Category: OSX Development

OmniGraffle Stencil for FFBD

After looking around the Internet for an OmniGraffle stencil for creating Functional Flow Block Diagrams (FFBD) without any luck I decided to just create my own, which you can download from here. This stencil contains all the major components of a Functional Flow Block Diagram which is used to outline the control of flow between functions within a functional architecture. FFBD are extremely helpful to try and describe the behavior of a system while being solution agnostic.

Links
Download Functional Flow Block Diagram (FFBD) Stencil
OmniGraffle Home Page

Adobe Labs and Eclipse RCP

Today I found the Adobe Labs site, which is where Adobe releases all of its beta preview software for testing and trials. There are also some developer tools such as the XML Toolkit, which allows for metadata to be stored within files. Currently XMP supports these file formats: JPEG, PSD, TIFF, AVI, WAV, MPEG, MP3, MOV. Also of interest on this site is the new Flex Builder application. What is interesting about this application is not so much that it is a new application for building Flex applications but rather than it has been developed using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) framework. This is following a general trend for more and more applications to utilise the power of the RCP framework. For a list of some of the already developed RCP applications have a look at this page.

Links
Adobe Labs Site
XMP Toolkit
Eclipse Rich Client Platform
Adobe Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh

Cool OSX Apps Site

I have been subscribed to the RSS feed from the Cool OSX Apps site for quite some time now. It is a great little site that points out all the well developed OSX applications for the mac. In addition the site is well designed and has regular updates. The archive is also something else as it provides a live view of the articles against a timeline.

Links
CoolOSXapps.net

Linkback: Mac API for Embedding External Content

If you are a mac OSX developer and want to embed content from others into your application's documents but still have them editable in their original application then LinkBack is for you. The LinkBack website describes their API as:

“LinkBack is an open source framework for Mac OS X that helps developers integrate content from other applications into their own. A user can paste content from any LinkBack-enabled application into another and reopen that content later for editing with just a double-click. Changes will automatically appear in the original document again when you save.”

My favourite mac drawing application, OmniGraffle, now supports LinkBack so that it is even possible to embed OmniGraffle documents within OmniGraffle itself such as described in this article.

Links
LinkBack Site
OmniGraffle

JavaScript Library to Create Curved Corners

CurveyCorners is a great little javascript program that any website developer can place in their pages. Then using some simple HTML and Javascript you can easily create curved corners on any HTML DIV element. So what you must be thinking, because there are lots of things like this that achieve the same results with plain CSS. Well the benefit of curvyCorners is that is will create corners that are antialiased, which means they appear extremely smooth as though it was done in a proper graphics program.

Links
curvyCorners Site

Eclipse on Mac Intel

Ok so I haven't been using Eclipse on my mac for a while, actually since I upgraded to the new intel-based MacBook Pro. To my disappointment the 3.1.2 release of Eclipse that I was using crashes when trying to start it. After digging around I have found out that this is because that version of Eclipse does not support mac intel; however, the 3.2 release candidates after RC5 do. Therefore if you wanting to use Eclipse on one of the new intel-based macs then you are going to have to start using the 3.2 stream of eclipse even though it has not finished production. I hope that this will not screw up any plugins that you rely on.

Links
Eclipse 3.2 Project Plan
Eclipse Home Page

BEEP Networking

I was looking at the Mac application SubEthaEdit today due to an article about MacZot.com and noticed that SubEthaEdit was using something called BEEP to collaborate with other users using SubEthaEdit. This reference to BEEP peaked my interest as it was a technology/software/gadget/thing that I did not know about and therefore I had to know about it (I am bad with things like this).

After a quick search on my good friend Google I found the BEEP home page and after reading about it have found out that BEEP is a low level library for making it easier to create your own networking protocol. BEEP provides all the common functionality that most applications have to recreate whenever they need to implement their own communication protocol. BEEP makes this easier and even provides a number of predefine profiles for common protocols like TCP or even SOAP. The best way to understand BEEP is to read the article in the links section below as the Beep home pages is a little thin on information.

