even I myself started last December my own project on a Twitter client on both Windows (where no official client is available) and Mac (where an official client is available next to many, many others...). Why did I start? Because I have another idea on how people can user Twitter more efficient. Now you tell me and all the developers out there, that there is only one right idea for a user interface - yours. I am sorry but I won't believe this is the real reason. For me it seems the main reason is you want to press money out of your user base - as we all have already seen on Twitter for iPhone (which I don't use btw) and your bad implementation of some kind of advertisement. Don't get me wrong - I am the last saying you should not try to make some money - but be aware that your money comes from your big number of users.

I do have active API keys for my client so could finish it on plan (public beta should have started by the end of the month) but now I am not sure if I even want to support Twitter at all. And what shall I say to the potential customers of my client? Maybe Twitter is gonna revoke my API keys if they feel lucky and it will stop working?

So STOP WITH THIS BULLSHIT and let the API open for everyone. Don't trust on your user base to stay with you if you go ahead in this way - Twitter is a service used by first and second adaptors - they are the first to come but also can be the first to leave.

Personally I will revoke my Twitter sending integration in both my popular Windows Google Reader client as well as from my Snarl style within one week and start to port my own client over to StatusNet if you stay with those regulations. I will have a look for one week what happens and if you listen to your users - if not all of my Twitter accounts will be closed and I won't be to sad to leave you.

Kind regards

Sven

Winslew 1.6 out now

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-03-06T10:57:40+01:00

As having promised last week I just finished the final works on Winslew 1.6 and you can get it from my download page. Your auto update notifier shall give you this news on next Winslew restart too.

Winslew 1.6 is about two major enhancements. The first is more or less invisible under the hut but for me personally it was one the biggest wished since I started with Winslew (which turns one year in two days as I just saw). With Winslew 1.6 the rendering of the webpages and caches is no more done by the Windows included renderer (which is Internet Explorer in fact) but instead I ship it with a builtin WebKit based browser. This gives us a much faster browser (still can't believe the difference) which is more standards compliant and those not bug you always with some script errors or similar. You won't see it directly but you'll gonna feel it.

The second one is a feature request I got on UserVoice (it's #1336245) which asked for some keyboard shortcuts for faster and easier use. When starting this feature I thought "how hard can it be" but while I implemented it I found places to optimize again and again and again so in the end it took a little bit longer but I think you can now do most of not all by keyboard in Winslew. This starts with every button in Winslew 1.6 main window having a keyboard shortcut now but also means that most of the dialogs (tag editing, title changes and so on) now react on the Escape-key to close immediately as well as triggering the Save/OK button on pressing Enter (if all required data is entered already). Also the input cursor is now placed in the best fitting textbox on opening a new dialog.

But I didn't stop here and thought of enhancements in every Window and the best example of small but cool additions is the "Add new page"-window. In Winslew 1.5 the only nice feature was that a URL in the clipboard automatically has been inserted into the textbox. With 1.6 this is still the case but Winslew 1.6 also tries to discover the title of the linked webpage now and places it into the title textbox.

As last small enhancement I wanna mention that you can now change the colors of the list view to be more lighter for better readability. This has been wish #133649 on UserVoice - so if you have wishes for one of the next releases you see there is the right place to store them. I try to put as many of them in my next releases every time :)

Nymphicus first Preview / Winslew 1.6 one week late

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-02-27T13:20:50+01:00

We are very happy that starting today both the Mac as also the Windows version of Nymphicus have been sent to some initial testers. Neither is this release finished nor is it working 100% as expected - but the main features are all working and now we are more and more working on optimization, stabilization and adding the last missing features. If you want to be one of the early testers just drop us a mail :)

Sadly I have to postpone Winslew 1.6 for one week as a bad cold has hit during the last days and because of the headache I have not been able to make the last adjustments and tests to feel good about a stable and fast release. So Winslew 1.6 now scheduled for first weekend in March - sorry for that. As Winslew comes with Webkit as rendering engine the test cycle on different Windows setups became much more urgent than before as this code includes low level functions which have more options to crash at all...

Nymphicus - some more teaser...

info@li-ghun.de — 2011-01-14T17:43:28+01:00

Michael and I are both having quite some fun on the great progress we already make on both Nymphicus for Mac and Windows. Both versions are now already complete in terms of basic Twitter features like seeing the timeline, writing new tweets, replies or direct messages, retweeting and favorite items. So I decided to take some minutes today to give you out there some more first tweaks on what will be coming.

