Trying Out Figma
This week I finally sit down and got my hands dirty in design. I partially explored design systems, sketched some logos, colors, and typography in Figma. Then I tried a slight re-design of my website's home page:
Figma is really intuitive. When I first saw others' cursors moving in real time, it blew my mind. But for me as a one-person shop, its intuitive interface is the reason I love it. I tried Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch. They all failed me. Figma is the first tool I felt home-ish. I still struggle with it, but I do see its potential in my workflow.
I know the design I did today isn't great. It's not even good. It's the worst thing I will probably come up with. And I'm not updating my home page to be exactly what I have designed.
However, the design did improve the website in some areas. And I just incorporated them in the latest build.
Separating code and design does make the product better. I will spend more time on dedicated design sessions.
∞ Flutter 1.9's Support of macOS Catalina and iOS 13
Chris Sells, PM for the Flutter developer experience, announced on Google Developers Blog:
Supporting macOS Catalina and iOS 13
As Apple prepares to release Catalina, the latest version of macOS, we’ve worked hard to make sure that Flutter is ready for you to upgrade. We’ve updated the end-to-end tooling experience to ensure it works well on Catalina and with Xcode 11. This includes adding support for the new Xcode build system, enabling 64-bit support throughout the toolchain, and simplifying platform dependencies.
With iOS 13 on the way, we’ve also been working to ensure your Flutter apps look great on the latest iPhone release. Flutter 1.9 includes an implementation of the iOS 13 draggable toolbar, with both long-press and drag-from-right, and supports vibration feedback. Work on iOS dark mode is also well underway with a number of pull requests already merged.
Finally, in the latest development builds, you can now turn on experimental support for Bitcode, which is Apple’s platform-independent intermediate representation of a compiled program. Submitting your app as Bitcode allows Apple to optimize your binary in the future without resubmission, and opens the door to Flutter potentially supporting platforms like watchOS and tvOS that require Bitcode for app submission.
I have been seriously looking into Flutter lately. And this is the moment I was sold to it. Timely support of latest macOS and iOS versions are critical for my projects.
You Can Now Edit Titles with dA 5Star Version 5
dA 5Star version 5 is now available on macOS App Store:
- You can now edit the app or podcast's title. This is useful if you have a long title in store but want to use the short version for the wallpapers.
Be creative on custom titles and happy reading 5-star reviews ^_^
dA 5Star Version 4 Brings Multi-desktop And Multi-screen Support
dA 5Star version 4 is now available on macOS App Store. It now has:
- Better support for multiple desktops: switching desktops will update its wallpaper if not yet.
- Better support for multiple screens: all screens will display the same review.
Happy reading 5-star reviews on all of your desktops and screens ^_^
dA 5Star Version 3 Is Shipped
Release notes:
- It now fetches most recent 500 reviews from each territory. It may take a few minutes to download them all though.
Purchase the app here and happy reading 5-star reviews from over the world ^_^
dA 5Star Version 2 Is Shipped
Release notes:
- Added dark wallpaper appearance. By default, it's now in sync with your system's appearance. You can override to always be light or dark.
- Added a "Rate dA 5Star" menu item. I truly appreciate it if you can take a minute to leave a macOS App Store. If it's a 5-star review, I can read it from my wallpaper!
- Added a "Send Feedback" menu item.
Purchase the app here and happy reading 5-star reviews ^_^
Two Weeks to Air
dA 5Star is now available on macOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/da-5star/id1473088658
Only July 7, I was listening to Independence episode 56: The Happiest Customer, where @parrots, @eataduckimust and @jellybeansoup talked about positive feedbacks, and what we should do with them.
Two thirds into the episode, Curtis threw out an app idea: pull random 5-star reviews and automatically set them as wallpapers.
I really enjoyed listening to the episode and was nodding along with them. Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about the app idea. It seems like simple enough to implement, and yet can have a huge impact on my daily mood and productivities. So I spent some nights in Xcode, and voila! dA 5Star was born.
If two weeks ago you told me I would ship a macOS app completely built with AppKit, before I ship a (non-game) iOS app, I would stare at you with a how-is-that-possible and why-would-I-do-that face. And yet two weeks later, I SHIPPED a pure AppKit macOS app!
Go buy me half a cup of coffee, now: https://apps.apple.com/app/da-5star/id1473088658
And of course, leave a 5-star review so I can eat my own dogfood.
Every time I used a credit card then immediately received a receipt from Square, I was reminded how all the credit card companies are selling my data.
Every time I realize there is no built-in cgPath method on NSBezierPath, but on UIBezierPath, I am reminded that macOS development has been really a second-class experience. Good thing it's changing since WWDC19.
Catalyst will affect nothing about macOS’s game landscape, since most of the games are built with either Unity or Unreal, and they both have a Catalyst-like check box called ☑macOS.