We love WordPress updates and WP 3.3 is a doozy! Many things have changed, including the internals of how the admin bar is constructed. Today we introduce version 0.4 of our WP Admin Bar ID Menu plugin which allows the plugin to work with WP 3.3. Nothing else has changed about this plugin, it remains a very simple tool that just puts the ID number of a page or post into the admin bar alongside the “edit” menu item.

You can get the update by simply checking for updates in WordPress if the plugin is already installed.

Over the nearly 2 years (or more realistically 1.5 years) that Tenseg has been around there have been some software releases, but not a steady stream as you might expect. Some of these releases have been significant ones, but none have been mind-blowing.

One reason for this is simply that one of the two people (myself, Alex Celeste) is a full-time college student during the academic year, so I don’t have the time to be constantly moving projects forward 365 days/year, and the other person (Eric Celeste) likewise has more important money-making endeavors to look after. Every couple of months an update to one piece of software or another may be sent out (like the unmentioned minor updates I released to Fact Triangles, Blackjack, and soeMatrix earlier this week), but again, these have been minor updates. The release notes of these products have over time hinted at some of what we’ve been busy with: Across the entire first semester of this past academic year I cooked up a massive collection of integrated backend tools that will help us support released software going forward, but naturally you don’t really see the tools reflected in your experience with Tenseg software, they just make our lives much easier.

However, it is summertime (as the heat wave currently engulfing Minnesota is proof of…) and so we both have had a little more time to devote to programming. I wanted to point out that summertime aside there are a couple projects that we’re working on that at some point may result in a piece of software you all can play with. For the most part these are projects we’d like to keep under wraps and first mention days (if not minutes) before public release, but I might as well mention the Sprouts app that I’ve been helping Eric put together as of late since he mentioned it on his personal blog.

If you are a Cocoa or Cocoa Touch developer yourself (if you don’t know what those two are just skip this paragraph ) then there is something we’ve started putting together that you may find useful. As you know, coding involves lots of research and experimentation. StackOverflow is a blessing for this, but we wanted to make sure we had a place to put our own tips and samples (even if mirrored from questions at StackOverflow). So, that was what gave birth to our new Developer Tips and Samples page. Regardless where else on the internet we share tips and sample code they will all be centrally accessible on that page here on our website. We anticipate that more tips and samples will be added to that page as we do our own coding. If any of the tips and samples on that page help you out we’d love to hear from you.

So in a nutshell… More progress is being made then you would see just by checking this news page and looking for updates in our software. The bulk of our (somewhat strained during the academic year) development time is given to currently unreleased software, most of which we aren’t mentioning publicly at this time. Therefore most progress these days is what we like to call “hidden progress” because we can see it easily enough, but none of you have a clue it is being made (without a post like this one).

Just a few minutes ago a minor update to WebPDF was released, v1.0.3. What does this minor update change or fix? The only visible changes are to the History menu. First you will no longer see URLs displayed, instead you see page titles. Second the Clear item now goes gray when the History menu is empty (right after you use the Clear function before you navigate to another page). Beyond the visible changes we’ve made numerous bug fixes based on dealing with warnings and static analyzer results in Xcode and once again (I promise for the final time for a long time) changed the URLs to our backend support mechanisms, you know, our web-based software WebPDF talks to for update checking, feedback submitting, and crash reporting. Anyway, you can grab WebPDF v1.0.3 either from within WebPDF or by heading on over to the WebPDF Product Page. Any comments regarding this new version can be posted either in the comments here, at our discussion forums, or by using the “Send Feedback…” option in WebPDF itself.

Earlier today I found out that my computer was never sending out system profiles when on the network of my college, CSB/SJU, using EmailSystemProfile (by taking a closer look at when it was sending the emails by looking at the recipient GMail account’s inbox). It seems that whatever is breaking the script is well out of my control. I’d bet that many institutional/corporate networks probably block what this essential script needs open to run. So, for those of us that are stuck in setups where the script doesn’t work, here is an applescript alternative. Once downloaded place this script within the Apple Mail scripts folder (~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail) and edit the recipient variable at the top of the script file in Applescript Editor. We can’t get this to run automatically, but at least it’s simpler than manually saving proprietary system profile files and emailing them. Once you run this script from Mail all you need to do is click Send and the system profile will be sent off and filed away similar to how the automatic script functions. If you’re one of the unlucky users for whom the original shell script doesn’t function then I highly recommend getting this applescript on your system sooner rather than later.

