And here’s why building good UI is slow. Can you spot the difference to my last image?
Hint: look at the button for hiding the sidebar. It’s now no longer clashing with the edge of the tool panel. Getting this to work required an NSTitlebarAccessoryViewController that holds an empty 14-pixel-wide view. (Yes I calculate the 14 by reading the geometry.)
Docked palettes in #McKinley.
So, in McKinley, many people loved the floating palettes UI. But some people hated it. As part of Hardwick’s development, I’ve been attacking the problem.
I’ve built a dockable palettes system, so palettes can be dragged in and out of the document window. (You can also dock multiple palettes in one single floating window if you want.) I’m hoping this should suit everyone’s needs!
Still a bunch of tweaks to get it feeling perfect, but it’s a start!
Trying a version with proper NSTableView columns. Do the alternating row colours affect being able to visually scan the colour swatches?
Having fun working on my Thread Picker dialog for Hardwick (my embroidery app).
It’s used for choosing a thread, but also for defining new custom threads, and marking threads or thread libraries as favourites. (Favourite ones appear in the app’s threads palette for quick access.)
Spending today using (demos of) other embroidery software. It’s mostly Windows software which I’m running under CrossOver.
It’s hard to tell whether I’m just not used to Windows UI conventions, vs the software being unintuitive!
First thing I don’t like about the iPad mini: the acoustic display. The sound quality is fine, but if I’ve got a podcast on and I’m holding the iPad, it vibrates the device in rhythm with the words. I’m finding that quite unpleasant.
Would anyone who does machine embroidery mind taking a survey about software?
https://forms.gle/BWgDtqxeDqAPerE87
I’m building some embroidery digitising software (called Hardwick), and I’m interested in folks’ existing workflows, and where the pain points are!
Just took the plunge on an #iPad mini.
I’ve never particularly managed to have an iPad as part of my workflow for anything. I had one of the early 12 inch iPad Pros (from work) for a while, and I seldom used it.
This mini is mainly because I’m building an app that’ll run on iPad (so I need to test), but I thought maybe with the mini, if I take it with me all the time (hopefully it fits in my handbag), then I might end up using it more.
@Iconfactory Awww, you’ve hit your limit for the indie icon deal?
I’m considering what to do for Hardwick’s icon. (It’s an embroidery designing app — the name refers to the tapestries at Hardwick Hall, so I’m considering an icon based on that.)
I’ve signed up for your “notify me when there’s availability”, so fingers crossed :)
@funnymonkey the best reaction to this so far:
Today is definitely a day of yak shaving.
I had _intended_ to build splitting a shape into regions for satin stitch. But I’m down in low level file handling code, binary encoding for stitch data, and also some performance stuff with moving complicated stitch maths off the main thread.
I’ll get to my new feature one day!
Trying to work out what Dropbox does with file packages on iOS. Docs seem to imply they do something clever on MacOS but not iOS, but docs are old…
Guess I’m building a test app.
(Context: my shared file-writing library currently saves file packages. I’m bringing it to iOS, and would like to make sure that any Files app plugin (eg Dropbox) is a valid save location that works cross platform.)
Did some lighting and smoke for Halloween. Everything turned red when a kid walked up the drive :)
Fatigue day today.
I went to the supermarket at lunchtime. Needed to visit the pharmacy, so also had lunch in the café (and did a bit of work there) and bought some groceries.
That wiped me out for the rest of the day. I’ve not even had the energy to put the groceries away. Mercifully I didn’t buy anything frozen.
Today’s task: embroidery test stitches, to use as reference for my onscreen rendering in #Hardwick.
It seems that the event-parity layer across AppKit and UIKit (that I just spent a week refactoring into my vector canvas engine) is somewhat superfluous on Golden Gate.
But alas I am supporting back to MacOS 15, so it was still worth writing it!
Once again I’m thinking about App Store vs non App Store business models. This time it’ll be for an app that’s on both Mac and iPad.
I’d like to be able to sell it at trade shows. AFAICS there’s no way I can take money in person for an App Store app (selling offer codes is not allowed).
if I make the iPad version App Store and the Mac version not, then I can’t have them share a purchase or subscription.
This is frustrating.
Building Mac App Help Books
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/10/23/building-mac-app-help-books/ #mjtsaiblog
The misaligned tool icons are an interesting one — McKinley loads its tool icons via its own file format. I’m now exporting them as SF Symbols to load into Hardwick, and I’ve not got the margins set up right yet!
But no worries. It just requires a bit of iteration in my McKinley documents.
