The last few months have been really busy and I did almost no work on BetterTouchTool. Now I have finished all my exams, seminars etc. and the only thing left to do is my Master Thesis. I’ll probably have more time for development again (at least until I finish my Master Thesis and have to search for a job ).
So yesterday I released BetterTouchTool 0.763 which mainly fixes some bugs.
What things do you want in upcoming BTT versions?
I thought about adding the possibility to create your own gestures in one of the next versions, I found a pretty cool algorithm (http://depts.washington.edu/aimgroup/proj/dollar/ ) which should help me to implement s.th. like this. My current idea would be to activate the drawing mode by e.g. tapping with three fingers, then removing two fingers and draw your own shape with the remaining finger. What do you think? Are there more important things than custom gestures?
BetterSnapTool 1.3.2 is a bugfix release. If you want to test it before it hits the App Store you can download the beta trial here: http://boastr.de/BetterSnapToolTrial.zip
Fixed keyboard shortcut issues with snap areas
Hopefully snap areas won’t enable the external graphics anymore (unfortunately I can’t test this because I don’t have a MacBook with external graphic card)
Keyboard shortcuts are now also disabled if you disable BetterSnapTool for a specific app
Some other little fixes
If you find bugs in this version please report them so I’ll be able to fix them before I submit it to the Mac App Store
Again some information about Sandboxing: BetterSnapTool will stay in the AppStore even with Sandboxing enforced! I’ll even be able to release some bugfix updates after the sandboxing deadline.
BST 1.3 includes the new snap area feature, which allows you to create your own snapping areas.
It also contains a few bugfixes and other improvements.
Added an option to disable BetterSnapTool while holding modifier keys
Unfortunately application specific snap areas are not finished yet, they’ll follow with one of the next versions.
Any feedback is very welcome!
//edit: I updated the alpha, should now work on more systems
//edit 18/2/2012 updated again
//edit 25/2/2012 updated again, now app specific snap areas and labels are possible (the label feature isn’t finished yet, in order to change the size you have to right-click the text and select “font” etc.
//edit: 26/2/2012 improved the labels, unfortunately due to format changes the labels from the previous alpha will be lost.
Because I haven’t finished the documentation yet, here a little video which shows how to use the snap area feature:
Apple moved the deadline for sandboxing to June 1. In addition to that they made clear that the sandboxing requirement only applies to new apps, submitted starting on June 1. We’ll even be able to submit updates after the deadline for existing apps.
This is great news for BetterSnapTool and maybe for the new SecondBar version I’m working on
Just installed the Mountain Lion Developer Preview. Everything seems to work so far (BTT, BST etc.). Sure there will be a few things that I’ll have to “adjust” but there doesn’t seem to be anything that can’t be fixed with a few easy changes.
//edit: here is a first version where I fixed a few obvious things, but I haven’t tested it on Mountain Lion yet! Download
I took some time to work on BetterSnapTool this weekend, and I made quite a bit progress. The drag-area feature I introduced here: http://blog.boastr.net/?p=2722 is pretty much done and I think it’s pretty cool
I’ll release an alpha of this by the end of the week, and hope to get a final version to the app store in the next 3 to 4 weeks.
//edit: arg some issues with multi monitor systems will delay the alpha release a bit…
//edit: 13/2/2012 my final exams are finally over (next semester only master thesis, yay!) and I have made some huge progress on the dragging areas. I hope I’ll finally be able to release the alpha on Wednesday.
I’m sorry for all the unanswered mails, but university stuff currently eats up most of my time. (but it’ll pay off, I’ve developed a nice class during a seminar, which I’ll use in a cool upcoming project for mac iphone and ipad )
If I don’t answer your mails, please try again in a few weeks because I probably will not able to respond to all of t he unread ones in my inbox ;-(
if you are here because BetterSnapTool popped up this message:
Here a few infos:
I may have to remove BetterSnapTool from the Mac App Store because Apple has introduced a new technology called “Sandboxing”, which was announced to become mandatory for Mac App Store apps starting in March 2012. Unfortunately this new technology is very restrictive and apps like BetterSnapTool can’t work with it. More on this topic here
But no worries! In case it really comes down to this (I still hope Apple won’t enforce it). I’ll provide a mechanism to switch from the App Store version to non-App Store version for free.
I think I’ll be able to release a new version of BetterSnapTool before the Sandboxing becomes mandatory. Here a sneak peek on the upcoming features ( it’s not ready to be released yet, especially the gui needs work, but it basically works ):
It will be possible to define your own snapping areas in addition to the current ones.
Here is a little video showing this in action:
).
I’ll even be able to release some bugfix updates after the sandboxing deadline.
