waffle

Google+Growl 3.0 is finally out, exactly 18 months after the previous beta. I knew there was something I was supposed to do…

• It fixes an issue that appeared when Google decided to upgrade their data format. They started sending https:// Gmail links in the feed that Google Notifier is using, which is good, but they started labelling it as linkWithSecurityPolicy instead of link, which meant that as this was passed to plugins (not just Google+Growl, although I can’t say I know of any other), the link could not be found and extracted. If you couldn’t click the notification and open the link, this is why. Google has reassured me that they didn’t intend this consequence and that they will be correcting it, but that I should also update my end to handle it, which I’ve now done.

• Originally I was supposed to work around a change in token field behavior from 10.4 to 10.5 that broke notification text format editing slightly in the preferences. I haven’t found any way to work around this, and at this stage I’m just going to release as 10.5 compatible, leaving 10.4 behind for this instant. I’ll need to go back and rework some of the code into something better; a year with daily access to Resharper between nine to five really helps you see all the places in your Cocoa code where you could use some refactoring. When this is done, source code will be released under the BSD license. If there’s enough call for a 10.4 version, I’ll see what I can do.

• I’m debuting a new product page design some months in the making. It’s HTML5 and it looks fairly wonderful in newer Safari versions. It looks a lot flatter in Firefox, which should tell you something about the WebKit advances as of late. In fact, a CSS feature or two have gotten into Firefox while I’ve been improving this, and I’m considering inserting the equivalent -moz-rules in the near future; something I ruled out earlier as a result of the rounded corners CSS rendering as aliased (read: horrible-looking) in old Firefox versions.

• The new page is, right now, an unholy mix of the minimal PHP includes I used before and a new version baked by the Ruby-based nanoc site compiler. In fact, the previous nanoc version. They just released 3.0 (!) and now I’ll have to rework some of my code, I guess.

• At the very bottom of the page is a link to a Google+Growl tech profile. (That thing I explored earlier.) Maybe I’m the only one who cares, but I still think it’s a matter of respect to state straightforwardly how your application works when you’re being asked, and I think that this is a good way to do so.

Hopefully, this won’t be the last waffle software release in the month of August.