I've just released an update to Narrator, my fun app to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices.

Version 2.0.6 fixes a couple of small but annoying bugs, and is a recommended update for everyone:

• Fixed a bug where the age, gender, and sliders might not update when changing actors or characters.
• Fixed a bug that could occasionally cause the Play button to stop working when playing/pausing or changing voice attributes quickly.

Download Narrator 2.0.6 now!

I'm pleased to announce that Dejal Simon, my flagship server monitoring app, is featured in the fifth TheMacBundles collection. Plus, for a limited time, Dejal BlogAssist, my handy HTML markup tool, is also included as a bonus app.

Dejal Simon is the essential site monitoring tool for Mac OS X. It checks servers for changes or failures, and notifies you via e-mail, sound, speech, Twitter, or other means. You can use it to track updated sites, and to alert you when an important server goes down or recovers.

The bundle includes the full Simon Standard license — normally $59.95!

BlogAssist is a handy tool to help weblog and website editing by making HTML markup easier. comes with several useful operations, including web and e-mail links, bold/italics/strikethrough/etc, LiveJournal tags, and more. But you aren't limited to those — you can add, change, or remove them via the Operations Preferences.

You can see more of them on the Simon and BlogAssist pages.

This bundle also includes 10 other fine apps, for only $49.95. A bargain! Especially since you're getting a Standard license for Simon — for less than it normally costs by itself.

The included apps are:

• iPhoto Library Manager
• MYStuff
• MyTunesRSS
• PDFClerk Pro
• Simon
• Spyder
• WebPrint Plus
• Yum
• Yummy FTP

Plus bonuses:

• A-Dock X
• BlogAssist
• FolderGlance

12 apps for just $49.95 — a saving of over 85%!

Visit TheMacBundles.com to learn more, or to take advantage of this great deal.

I've been meaning to follow up on this for the past few days. Back in March, I wrote a blog post titled "Apple, please support iPhone trial apps", where I urged Apple to reconsider their position that "free apps will always be free."

I discussed how not allowing free apps to use the new In App Purchase feature introduced in iPhone OS 3.0 was very limiting — this restriction prevented free trials of apps, as is very popular in Mac software, meaning that the only way a developer could provide a trial is to have two separate apps (e.g. Lite and Pro editions), which is more hassle for the developer and customers, including issues with migrating data.

So you can imagine how pleased I was when I learnt recently that Apple has removed this restriction. Now any app can use In App Purchase, including free ones. So now the trial distribution model is finally feasible.

There is no more need to release Lite and Pro editions. Developers can release a single application as a free download, perhaps with limited features, then enable people to purchase an upgrade to the "full" edition.

There are still some restrictions. The most common trial model for Mac software is a time-limited demo, where the application lets people evaluate it for a certain time period (e.g. 14 or 30 days), then disables some functionality if still not purchased. My Mac apps do this, as do most other "shareware" apps. This is not allowed on the iPhone App Store. iPhone apps have to be fully functional, and can't disable essential features.

But there are other things that can be done, like provide a basic set of functionality, and perhaps display ads, then the purchase provides extended functionality and removes the ads. So the app remains useful forever as a free app, but becomes more powerful (and without distracting ads) if the user chooses to purchase.

This is what I plan to do for my future iPhone apps. For the secret project I'm working on now, I'll release it as a free app, with ads and perhaps some feature limits (but nothing that impinges on the usability), then offer In App Purchase to disable the ads and extend the functionality.

It looks like it'll be quite easy to set up; for this sort of situation, it appears that the purchase can be handled entirely via Apple's server, storing the purchase in the iTunes account, enabling multiple phones used by that account to use the full app (e.g. when buying a new phone).

I haven't decided on terminology for this yet... call the purchased upgrade the "Paid" or "Premium" edition, or something else.

It'll be most interesting to see how many app developers adopt this technique. I've seen a few so far, and expect it to be quite popular, especially with the indie developers who are used to this kind of distribution model.

But, thank you Apple!

iPhone developers: you may have seen my DSActivityView open source project. Another developer was inspired by it, and created his own variation, WTFeedbackView, with support for progress bars, among other changes.