Links
Beep Home Page
Article describing Beep

EasyEclipse: The easy way to develop using eclipse

Are you interested in developing using Eclipse but have found there are too many different plugins and you are not sure what you need? Well the folks at EasyEclipse are trying to make your life that one little bit easier by including all the plugins in an easy to install version of eclipse or readily packaged plugin bundles. Although you can actually do this all yourself I am all for making things a little easier and quicker to use so go and check it out.

Links
EasyEclipse Home Page

Intel releases development tools for Intel-based Macs

Intel has released a number of tools for Mac developers to optimise their code to run on the Intel Core Duo processors. The products available are:

• Fortran Compiler
• C++ Compiler
• Math Kernel Library for Mac OS
• Integrated Performance Primitives
• Supporting documentation

Links
Development Support for Intel-based Macs

Apple Releases Dual Boot Application

In a weird twist of events Apple has released a new program called Boot Camp as a Public Beta that allows you to easily install and boot Microsoft Windows on an Intel based Apple Mac. This gets around some of the more painful processes that were required to use the other dual boot procedures and gives an easy to use apple-esque interface into the world of dual booting.

Links
Boot Camp Public Beta

Sparkle: A Developers Application Update Component

Sparkle is a great little plugin that allows OSX developers to add automatic update features to their applications quickly and easily. So rather than forcing users to go and check websites for the latest version or even just notifying users that they are using an old version, sparkle can notify of new updates, download the updates and install them all through a very easy to use interface. I have already seen this plugin working in the Virtue virtual desktop application that I use. I expect that with the introduction of sparkle we will see more and more OSX applications with the same looking update components which is also a good thing for common look and feel across the Apple Platform. If only apple would allow third party developers to easily hook into the OSX Software Update Application.

Links
Sparkle

Cocoa Developer Handbook

If you are interested in developing applications for Apple's OSX operating system but do not know where to start then this is a good place. It is a free handbook to Cocoa development.

Links
Become and Xcoder Book

OSx86 Project

With the release of the new Apple computer running on the Intel processors a number of sites are starting to pop up in order to run operating systems other than OSX on these machines. OSx86 project is a nicely laid out site that is trying to keep tabs on any developments. It is already reporting the progress people are making with getting Knoppix 4 running on the Apple Intel hardware (commonly known as Macintel). What I really keen to see is the ability to run windows programs within OSX without too much of a noticeable speed slowdown. This would allow me to run the IBM software that I use for work within the elegant Apple OSX operating system. There is an opensource project called Darwine, which is trying to achieve just this and there has also been noise from Microsoft that they will update their Virtual PC software to run on Macintel; however, I will not hold my breath for that one as I would most likely go blue in the face (I expect end of 2006 or early 2007 for Virtual PC to be released).

Links
OSx86 Project
Darwine Homepage

Mac Backup Article Updated

My friend Matthew Phillips has updated his great article on backing up your mac using RsyncX that I host on my website for him. The latest version is available via the link below

Links
How To Backup a Mac Using Rsync Article
RsyncX (via VersionTracker)

C/C++/Java Board Game

Finally a way to teach kids how to program at an early age. I have a few friends who have kids and I have been threatening that they should teach them how to program so that I can get them to come and work for me. This is generally in retort to them pronouncing that they have the smartest kid on the block. Well now with the C-Jump board game you can teach your kids how to program in a fun and learning environment.

Links:

C/C++/Java Board game

No more Java Apple Applications!

It looks like Apple is dropping the Java-Cocoa bridge that allows developers to use Java to develop OSX applications. I personally am not surprised at this as it is a large effort for Apple to maintain both Java and Cocoa APIs. This is effort better directed to other cool applications and hardware.

