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cabelsasser posts

Filed under: Software

Transmit turns 10, we Panic

Milestones come and go, but the big milestone of the day was 10 years in the making. Panic's Co-founder, Steven Frank, noted on his personal website that their flagship product, Transmit turned 10 years old.

Transmit, originally called "Transit," was released on September 8, 1998. Who knows, without the success of Transmit we might not have the other beautiful applications from Panic. If you want to relive the old days of Transmit, Panic offers up a free version (you must be running a pre-OS X Mac, or have a classic mode enabled Mac) for your downloading pleasure.

Join TUAW in saying, "Congratulations, Panic." We cannot wait to see what is next!

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Apple, Developer

Cabel's Coda toolbar and the Three Pixel Conundrum

Panic's Cabel Sasser has updated his blog (finally! His Miis were cute and all, but I was tired of seeing them every day) with a really interesting post about how he designed the toolbar for the everything-web-development tool that apparently is the bee's knees, Coda.

Instead of using the standard rounded bevel of OS X's unified toolbar, Sasser decided he wanted to do something a little different, and created a tab-ish vertical indent. Unfortunately, the way OS X's toolbars work didn't vibe with his idea (there were just three pixels at the bottom that couldn't be edited the way he wanted), so the Panic team ended up developing their own entire toolbar. That, he says, is why you can't rearrange the icons in Coda-- because the app isn't using the system toolbar.

But the best part is saved for last. All the hard work paid off, because even though Sasser had to drive his team nuts just to figure out a way to get around those three pixels, Apple eventually agreed with him. And the new toolbar in Leopard looks strangely familiar. Great story, and a real shot in the arm to developers who might not otherwise be pushed to bother with all the coding required to get the look they want exactly right.

[ via DF ]

Filed under: OS, Leopard

Resolution independent UI patent dissected by Cabel Sasser

The developer of Transmit (and composer of underground musical hit Buggy Saints Row) has done due diligence on Apple's patent application from December for a method of generating resolution-independent UI elements. If Apple is going to scale the Finder's descendants to work on hyper-resolution displays, this kind of tool would be essential.

Sasser's post gives a great intro to the importance of resolution independence (keeping UI elements smooth and silky even as more pixels are required to render them on denser displays) and explains what's cool about the patent application: Apple developer Mark Zimmer (inventor of Fractal Design's natural media drawing app Painter) has built a theme creation tool that actually works up buttons, scroll bars and other eye candy via a procedural description, instead of bunches of pixels. Want a higher resolution display? Boom -- the markup is run again with the denser target, and welcome the new hotness.

Cabel believes we'll be seeing the fruits of this labor real soon now. Must be later today!

Filed under: Retail, Cult of Mac, Apple

More Portland Apple Store drama



We mentioned that the Portland Apple Store was a no go, but Cabel Sasser, Portland resident and Mac developer (of Panic fame) has investigated the story some more. It seems that the good people of Portland were concerned about Apple just plopping another carbon copy of an Apple store in their fair city. Apple, hip to style, worked with the Landmarks Commission to come up with a rendering as seen above, which is a departure from the normal Apple Store. Sadly, it still wasn't good enough and it looks like Apple is taking its ball and going home.

Cabel has heard that Apple might try again, and here's hoping they do. I mean, who doesn't like the Apple Store?

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