Here's his introduction:

WTFeedbackView is a class to display a HUD-like view with either an activity indicator view or a progress view. It's based on DSActivityView by David Sinclair (http://www.dejal.com/developer/dsactivityview), with some significant additions and modifications.

More specifically, WTFeedbackView offers:

• Client access through a single class, by means of class methods only, for all features;
• Changes to the text being shown trigger an animation that resizes the HUD view appropriately;
• Three built-in styles (like DSActivityView):
  • Simple style: displays a transparent view containing an activity indicator view next to the text explaining the ongoing activity;
  • Bezel style: displays a dark semi-transparent view containing either an activity indicator view or a progress view, above the text explaining the ongoing activity;
  • Keyboard style: same as the Bezel style, but covering only the keyboard;
• Three built-in kinds:
  • Activity kind: displays only an activity indicator view, plus the text explaining the ongoing activity;
  • Progress kind: displays only a progress view, plus the text explaining the ongoing activity;
  • Flexible kind: contains both an activity indicator view and a progress view (plus the text explaining the ongoing activity), but displays only one at a time, on demand. This is useful when the ongoing activity has parts whose lengths are sometimes known and sometimes unknown. Rather than create a new feedback view for each part, a single one can be used, minimizing screen distractions;
• Easy updating of the progress view, through a class method +updateProgress: (CGFloat) progress;
• Thread-safety where needed. For instance, +updateProgress: can be safely invoked from a background thread;
• Possibility to subclass WTFeedbackView to create custom feedback views having the general behavior of WTFeedbackView but looking differently.

Although iPhoneOS 3.x isn't a requirement, WTFeedbackView and the demo were compiled using iPhoneOS 3.1.2. They were *not* tested on any version prior to 3.x, so don't assume they will work with 2.x.

Enjoy!
Wagner

I'm hosting it for him: download now.

As you may have noticed, I'm fascinated with multi-touch interfaces. I just saw an interesting concept that proposes a desktop-based multi-touch system that avoids the need for touching a screen directly (which has issues of fingerprints, muscle strain, and obscuring the view), plus an interesting desktop usage metaphor.

I'm not entirely sold on it, but it definitely has some potential. I'm really not sure how well the proposed windowing system would scale — I currently have 23 windows open between all my apps, and often have more; their system of scrolling through them could be cumbersome, though the zooming out overview might be okay.

They also seem to reserve most multi-touch gestures for managing the windows, which could limit what apps can do with them.

Anyway, check it out; it's a fascinating concept, and a good description of some potential issues with more conventional approaches:

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

I read an article that really resonated with me a while back, that was written a few years ago. It was entitled "Caring for Your Introvert", written by Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic.

In the article, he clearly defines what an introvert is, and how we are perceived by extroverts. Yes, I am most definitely an introvert. But that doesn't mean I'm antisocial or unpleasant. It just means that I and other introverts are energized by being alone, instead of by interacting with other people.

Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge.

So very true. I enjoy spending time with friends and attending conferences and such, but tend to hang back and observe rather than directly interact, and even so I feel drained afterwards, exhausted by the social interactions.

People who don't know me or other introverts well might be concerned that I'm suffering in some way, perhaps feeling left out... but it's really the way I prefer things.

We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours.

Amusing, but not much of an exaggeration. Which is one reason why I prefer to communicate with clients and others via email, rather than phone conversations. I want to think through my response in peace and quiet, without meaningless niceties filling in the dead air.

So if you're an extrovert and you see a quiet person, don't be concerned. We're just fine, thanks.

My wife and I moved from New Zealand to Portland, Oregon back in 2001. It's a great city, with a nice friendly "small town" feel but the amenities of a big city. This brief video show a lot of the great things to see and do around Portland:

Sorry customers, another development blog post. :)

For a new iPhone app I'm working on (shh), I have a button that I wanted to behave like the Delete button in a table view. You know, when you tap the delete toggle to the left of a cell, a red Delete button appears. And tapping anywhere other than that button will hide it without doing anything else:

(Contacts app)

I couldn't see any obvious way to do it, so asked on the iPhone Developer forums, and got a helpful reply suggesting a UIWindow subclass, overriding -sendEvent:.