Links
Cocoa-Java Integration Guide (with note about ongoing support)

Growl 0.6 Released

Growl 0.6 has been released with a whole load of new notification styles. Growl is developer notification system that allows any OSX developer to use a system wide notification rather than having all the developer produce a million crappy notification widgets. By having a single notification system allows for messages to cooperate rather than conflict and potentially overlap and get in the way. There are already quite a few applications that support growl (see growl site for complete list).

Links
Growl Home Page
Application List supporting Growl

Where is IBM WebSphere for OSX?

I have been using Apple Macs for the past three years since OSX operating system was first released. Since my switch from PC to Mac I have been very happy. My day to day work mainly involves the use of email and office-based applications, however my other part of work is the development of middleware solutions using enterprise-grade application servers. The problem that I have is that many application servers available run on windows, linux or Solaris (plus other mainframe environments) but not OSX which makes it very painful for me to try out ideas, especially while traveling and using an Apple Powerbook.

Currently I am using IBM WebSphere on a windows platform and it made me start to think about IBM and the way it is marketing its products. IBM is the manufacturer of the G5 PowerPC chips as used in G5 PowerMac and in G5 XServes. IBM also develops the WebSphere application server. You would think that if it wants to sell more G5 processors it would allow its premier application server software to also run on their own hardware (namely Apple XServes). I realise that IBM makes its own server class machines (zSeries) and in the latest version of WebSphere 6.0 also contains support for a new processor on the zSeries machines to run WebSphere even faster, but why miss the XServe market. I would love to be able to move my development environment over to OSX so that I could use either Eclipse or IBM's development IDE and run WebSphere all on my Powerbook or on an XServe (for deployment). I have even queried local Apple representatives about this and had no reply.

So why doesn't IBM provide an OSX version of its application server as this will truly boost Apple's profile to create an enterprise grade application server. I hear you say that Apple does support JBoss, but this application server is not really recognised in corporate and government circles. It makes sense to me for this fusion as Apple wins by having a truly enterprise class application server, IBM wins by selling more of their PowerPC processors and application server products and mac developers out there also win by not having to mix their development environment with those evil windows machines.

Modifying OSX Applications using Apple Developer Tools

Ever wanted to add a button or move something in a already built OSX application. Well you can using Interface Builder that comes for free in Apple's OSX Developer tools that are freely downloaded. The best way to understand how to do this is have a read of the article at MacDev Center here.

Links
Modifying Stickies Article

Adding AppleScript to Cocoa Applications

Here is an article documenting the method to enable AppleScript for the Cocoa applications that you may be developing.

Links
MacDevCenter: Making Cocoa-Java Apps Scripting Article

Firefox Mac Optimised Builds

Do you have a G4 or G5 mac and use Firefox? If you do then you will like the following links. Neil Lee has created a build of Firefox 1.0 that has been optimised for use on the G5. Users have reported that there is noticable difference to the original version. I will have to wait to monday as my G5 is at work, but my powerbook uses the G4 chipset and there is also a version created by Kai Rune optimised for the G4. Got to love geeks and the pursuit for ever faster processing.

Links
G4 Optimised Firefox Link
G5 Optimised Firefox Link

DVD Cases

If you are packaging up videos or what a different case for your software you can't go past the cases for sale at JewelBoxing.com. I am amazed that they can create a whole site just about cases but there is actually quite a lot of content describing the product and how it works. There are also quite a few very nice examples of people using the JewelBoxing products. I am interested in this to potentially package up some of the software that I am writing in my spare time.

Links
JewelBoxing.com

Interested in OSX Tiger's Spotlight Feature?

Apple has released a quick article that descries the new Spotlight feature that will be available in the new OSX Tiger operating system to be released early in 2005. This is not an article for the general user but is intended for all you OSX developers out there who are curious about how spotlight will work and how to develop programs to make use of its capabilities. If you are not a developer but are still a complete mac geek and want to know everything about the mac then it is still a good read.

