David and Roustem are really getting into the swing of things with 1Passwd. Going from a cluttery interface and obscure features, they’ve turned from the dark side to the world of the unified. A new icon to complement a sweetened-up user interface, live search, gradients everywhere and smart folders to categorize your passwords give weight to their claim “it is by far the best release we’ve ever had!”

Continue Reading 1Passwd 2.3 released

This is mainly for developers, but if you’re a Quicksilver user and want to get a taste of the upcoming Fumo interface, feel free to tune in.

Nicholas Jitkoff, aka Alcor, the developer of Quicksilver has been extremely generous in providing assistance and code. A developer by the name of “ytrewq1″ has also been very gracious. Sincere appreciation to both of them.

Well, let’s take a look at how Fumo is shaping up. I’ve added a sliding transition for when it’s activated so it shoots down from the top of the screen. I’ve also made the contentView of the window transparent, and added a custom view to which the rendering of the background is done. Trust me, it’s easier that way.

The transition for the window exiting (by sliding out) is very crude and you’ll notice that I’ve had to use the “reallyOrderOut:” method on the window since orderOut makes it fade out, and it looks weird if the window slides out of the screen, then reappears and fades.

Final thing, (actually the first real thing I did) was the subclassing of the “activateInTextMode:” method. Try activating the interface in text mode (you’ll need to have a trigger for Command Window in Text Mode). Hopefully you get a very nice warping effect.

Next on the agenda is changing the background and text color of the actual searching views. Take a shot at it if you like. Here’s the source code:

Fumo Source

Update: Download a (still unstable) version of Fumo from this post.

Remember Fumo? Well, I have slowly been unraveling the source code Alcor kindly provided, and am starting to get the picture of how everything works. I’ve been playing around with different interface ideas, and for Fumo, have so far got something like this:

Yeah, I know it’s a far cry from the actual interface mockups Pavel created, but it’s a start. I mean, I’ve been whinging about this a lot, but you try to subclass views that are as cool and extreme as Quicksilver’s - without looking at their implementations. As ytrewq1 described, writing plugins for Quicksilver is a tedious process involving looking through the available code and just experimenting until something goes right.

Having said that, I’m having a lot of fun writing code for my favorite app, and it shouldn’t be too long before Fumo hits the market… uh… streets. It’s a great idea that is just waiting to be created (in fact, it’s been waiting for several months now. Before I knew about it, of course).

Got any ideas for Fumo? Or for a plugin for Quicksilver? I’m eagerly awaiting that comment

Update: Download a (still unstable) version of Fumo from this post.