So I added some more information to the Nymphicus main page itself and also added a first short FAQ for Nymphicus. The best way to get the latest updates is to follow our Twitter account @liGhun as we will send screenshots and more there to the public...

I did mention it sometimes already but didn't really say it loud: lI' Ghun now is no more a single person project place - I want to happily tell you that a good friend of mine has joined li' Ghun recently and we are working together and in parallel on Nymphicus on both platforms. Say hello to Michael :)

To give you a first very rough feeling on what to get - but this is work in progress so the concepts will stay but the polish will come later

Stay tuned..

Winslew 1.5.1 out now / Nymphicus first teaser

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-12-18T13:02:06+01:00

Just a few days ago I released a small update version of Winslew which now reached version 1.5.1. This small update is mainly about some bugfixes and includes a much better renderer for the full page cache generator which now captures much more images than it did before.

Winslew 1.6 is in the works and is planned for early 2011 and will finally get rid of the current webpage renderer which is Internet Explorer based with all it's negative aspects like slow and bad rendering and all popping up dialogs about content being blocked and so on. Winslew 1.6 will use Webkit and my firsts tests it is not only nicer but also very much faster.

Also I added today a very small first teaser of the second application I will develop under the trademark "lI' Ghun". Nymphicus will be an all new Twitter client both for Mac and Windows (and both of them developed natively!) with an all new approach for power users of Twitter. More teasers as I make more progress - concept is done, first small proof of concept test apps are running but don't expect it to early in 2011.

Happy Holidays and a Happy new year 2011 to all of you.

Winslew 1.5 with Pastebin integration out now

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-10-15T17:45:45+02:00

It's done - since a few minutes Winslew 1.5 has been added to the download page and the auto updater of Winslew will now inform every users of an older version about this new release.

This release is focused on two major ideas:
1. Getting all wishes in UserVoice done and
2. give it a nicer style at all

So let's see what's new:

Pastebin integration
First of all I added an integration with the text upload service Pastebin to Winslew. So you now can upload any text (either an existing text file, something you have per copy&paste or just write it yourself) to this service and it'll be added to your Read It Later list automatically. Here is what it looks like:

UserVoice 828593

Minimize to tray icon
You now can choose in the preferences that Winslew shall vanish to the tray icon area instead of the task bar. So you save space on your screen and using its context menu have access to the most wanted features like adding items or refreshing the list.

UserVoice 1091051

Auto refresh
You now can choose in the Preferences an interval which is used by Winslew to automatically refresh the list with your Read It Later account.

UserVoice 568661

Online license retrieval
I have created a database here on this webpage which stores all your license codes. If you didn't enter a license code but you have already purchased Winslew the license code will be retrieved by Winslew automatically on next start of the application. Just to be complete: Of course I do not send you username or any other personal data over the net for this retrieval.
UserVoice 828601

Add currently shown webpage to Read It Later
If you use the built in browser not only to view content but also to browse through the web you now have a new button on top of every page which is not already in your list to directly add it to your RiL list.

UserVoice 828587

OK, that's all about the great new features. Next as I said already I decided to give Winslew a complete redesign (or to be honest: I decided to change one small thing - than a second, a third and in the end changed everything). You already may have noticed it on the screenshots above. I use now a different icon set for all the buttons, have created a new Winslew application icon (which fits more to lI' ghun) and changed the color scheme at all. I hope you like it :)

And one more thing:
lI' ghun now has not only an own Twitter account (@liGhun) but also a Facebook profile where you can get the latest news as well as can contact me directly (and you can of course like it if you want).

I want to thank all customers for using Winslew and all beta testers for their great feedback.

WInslew 1.4 has been released

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-08-17T16:31:00+02:00

The news here is quite later than the actual release - but as Winslew includes an auto update mechanism you might already have been noticed of the newest update to Winslew.

Winslew 1.4 is mostly about administration of many items more easily. So we now have with most of the buttons the option to start their action at more than one item if you select two or more. For example mark three items in the list and press the delete button - all three will be gone. Also the tag editing has been greatly improved. Now additionally to the single item tag editing you can now add or remove tags to/from as many items as you want at once.

The second new big feature is an image upload. If you have a local image file on your harddisk and want to save it to Read It Later you are now able to do so. Just hit the upload button and it is submitted to the image hoster Imgur and added to your Read It Later account.

I want to thank Henry for his great ideas and feedback (I am quite sure he is the one with the most items in Winslew at all). Both the requests for the multiple item functions as well as the image upload are based on his ideas. Thank you Henry!

