Maxprog @ Blogger

Did you know that if you never update your operating system, the last version of your favorite applications, one day, will no longer be supported? Do you realize that this situation will become an uncomfortable impasse soon or later? and the more outdated you are the worse? Let's have a look. The computer industry is in constant motion and evolution. As the time goes on, we usually purchase new hardware, we very likely update our operating system to enjoy all the new features and we try to get all our software up-to-date. But sometimes it is not that easy, mainly because a new operating system or a new hardware can conflict with a version of a software you use a lot, a software that is vital to you or your company. Indeed if that specific version does something or supports something new versions don't you will have to stick with what you have. Same if you're a satisfied pragmatic user that doesn't feel the need for speed new unneeded stuff or simply if your hardware is...

All of a sudden, right after updating your system to macOS High Sierra you probably found out that all the recipient lists throughout the software were no longer sorted alphabetically. Well, I believe we were the first to find out and it took more than two weeks to actually receive the first complaints from MaxBulk Mailer users. We even received screenshots like this: High Sierra file sorting issue So what happened? We believe it all has to do with the new APFS hard disk format that comes with the macOS 10.13 High Sierra operating system. It is a format exclusivelly used on SSD drives for now, maybe that explains why we received so few complaints. That new APFS format no longer returns folder item lists automatically sorted alphabetically but somehow shuffled or maybe ordered by date, not sure. Anyway, as said above, we suffered the problem before anyone else and we fixed it right away. To fix the problem the file list has to be sorted by code. That means we have to process that list...

Today I came across an old document I created on June 2004 probably from some text I found on the internet or maybe from an old NUG post, to say the true I am not sure where it comes from. Anyway, the thing is that the document in question is some kind of variable naming conventions now I realize I fully adopted after reading it. This is what it recommends when naming things you are declaring in your code depending on their nature. For you to understand better, it is a list of heading characters you have to start names with. This is the list: Local Variables: "a" Global Variables: "g" Constants: "k" Input Parameters: "in" Output Parameters: "out" Input/Output Parameters: 'io" Properites of Classes: "m" Events: "ev" Methods/Functions: descriptive name Modules: DB_Module, System_Module Methods/Functions in those modules: "DB_" Properties in that module: "mDB_" Constants in that module: ...

It has been a long time since we last updated the software we have available for sale in the Apple App Store. People may wonder why the versions we have there are more than a year and an half old. There is an explanation for that, Apple rules. Indeed, when you post a new application or an update to the App Store, Apple performs an in-depth review of your submission. If you pass all filters and match all Apple guidelines, your application will be available for sale, otherwise you will get it rejected and you will receive some kind of cryptic message about some weird issues that make your application unsuitable for the platform. Hopefully I am quite used of those error messages and I always manage to get the submitted application finally approved. The reason why we stopped updating comes from Apple new requirements, especially Entitlements and Sandboxing. Apple says: "Application sandboxing restricts an application’s access to only system resources, including the file system, for wh...

After about a decade without a single issue, the iCash Currency Manager updating system has stopped working . Indeed, if you open the currency window and click on the 'Update now' button or you have activated the iCash 'Document > Update Currency rates' at startup preference, you will get the currency list filled with zeroes. So, what happened? Actually iCash was fetching currency rates from Yahoo! services. It seems like Yahoo! has discontinued the (private, mostly-undocumented) Yahoo Finance API that many developers have been using for their currency data. All responses seem to be returning "violation of the Yahoo Terms" error. I suppose there's a chance they may switch it back on, but they don't officially support that API anywhere as far as I can tell. You can see by yourself clicking on the link below: http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=USDEUR=X&f=sl1d1t1ba&e=.csv Instead of receiving the USD to EUR rate as usual now we g...

During the last decade we have been witnessing the smartphone revolution. Mobile phones have become multi-purpose tools, they can do much more than handling calls. At the very beginning we were all filling our new toy with all kind of stuff and it was really funny. Smartphones are great and you can do lots of things with them. Actually there are tons of apps that can take advantage of the portability of such type of device. Some of those apps are the result of its success and would not have existed otherwise but I believe not everything can or should be ported to smartphones. Indeed, smartphones are not notebooks nor real portable computers. They are something else. Actually, since they are phones and they are supposed to be carried virtually everywhere there owners go, they include a small screen and they don’t have a real keyboard. As a result mobile devices may be harder to use with given applications, even with the biggest screen available. Even tablet computers like the iPad ...

Did you know you can fetch sequential contents from the web with Web Dumper? Sequences of documents, pictures or directories like '/01/pict1.jp', '/01/pict2.jp', '/01/pict3.jp',..., '/02/pict1.jp'. This is called Incremental downloads. Read more here: https://www.maxprog.com/site/blog/post.php?id=278

Sometimes people ask me why all those beautiful and colorful Maxprog software icons have suddenly been replaced with black and white icons: Actually I already posted a note about that a few months ago. It has to do with HiDPI (retina) support . Indeed as part of our commitment with our users we decided to give support to HiDPI displays. To do that, and among other things, we had to redesign all our icons since they were not ready for HiDPI at all. HiDPI needs two different sizes per icon, for example the toolbar now needs 64x64 icons in addition to the usual 32x32. We only had the low resolution ones so we had to look for a solution. All our icons were made by profesional designers, one after the other in the last two decades. At the beginning the idea was to find similar icons and we actually did so. However the result was quite unsatisfactory because it really seems color icons are something of the past, especially in the main toolbar. Lets have a quick look at Apple Safari, iTunes, ...