Tuesday, January 23, 2007

New Version Design

We have finished the version 1.1.x roadmap. It is time to move on to 1.2. As you probably know, 1.2 shall include app language stripping capabilities. This means that many parts of the Xslimmer app will have to be adapted or even rewritten.

The most obvious change will be the main window. How do we indicate that an app has multiple languages? should we show what the final language will be? what happens after the language stripping has been done? But, most importantly, how do we combine both features into one single application and make sure that it is still attractive and easy to use?

Then you have the history or log information. The operation needs to be reflected in there, and in a compatible way with the current existing slim log.

Blacklist. Does it need to change? Will apps behave in equal manner when stripped from languages than when stripped from architectures? There is some testing to do.

These and many more details, are our current thoughts on making 1.2. It will take a few weeks, and a new beta test to get it out, but, as we are in the design phase this week, it would be great to hear any ideas you might want to see included in this or other future versions.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello! I recently purchased XSlimmer because it's a great little app, and I think integrating language stripping into it is a natural progression for the software. One way to integrate the language stripping functionality with the binary stripping would be to keep your current layout, but add a button or checkbox-type function to the toolbar that toggles "Binaries [ ]" and "Languages [ ]". Checking both would remove the proper binary architectures (as it currently does) and all languages other than the currently enabled system language. If the user doesn't want to delete all other languages, there should be a preference page for languages that allows them to select which languages they'd like removed. Also, you could throw out a little warning after Slim! is clicked that tells the user what actions are going to be taken. The checkbox-type functionality would also allow users to choose if they wanted to just do binary stripping, just language stripping, or both.

The only qualm I have with the current interface is that the Slim! button isn't immediately obvious. It needs to be bolded or highlighted to make it more visible. Hope this feedback helps, keep up the great work.

Jonathan said...

I think Eric has proposed some excellent recommendations. I had trouble finding "Slim!" myself when I first started using the application (I did purchase it).

I am wondering, does/do the developer(s) live in/come from Spain? Another question: what programming language is used for Xslimmer? Is it Cocoa, and will you move to Objective C 2.0 (is released with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard).

I hope your application won't be Leopard-only, as is a growing list of applications.