Sadly one feature from the previous release is gone - the printing function caused more trouble than it should so I had to remove it. The most sad part is that because of Microsofts "interesting" combination of Windows and Office I am even not able to add it for myself in the moment - I think I need to find another around the MS ways to do so...

Winslew 1.5 now really will focus on the automatic license retrieval - can't be that due to spam filters you users sometimes have difficulties to get your paid Winslew licenses. Hopefully we see it in end September.

Roadmap Winslew 1.4 and license sending

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-05-14T10:21:35+02:00

Now that Winslew 1.3 has hit the road and seems like to be quite stable (at least I didn't get any negative feedback until now and used it myself very much on a long train trip this week) it's time to think about what the next version shall feature. First of all I have one last user request open on UserVoice in the moment: auto refresh the items list and (optional) hiding to tray icon - see UserVoice 568661.

Next I want to tune a little bit the design of the interface - e. g. the two search fields do work as they should but look a little bit ugly I think.

Third and in the moment most important to me is some changes in license key handling. While license key handling itself works without any problems I do have a major problem on how I get the license keys out to you when you have purchased Winslew. I already have had several buyers who had trouble getting the license key using email - spam filters tend to be very aggressive these days :( Even worth I had several buyers whose given email address in the Paypal payment have been invalid and the sent license keys came back not able to be delivered. Here I want to enhance my license key generator (yes, it's an own program with a modern user interface :)) to not only send the email but also store the license key in a database here on li-ghun.de. Winslew itself than shall check on startup if it already knows a license key - and if not ask this database to automatically download the license key and store it.

While this will solve the problems in the future I still have some license keys open whose sending has been failed. As I don't have any other way to reach those buyers I decided to just write them down here - nobody else can do something with those keys so why not show it public...

Robert Smith 1831: Please send me your Read It Later user account name
Sophie: e545876b4b
Scott: f4237c5ef4

If you also are waiting for a license key and already checked your spam filter - drop me an email and I will add your code here too.
Finally: Please submit wishes at UserVoice - I wanna extend Winslew to fulfill all your requirements :)

Winslew 1.3 out now

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-05-09T13:59:51+02:00

After more than a month of coding, testing and documentation I am happy to finally release Winslew 1.3 today. So here what's new:

1. New cache view "Full"
Next to Online, Less and More I have added a fourth view called "Full". This view trys to fetch as much as possible from the page for offline view. This includes stylesheets and images.

2. Styles for "More" and "Less" view
Until now those two views where always black on white. With Winslew 1.3 I added the option to choose between different styles including a reverse view white on black. You also can define own styles which are simple Cascading Stylesheet files. See the new extra manual for creation of new styles.

Important: Styles are only available on newly created or updated caches.

3. Print page
You now can send the current view to the printer

4. Change title
You now can change the title of an item

5. Better list view
The list view has been slightly enhanced

6. Cache creation is background process now
Cache creation already took quite some time but this became even worse with the new Full view. Because of this cache creation is now an own background process which will take place while you already can browse your items and there cache (if already created at that moment of course).

7. Better documentation
Or should I say documentation at all? Anyway - the documentation page has been reworked completely and now really features all functions of Winslew.

Winslew 1.3 to be released on May, 9th

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-05-01T08:53:40+02:00

In my last post about what will be new I wrote I hope to release Winslew 1.3 in the end of April. Today it is May, 1st so I won't reach that goal as you might have already guessed. While the main features are all done and working fine all the work on performance improvements let me to some new ideas to handle cache downloads at all and I am currently reworking also the download of the "old" caches "less" and "more".

If I am lucky I will also add one or two additional features into this release which have been recently asked for and are viewable at UserVoice here and here.

Current progress always live at my Twitter account :)

License codes need Read It Later account

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-04-08T16:18:49+02:00

Let me first thank all my customers for having payed for an individual license code of Winslew. I am very happy that you think my work is worth this amount of money and I am now even more motivated in creating new and better features (and please don't stop making suggestions of what you wish for the future).

Recently I got some payments via Paypal with the field for the Read It Later username being blank. I need this information to create the license code so asked those customers to please send me the user account separately. To make it clearer that I need this username I added a short note on the download page and added a new entry into the FAQ section.

Winslew 1.3 preview

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-04-09T16:08:30+02:00

Winslew 1.2.1 is out now already for some days and I wanna give you a short preview on what you can expect to get when Winslew 1.3 will be finished. There is one big new feature in the works: A third offline view type. As with Winslew 1.2.1 we have two of them: "Less" and "More". With 1.3 the third one will be called "Full".