I tried implementing that, but what I really wanted was to override -hitTest:withEvent:, since I wanted to block taps on views other than a specific button, and the documentation says one should always invoke the superclass of -sendEvent:.

Then I noticed that -hitTest:withEvent: is actually defined in UIView, and further experimenting with the table Delete feature showed that it appears to be implemented UITableView, since the cancel tap behavior only occurs in the table, not the navigation bar or toolbar. Besides, implementing in a UIView subclass is more focal, so a better choice.

So here is my UIView subclass to do this. It uses a delegate approach, with a protocol to declare the method:


@class DSView;

@protocol DSViewDelegate
@optional

- (UIView *)view:(DSView *)view hitTest:(CGPoint)point
withEvent:(UIEvent *)event hitView:(UIView *)hitView;

@end

And the actual subclass interface; as conventional, the delegate is not retained:


@interface DSView : UIView
{
id DS_viewDelegate;
}

@property (nonatomic, assign) id viewDelegate;

@end

With the implementation just overriding the hit test method. It simply invokes the superclass then gives the delegate a chance to change it (or perform some other action) if it implements the delegate protocol method:


#import "DSView.h"

@implementation DSView

@synthesize viewDelegate = DS_viewDelegate;

/*
hitTest:withEvent:

Overrides this method to add support for the -view:hitTest:withEvent:hitView view delegate behavior.

Written by DJS 2009-09.
*/

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event;
{
UIView *hitView = [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];

if ([self.viewDelegate respondsToSelector:
@selector(view:hitTest:withEvent:hitView:)])
return [self.viewDelegate view:self hitTest:point
withEvent:event hitView:hitView];
else
return hitView;
}

@end

To use this, simply change a container UIView to DSView in the view hierarchy, then set the delegate property to your view controller (via code or IB):

self.view.viewDelegate = self;

Then implement the -view:hitTest:withEvent:hitView: delegate method in your view controller, e.g. as follows — this will cause a tap on some special control to go through as normal, but tapping anywhere else in the view will hide the special control, without passing the tap on to whatever was actually tapped:


- (UIView *)view:(DSView *)view hitTest:(CGPoint)point
withEvent:(UIEvent *)event hitView:(UIView *)hitView;
{
if (hitView == someSpecialControl)
return hitView;

someSpecialControl.hidden = YES;

return nil;
}

I hope this is useful to someone else too.

You can get the code from my Dejal Open Source Subversion repository via this Terminal command:


svn checkout http://dejal.svn.beanstalkapp.com/open/DSView


Or browse the source directly on the web.

If you haven't seen it already, check out DSActivityView, too.

I've committed a minor update to the DSActivityView open source project for iPhone. See the DSActivityView introductory post for more information, including a video demo.

This update adds a showNetworkActivityIndicator boolean property. It is NO by default, but if set to YES the network activity indicator in the status bar will be displayed, and automatically hidden when the DSActivityView is removed.

You can toggle this property as needed while the activity view is in use. For example, you might have the network activity indicator appear while fetching some data from the internet, then disable it while parsing it (while the activity view is still visible).

Of course, you can easily show and hide the network activity indicator yourself, but this tweak saves having to remember to disable both it and the DSActivityView.

You can set this property via:


[DSActivityView activityViewForView:self.view].showNetworkActivityIndicator = YES;


or to toggle it on an already-visible activity view:


[DSActivityView currentActivityView].showNetworkActivityIndicator = YES;


You can get the project from my Dejal Open Source Subversion repository via this Terminal command:


svn checkout http://dejal.svn.beanstalkapp.com/open/DSActivityView


Or browse the source directly on the web.

I'm pleased to report that we now have a solution for the Snow Leopard incompatibility of Narrator, the fun app to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices.

The issue was a bug in Snow Leopard, which prevented Narrator from open its own documents. The bug stumped Apple's Developr Technical Support engineers, and definitely seems to be a bug in the operating system itself, not in my code. But the DTS engineers finally came up with a workaround for the bug, which this update implements. Narrator can once again open its documents, and so now appears to be fully compatible with Snow Leopard.

