Between a rock and a hard place
Ever since LittleSnapper 1.5 arrived earlier in the summer, we've been hard at work looking into reports about the application not remembering FTP passwords. We spent considerable amounts of time resolving a few bugs for v1.5.1 - however some users continue to experience issues when using LittleSnapper in dockless mode. Whilst we've looked into numerous ways to fix this issue, we've had to take a long hard look at the dockless mode and come to a hard decision for the feature.
As of LittleSnapper 1.5.2 we will be removing Dockless mode, and whilst that will cause consternation amongst some users, we wanted to ensure you're aware of the reasons for us pulling the feature - something we really didn't want to do.
The Backstory
Hiding the dock icon for an OS X application, whilst far from rare, is not actually supported by Apple. As such, it requires a little black magic to get an application running without a dock icon, and developers have to modify a setting contained within the application itself in order to achieve the hiding. In earlier releases of Mac OS X, this wasn't such a problem - however in Leopard and more notably Snow Leopard, developers are encouraged to code sign each release of their applications and this is where modifying the internals of an application can become an issue.
When a developer code signs an application, a signature is generated that is only valid for the application when we build it, and should the application's internals be modified (say, by toggling dockless mode on or off) the code signature is marked invalid by the operating system. This means that the OS doesn't allow the application access to any previously-authorised system resources - in LittleSnapper's case, the Keychain that stores your FTP and SFTP passwords becomes off-limits.
"So why not simply avoid code signing entirely?" I hear you cry. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Apple's push for Code Signing on the desktop is continuing, and on the whole that's a good thing. It means that data such as the passwords in your Keychain remain safe, yet at the same time they're accessible to unmodified code-signed applications that you've authorised to use Keychain data. Given that we expect Apple to continue pushing code-signing, removing code-signing is simply not an option - particularly in the longer term.
We know that some users will be highly critical about the removal of the dockless option - and rest assured we've looked into a number of different options to try and avoid dropping the feature. However, alternative routes to re-enable this functionality are both hacky in nature and by no means guaranteed to work in future updates to OS X.
Should Apple offer us a supported way to enable dockless mode in the future, rest assured that we'll do everything we can to get this feature back into a future release of LittleSnapper.
Further Reading
If you're looking for a little more discussion on the topic, then we'd recommend that you read the following post for some background - and for any developers reading this, we've filed rdar://7253116 which you're welcome to duplicate via Apple's Bug Reporter.
LittleSnapper reviewed by Macworld USA and UK!
It's been a busy couple of weeks for LittleSnapper reviews with both the US and UK Macworld magazines reviewing LittleSnapper!
Macworld UK reviewed LittleSnapper in its recent Autumn 2009 edition - and were kind enough to award LittleSnapper 5 stars and an Editors' Choice award! Macworld's buying advice was very clear:
LittleSnapper is an indispensible application for all web designers; the sheer joy at not having to stitch together shots is itself worth the asking price. But the additional annotation, sharing and editing options make it worth investigating for anybody involved with the web.
The folks at Macworld magazine in the US also published a review of LittleSnapper 1.5 on their Mac Gems blog recently - and we're excited to see it awarded 4 coveted mice! Here's a choice quote from the review:
LittleSnapper’s user interface displays a level of finesse, found only in the best of Mac software, that makes the program a joy to use.
It goes without saying that we're hard at work on LittleSnapper (and of course RapidWeaver) - expect more LittleSnapper and RapidWeaver news soon!
Celebrating 100,000 posts on the Realmac Forums!
The Realmac Forums have always been a hugely popular area for our users to discuss all things Mac, Realmac and more. However, today we're absolutely thrilled to announce that the Realmac forums have hit 100,000 posts since their re-launch in May last year!
On behalf of everyone at Realmac HQ, I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the folks who moderate the forums - as well as all our wonderful users who've helped make the community what it is today. It's been a fantastic 16 months for the new forums - and we can't wait to see them grow further as we welcome new LittleSnapper and RapidWeaver users to the fold!
Grab an Ember swag-pack!
From time to time we like to order some Realmac-related goodies - and to celebrate the launch of Ember we've recently ordered some Ember t-shirts. Modelled by six members of the Realmac team below, we've also saved a few of these shirts and starting today there's a chance for you to score one!
Some of the Realmac Team (L-R): Luke, Danny, Aron, Dan, Nik and Keith (Ben wasn't able to make the shoot)
To win one of ten Ember Swag Packs (containing either a white or charcoal tee and some Ember button badges) simply share your Ember images on Twitter using our embr.it short URL service. Any tweets containing embr.it URLs posted from now until noon (UK time) on Monday 21st September will be entered into the competition - and be sure to follow @emberapp on Twitter as we'll be announcing the 10 winners via the Ember Twitter account on Monday afternoon!
If you're wondering how to create a shortened embr.it URL, simply visit the bottom of any Ember page and click 'Generate'. Registered users can customise the URL 'slug' too by making sure they're signed in when trying to create a short URL.
Happy tweeting!
RapidWeaver 4.3 is now available!
For the past couple of weeks, we've been hard at work finalising RapidWeaver 4.3 to make sure it runs beautifully on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Today, after much testing and feedback from users, we are absolutely thrilled to publicly release RapidWeaver 4.3!
RapidWeaver 4.3 is recommended for all users - whether you're on Leopard or Snow Leopard - and a free update is available via RapidWeaver's built-in Check for Updates option as well as the Realmac Software Downloads Page! There’s tonnes of small improvements and bug fixes in this release - if you’re curious about what’s been fixed, be sure to check out the release notes.
On behalf of everyone at Realmac HQ, thanks for your patience with this release - and happy weaving!