Full will download the webpage including as much media data as possible meaning it will fetch the used Images as well as the CSS informations of the page and make them available offline. The good news is that this new fetching algorithm is already completed and doing a great job. The bad news is that it takes quite some time per page to download and parse all the stuff. So I will spend some more time on the updating mechanism which shall be run in the background in the future so you can access the articles already when cache is being build. See an example here.

The original online version:

And the downloaded cache version available offline:

See how close the offline version comes to the one you read online? Cool, isn't it?

As a small addition there will be a print function for the currently view item.
Winslew 1.3 is planned somewhere in the second half of April for now.

And Winslew 1.2 released

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-03-19T14:33:37+01:00

Due to the great response for my 1.1 release (which is only two days old...) and an overwhelming work by Ben who put together many ideas and wishes on UserVoice and having two free days Winslew 1.2 now is available already for download.

So what's new in this release?

Cache view selector (online, more, less) is now a dropdown box to get more space on title bar and have room for more options on future versions
Open in external browser added (UserVoice 568063)
Copy current item url to clipboard added (UserVoice 568063)
Added context menu to items to toggle read state, open in browser and so on (UserVoice 568143)
When opening the "Add item" window and the clipboard has an URL stored this url is pasted into the url-textbox automatically
Statusbar shown information about current API usage of user and Winslew (UserVoice 515029)
If API limits gets critical a Snarl notification is shown (UserVoice 515029)
Snarl notification on cache updated added
Snarl not running hint added to statusbar (UserVoice 568681)
Update cache window is now semitransparent
Delete button now really stays on screen all the time...

The next release will be about having a forth view next to online, more and less which shall provide an offline version of the webpage including as much as possible media (mainly stylesheets and images) which is covered by UserVoice 560313. Because of the complexity of this task this might take a little longer than the two days of the last update :)

Winslew 1.1 has been released

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-03-17T13:39:48+01:00

I just uploaded the new Winslew version 1.1 to the download section. There are some quite amazing new features available - let's have a look:

Filter your list by the content of the title or tags

Auto updater added

Rows can now be sorted by title, tags, added and updated

Tooltip of columns gives you now all informations about the current item

The width of the columns is memorized if changed by the user
Delete button now always available (not only in read view as before)
Version number display now trimmed (e.g. 1.1 instead of 1.1.0.0)
Link to documentation in Windows startmenu fixed

Have fun with this release and let me know your bugs and wishes on my feedback page

Feedback section added to homepage

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-03-16T13:33:36+01:00

After one week since release of Winslew 1.0 and first users having bought a license I wanna thank you all!

And as 1.0 is good but of course could have some more features or even have some bugs (no, I never create bugs of course...) I want to ask you for any feedback like feature requests and bug reports so I added a dedicated page here for that.

Finally for today I extended the FAQ to cover some more common questions.

Winslew 1.0 available now

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-03-08T13:28:31+01:00

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of Winslew 1.0. Compared to the last beta we now have favicons displayed next to the items (if a favicon is available for that site), some minor bugs fixed and finally the license code checker is included so if you buy a license you now have a place to put the license code in :)

The trial version which can be downloaded has the exact same feature set as the licensed version but only displays 10 items at once (and will give you one single hint to buy a license).

Store open

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-03-06T13:48:51+01:00

I just updated the download page and added the option to easily buy an unlimited license of Winslew for only 2,99 EUR.
Softpadia and Softsea already included Winslew in there download directories and approve that the downloads are checked.

Winslew 1.0 Public Beta 3 available now

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-02-21T15:40:43+01:00

We are very happy to announce the immediate availability of the first public beta release of Winslew 1.0. Go and get it on our download page and let us know what you think about it. This beta release has a built in expiration date at March, 31st 2010.

Changes since the Beta 2 include:

Expiration of beta version set to March, 31st 2010
Main window position and size now remembered and restored on new start
When adding a new page the "updating cache window" is now shown to show what is happening
The cache of an item can now be updated manually
Added About window

Winslew 1.0 Beta 2 now available

info@li-ghun.de — 2010-02-20T13:24:13+01:00

During the first beta tests of the beta 1 some bugs have been found and killed. Those bugfixes mainly address issues if you started Winslew with no internet connection available. Now the collection is saved upon closing the upon and can be loaded again if Winslew encounters being offline on startup time.

And more important: Winslew now has a complete automated installer and uninstaller :)

Beta 3 is planned being the first public beta and to be released very soon. If you want to try the current beta 2 in closed beta just send me an email and I’ll be happy to hand over you a download link for it.