My apologies for any inconvenience this bug may have caused.

Download Narrator 2.0.5 now!

And remember, you can still get Narrator and 11 other useful apps for just $49.95 from TheMacBundles for another few days.

TheMacBundles promotion is almost over! Last chance to get Dejal Narrator and 11 other great apps for just $49.95.

Narrator utilizes speech synthesis to read out the contents of a text document, using different voices for different parts. You have a range of "actors" that can portray any number of "characters", so various passages of your document are spoken with differing voices, pitches, inflections, etc. You can have it read out a play or story with appropriate voices. The words are highlighted on-screen, and there are also a couple of silent read-along options for stage directions, or for you to read out your own parts. A full license is included in the bundle, not some cut-down version.

You can see more of it on the Narrator page, or download it now to give it a try.

Note that at present Narrator has an issue on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): everything works okay, except that it can't open saved Narrator documents. It can open other kinds, though. I'm still waiting for help from Apple to fix this, but will release a free update to fix this as soon as possible. Of course, if you're still on Leopard, you won't be affected.

This bundle also includes 11 other fine apps, for only $49.95. A bargain!

The included apps are:

• CrossOver Games
• DVDRemaster Pro
• Entourage Email Archive X
• EastPrint
• ImageFramer
• Money
• Neutrino
• Scribbles
• Speed Download
• Super Flexible File Synchronizer

Plus bonuses:

• Mac DVDRipper Pro
• Narrator

12 apps for just $49.95 — a saving of over 85%!

Visit TheMacBundles.com to learn more, or to take advantage of this great deal before it expires. Don't delay!

Announcing maintenance updates for Dejal Simon, my essential server monitoring tool, Time Out, my break reminder tool, Caboodle, my lean clean snippet machine, and BlogAssist, my handy HTML markup assistant.

Each update includes improvements for Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) compatibility. I'm not aware of any remaining compatibility issues with these products — please let me know ASAP if you do find anything.

Note: Narrator is still partially incompatible with Snow Leopard. It all works, except it can't open documents saved in its native format (but can still open other kinds of documents). I have a Developer Technical Support incident request in with Apple's engineers to help me solve this, but I'm sure they're swamped with queries at present, so who knows how long they'll take to come up with a solution. The last word I have is that it seems to be a bug in Snow Leopard... so we might have to wait for 10.6.2 or later, but I'm hoping that a workaround can be found. [Edit: 10.6.1 doesn't fix it, either.] I'll do a free update as soon as a fix is available. Sorry for any inconvenience in the meantime!

In addition to Snow Leopard compatibility, Simon also includes some other changes:

• Updated the iPhone Report Template to improve the behavior of the back button and other aspects.
• Added a hidden preference to output debug information from the E-mail plug-in. It can be activated by entering "defaults write com.dejal.simon2 EmailDebugMode YES" in Terminal.
• Also added a hidden E-mail plug-in preference to use the recipient's SMTP server instead of the sender's, via "defaults write com.dejal.simon2 EmailUseRecipientServer YES".
• Added Japanese localization, thanks to Koichi Matsumoto.

Download now:

• Download Simon
• Download Time Out
• Download Caboodle
• Download BlogAssist

I'm pleased to announce that Dejal Narrator, my fun app to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices, is included as a bonus in the fourth TheMacBundles collection.

Narrator utilizes speech synthesis to read out the contents of a text document, using different voices for different parts. You have a range of "actors" that can portray any number of "characters", so various passages of your document are spoken with differing voices, pitches, inflections, etc. You can have it read out a play or story with appropriate voices. The words are highlighted on-screen, and there are also a couple of silent read-along options for stage directions, or for you to read out your own parts. A full license is included in the bundle, not some cut-down version.

You can see more of it on the Narrator page, or download it now to give it a try.

Note that at present Narrator has an issue on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): everything works okay, except that it can't open saved Narrator documents. It can open other kinds, though. I'm waiting for help from Apple to fix this, but will release a free update to fix this as soon as possible. Of course, if you're still on Leopard, you won't be affected.