Links
Apple Spotlight Developer Overview Article

TV Guide Application Icon

As alluded to in previous blog entries I am building a new OSX TV guide application that will connect to a live web service feed to get TV guide information so that I can cache and display TV Guide information quickly and easily on my mac. Development of this program has only just started and I have started working on creating the site to provide news and forums for the application. So far I have created a potential icon for the application (see right). If you have any comments on this icon please add them to the comments section of this blog. I will be working on the site for this application soon. Updates about the TV Guide application will be posted to this blog until I have the new TV Guide site running with its own blog.

Photoshop Tutorials

I am currently creating the icon for my new TV Guide Program (still to be named, ideas anyone?). While looking around for a few photoshop tutorials on how to do something specific I came across this great site. This site contains lots of great quick photoshop tutorials that shows you how to create numerous visually appealing effects. For all you budding graphic design people out there remember that less can be more.

Links
WebDogPro Site

More information when using WSMakeStubs

I have finally been able to get my program to send and receive XML data using Document-style web services using the WSMakeStubs generated code. My previous article describes a few bugs in the generated output from WSMakeStubs but I have also found that it tries to return the wrong object which is null. Trying to use null objects is very hard so I went digging to find out what was wrong. What I found out was that the stubs was getting the XML SOAP response message fine but it was trying to return an object from the result dictionary called “parameters” that did not exist. Once I ended up finding this it was an easy fix to just change the return statement in all the resultValue methods in the WS[name_of_service].m file. for instance change:

return [[super getResultDictionary] objectForKey: @“parameter”];

to:

return [[super getResultDictionary] objectForKey: @“/Result”];

I found this out by adding a few debug logging statements to the gotResults method in the WSGeneratedObj.m file. The debug statement used was:

NSLog(@“RESULT: %@”, [fResult allKeys]);

Hope this helps others out there.

Links
Previous WSMakeStubs Post

WSMakeStubs Bug

I just spent the best half of a day trying to figure out how to use web services in Apple's Cocoa environment using the WSMakeStubs utility. WSMakeStubs takes a WSDL file and creates all the stub code required so “in theory” you can just use this stub code to make web service calls. Well this would be true if it was implemented correctly. I found that everytime I tried to use it I would get the following message appear on the log output:

in _parseFault

After a while of pulling my hair out I found this great discussion thread that identifies a problem with the WSMakeStubs program which is easily fixed by changing a few lines in the generated code.

Well I am no longer getting the “in _parseFault” message, on to the next bug :)

Links
Post on CocoaBuilder.com about WSMakeStubs bug
CocoaBuilder.com Site

Tiger Start Kit for Developers

Apple has released information about the Tiger Start Kit for Developers that is providing a years subscription to the ADC Select Member and access to preview versions of OSX Tiger before it is released next year. This is great for all those OSX developers out there. Anyone interested in buying me a copy?

Links
Apple Tiger Start Kit for Developers
OSX Tiger Developer Overview Page

PHPStar: PHP for Mac OSX with everything

PHPStar 3 has been released that contains everything that you need to run PHP on a Apple Mac running OSX. Other installations are available for OSX but this one is unique because it contains ALL the necessary libraries (and ones that you may not use) in an easy to use installer. Oh and the best thing is that it is free.

Links
PHPStar Web Site

Growl - Application Notifications on OSX

Ecto (my blog editor) now supports Growl. If you are wondering what growl is then you are not alone as I also had never heard of this little program. A little closer look I have found out that Growl is system wide application notification system that allows any application of Apple Script to display notification messages. Ecto uses this notification system to display messages when activities (like posting) are complete. Growl was developed by James Cox and he even provides an API for application developers to use so that more applications can be created that utilise the Growl notification system. If you are an OSX developer then I strongly recommend having a look at Growl.

Links
Growl Website
Ecto Website

Oracle on Mac OSX

I was very interested when Oracle first announced that it would be releasing its Oracle 10g Database for OSX. Well now OSX is officially supported by OSX and if you want to install it for yourself here is a helpful guide.