NewsWave, the twitter-style RSS news feed, will be sunset early next year. WHY? Even though it has very loyal users and both iOS and macOS apps reviewed very well -4.8 for iOS & 4.5 for macOS-, ultimately the recurrent revenue did not justify the time I’d need to invest in to further enhance it. Leaving …
Author Archives: mmv
Blog migrated to new server
If you’re reading this post it means the server migration went well & this blog is now running from a California datacenter. Also, took the opportunity to update from Debian 9 to Debian 11 so I don’t need to worry about EOL until June 2026. Crossing fingers. Until next time, Marc
Using NSTextView in SwiftUI
MarsManaged is built on SwiftUI. At the time of this writing, November 2021, SwiftUI is still quite new and catching up to AppKit/UIKit capabilities. As many early adopters, I found myself in a situation where a key feature I wanted to build for the app was not feasible using only SwiftUI views. I needed good …
MenuBar Items in SwiftUI
Before SwiftUI you would easily add, change or remove menuBarItems from your app Storyboard. With the transition to SwiftUI however, there’s no longer a StoryBoard file to edit… So, what now? After the initial surprise, and having spent a few hours reading documentation… It’s actually a very straightforward three step process: 1. In your @main …
Preventing edits in TextFields unless cell is selected
For the ToDo section in MarsManaged, the goal is for the user to see and quickly manage their upcoming tasks. The user should be able to easily tweak bookmarked tasks, set target dates, complete or delete them. Now, given that each cell is composed of multiple editable TextFields, it’s important to prevent unintended editing on …
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SwiftUI modifier order matters
This Sunday I spent pretty much all day working on MarsBased. I woke up early, went to the gym, made myself some coffee and got to work. In front of me was a prioritized list of “feature enhancements” my wife had prepared for me -she’s an excellent Product Manager so she always has great feedback- …
NewsWave for Mac 2022.0 (macOS Monterey compatibility update)
Today was Keynote day! And what a day, the new MacBook Pro’s look amazing and we have release dates for macOS Monterey, just a couple days out! With that in mind I’ve submitted a compatibility update for NewsWave for Mac, version 2022.0. No fancy new features today, this update focuses on compatibility and addresses a couple …
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Nothing like vacation to recharge batteries
After almost two years of ’stay at home’ vacation this year my wife and I went to Egypt and Jordan. I forgot how great is to travel, meeting new people, learning new cultures, visiting new places… It was an extremely enjoyable trip, but more importantly, it helped recharge batteries and come up with new ideas. …
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PHP maintains an enormous lead in server-side programming
When I choose the backend code for NewsWave several years ago I went with PHP after listening Marco’s recommending it due to its reliability and stability. After several years I can confirm. Apparently a lot of other fellow developers think the same looking at the latest data from Ars Technica. If you’re planning a new project, …
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Using NSSortDescriptor to sort Dates and nil values
Today I’ve been working on sorting tasks, as I’m using swiftUI and CoreData I use a FetchRequest with the following SortDescriptor: NSSortDescriptor(keyPath: \Task.targetDate, ascending: true) The idea being it will sort based on the task due date from smallest to the largest, meaning you’ll see the ones you should act on first at the top. …
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