This bundle also includes 11 other fine apps, for only $49.95. A bargain!

The included apps are:

• CrossOver Games
• DVDRemaster Pro
• Entourage Email Archive X
• EastPrint
• ImageFramer
• Money
• Neutrino
• Scribbles
• Speed Download
• Super Flexible File Synchronizer

Plus bonuses:

• Mac DVDRipper Pro
• Narrator

12 apps for just $49.95 — a saving of over 85%!

Visit TheMacBundles.com to learn more, or to take advantage of this great deal.

Good news: most Dejal apps work fine on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

One issue that you may find with Caboodle and BlogAssist is that the Services menu has been enhanced, and the items for those apps might be disabled by default. You can re-enable them via the Keyboard Shortcuts page of the Keyboard system preferences.

However, it's not all good news. Narrator seems to be broken on Snowy. Opening a document fails, whether it was saved on Leopard or Snow Leopard. The document opens, but no content is loaded. It still opens version 1 documents fine, but not version 2's, which is rather a problem.

I've spent several hours last night and this morning trying to figure out what the problem is, without any luck so far. I'll keep on it, but just wanted to warn anyone using Narrator.

Once again, Seth Dillingham is offering bundles as a fund-raiser for the Pan-Mass Challenge, which supports cancer research and treatment. A very worthy cause.

Unlike typical software bundles, where hundreds or thousands of people might get a fixed collection of apps at a discount, this one is a bit different: you can use his Bundle Builder site to make your personal ideal bundle of iPhone and/or Mac apps, and offer your own price for it.

I am happy to participate in this effort again this year. A Standard license is available for Dejal Simon, my essential server monitoring tool, along with licenses for Dejal Caboodle, my lean clean snippet machine, Dejal Narrator, my fun app to speak stories in multiple voices, and Dejal BlogAssist, my handy HTML markup tool. Plus hundreds of other great products from other developers.

Go ahead, take a look, and put together your ideal bundle of apps, and help fight cancer!

Narrator, my fun text-to-speech tool to read out stories or interviews in multiple voices, has now been updated to version 2.0.4.

It includes:

• Fixed an issue with the Preferences window, where edits might not be saved when quitting with the window still open (specifically when an edit is still active).
• Fixed an issue that could prevent finding licenses in very rare circumstances.
• Updated the built-in Kagi purchasing tool to the latest version, which fixes some issues with Leopard.

Download Narrator 2.0.4 now!

My wife and I are big fans of the Portland Japanese Garden, five distinct Japanese garden styles over 5.5 acres in the hills overlooking downtown Portland, Oregon. My wife even volunteers there once a week as a gardener.

Here's a short piece from the Travel Channel describing the garden:

If you're in Portland or visit, the Japanese Garden is a must-see.

The Mac Bundle Box promotion is almost over! Last chance to get Simon Standard and 11 other apps for just $49.00!

This great bundle expires in just a couple of days, so if you've been thinking about it, wait no more!

The bundle includes a Standard license for my Simon, the essential website and server monitoring tool. Use it to watch your own sites for failures, or others' sites for changes, and get notified via Twitter, email, sounds, speech, or other means.

Simon Standard retails for $59.95. This is the first time it has ever been included in a bundle. If you're at all interested in Simon, you'll save $10 and get 11 apps for free by buying this bundle... if you hurry!

Other apps in the bundle include:

• Freeway (normally $79.99)
• Keynote Themes (normally $39.00)
• DEVONthink (normally $49.95)
• myNotes (normally $24.95)
• iCash (normally $60.00)
• DaisyDisk (normally $19.95)
• Web2Delight (normally $19.95)
• Chronicle (normally $19.95)
• xHub (normally $24.95)
• Stomp (normally $29.95)
• Exces (normally $30.00)

Visit the Mac Bundle Box site now to take advantage of this great deal. Don't delay!

I recently wrote a reusable class for a couple of iPhone apps I'm currently working on, called DSActivityView. I decided to release it as open source. Read on for details.

Firstly, I should say that this work was inspired in part by Matt Gallagher's excellent article, Showing a "Loading..." message over the iPhone keyboard. My code only uses the -keyboardView method from his article, but he deserves credit and thanks for that and many other helpful articles. If you're not reading his blog, Cocoa with Love, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Back to my class. Actually, there are three classes: DSActivityView, DSBezelActivityView, and DSKeyboardActivityView. They provide three styles of activity view, and could easily be extended to support more.

DSActivityView

This does a simple horizontal-style loading view, intended for situations where you have a blank view while loading data. It can be displayed very easily — for the default "Loading..." label text, simply use:

The activity view is automatically added as a subview of the specified view (e.g. the current content view). No need to save the result to an ivar. It automatically supports rotation to any orientation, too.

You can specify a custom label via:

Or specify a custom width, e.g. so you can change the label while it is being displayed without upsetting the geometry, via:

Then when you're done with it, simply invoke this to get rid of it:

DSBezelActivityView

This is a subclass of DSActivityView, which displays an animated round-rect-enclosed variation: it animates into view by zooming from full-screen, with a gray background fading in to cover the passed view, and animates out by zooming to half size and fading out the background (see below for a movie showing it in action). It is ideal for situations where you have content visible already, but want to do a network operation to validate or send data, or some other time-consuming activity.

Display it via:

The [DSBezelActivityView activityViewForView:withLabel:] and [DSBezelActivityView activityViewForView:withLabel:width:] variations are also available. To remove with animation, call:

DSKeyboardActivityView

This is a subclass of DSBezelActivityView, which displays over the keyboard, somewhat like the OS 2 Text app used to do. It is useful to simply prevent further typing while validating a field or sending data (though you might also want to disable the field, to prevent pasteboard operations on it). No need to specify a view to use for this, since it uses the keyboard:

Plus a [DSKeyboardActivityView activityViewWithLabel:] variation for custom text. Remove it the same as for the bezel style:

Demo

I've included a demo project that builds an app to show the various options: the three styles, default or custom label text, covering just the content view or whole window, etc. It requires iPhone OS 3. Here's a movie showing the demo app running:

You can get the project from my Dejal Open Source Subversion repository via this Terminal command:

Or browse the source directly on the web.

You can also download a snapshot, though it may not remain up-to-date; using Subversion is the recommended approach.

Follow @dejalopen on Twitter for automated Subversion commit message updates. You may also like to follow @dejaldevdiary for my behind-the-scenes development diary, and @dejal for general Dejal and personal tweets. Finally, there's also a RSS feed for the repository.

I hope these classes are useful. You are welcome to use them in any project, commercial or otherwise. I just ask that you give me credit; see the DSActivityView header for the easy and free licensing terms. If you do use this code in any form, please tell me (or comment here).

If you make improvements, e.g. to add other activity styles or fix bugs, please send them to me so I can share them with the community. Thanks.

Enjoy!

Update: see also an update to optionally support the network indicator, and an update for iOS 4.

The fifth Mac Bundle Box, a collection of 12 great apps, is now available!

$458.59 worth of software for the low price of just $49.00! An amazing deal. Plus 10% of each sale will be donated to Charity: Water, a very worthy cause.

The bundle includes my own Simon, the essential website and server monitoring tool. Use it to watch your own sites for failures, or others' sites for changes, and get notified via Twitter, email, sounds, speech, or other means. The bundle includes a Standard license, which retails for $59.95 and enables up to 20 tests. If you need more, you can upgrade to the Enterprise license for much less than the normal standalone price. So you can get 12 amazing apps for less than the normal price of a Simon Standard license! It's a no-brainer.

Other apps in the bundle include:

• Freeway (normally $79.99)
• Keynote Themes (normally $39.00)
• DEVONthink (normally $49.95)
• myNotes (normally $24.95)
• iCash (normally $60.00)
• DaisyDisk (normally $19.95)
• Web2Delight (normally $19.95)
• Chronicle (normally $19.95)
• xHub (normally $24.95)
• Stomp (normally $29.95)
• Exces (normally $30.00)

Buy Simon Standard from the Mac Bundle Box, save $10, and get all these other apps for free! :)

Visit the Mac Bundle Box site to take advantage of this great deal, while it lasts!