A few minutes ago the first update to Fact Triangles in almost a year went live. Believe it or not we started coding this update long before WebPDF went 1.0, but due to some solid problems we ran into when Xcode 4 was in its preview stage (versus the gold master released just a few days ago) Fact Triangles was refusing to run without crashing when you accessed the preferences window. That severe bug seems to be gone now when building using the golden master build of Xcode. The largest changes that are incorporated in the v1.3.2 update are its dependency on Mac OS X v10.6 or above, and the migration to our dynamic automatic updater. Additionally we have included the rewritten feedback provider and crash reporter, both of which are in use by WebPDF. A fairly small, but somewhat significant, update. A month from now we’ll be dismantling the static automatic updater for Fact Triangles and with that saying farewell to static updaters altogether as all our software products will be utilizing the dynamic updater. Feel free to grab the update using the self-updating feature, or if that fails you can always grab the update from the Fact Triangles Product Page.

A couple minutes ago WebPDF v1.0.2 was released. As you can infer from the article on the widget updates just below this article, this update migrates WebPDF over to the new update mechanism (and like with the widgets, in about a month the old WebPDF updater will be taken down). But that migration is by far not the only thing that has changed in WebPDF, there are three other bugs that have been fixed in this minor update:

• The copyright statement as visible in Finder is now updated for 2011
• The “Use Safari HomePage” button associated with the HomePage preference, which worked in testing v1.0.1 but broke I think with 10.6.6, is now working again
• You can no longer resize the About dialog

This update doesn’t make many changes, and the biggest one is entirely invisible, but the changes it makes are pretty significant. As always, questions and comments regarding WebPDF are welcome, just use the “Send Feedback…” menu item. WebPDF v1.0.2 is available either from the WebPDF Product Page, or for the next month using the self-updating functionality.

Late last night we pushed out two fairly minor updates to both Blackjack and soeMatrix. The only user-visible change that was made (that we remembered to document as we were coding) was in updating the copyright statement for 2011. These updates have far more changes under-the-hood though. With the v1.5 updates we debuted a self-updating functionality to these widgets (and that was to be used in any future widget we develop). That functionality didn’t exactly use a proper update feed (like appcasts for Mac applications and plists for Safari Extensions), it was just a simple php script with authorization keys. Around the same time we created the widget updating mechanism we began work on a solution to encompass all our Mac products that would act for us developers as simply as the updaters act for you users (much like Apple’s iTunesConnect for the App Stores). In creating this we would do away with static appcasts, plists, and php files altogether, instead opting for one catalog.php file to dynamically serve up whatever the product calling it wanted. In these v1.5.1 updates we’ve switched over to this new update mechanism (we call it Tenseg SoftwareUpdate), leaving the old widget updater behind when going forward. When we next update all our other products they, too, will (possibly silently) switch over to utilizing this new update mechanism.

You may ask why create such a mechanism when we knew a Mac App Store was on the way (and is now open)? The basic answer is that the Mac App Store requires being part of another paid developers program and we didn’t want to commit to that at the moment. That, and since we develop more than just applications for Mac OS X we’d still need to deliver the widgets and random scripts from our website alone. If we ever decide to release shareware applications (versus just freeware applications) then the Mac App Store will be one of the more likely choices for distribution. Until then we’re going to be sticking with our own distribution mechanisms for our Mac applications.

Anyways, you can either use the built-in updaters or head on over to the product pages (Blackjack and soeMatrix) to get these minor updates. The old updater will remain in place for one month, then the self-updating functionality of the v1.5 updaters will be broken for eternity.

WebPDF v1.0.1 has just been released. This update brings a few changes regarding URL loading (you can now specify a home page and we add “http://” for you if you forget) as well as introduces minor tweaks to the main window interface. Additionally you’ll find that the Save PDF dialog box will now start remembering where you last saved a PDF to. All of these changes should be quite useful, but the single biggest change in WebPDF v1.0.1 is completely invisible to the average user. You know that “Send Feedback…” item in the Help menu. The window it brings up so you can send us feedback on WebPDF has been completely rewritten, as has the server code that actually accepts your feedback. There are only two visible changes in that window to hint at the massive under-the-hood changes, I challenge you to figure out what those changes are (and test out the feedback system to submit your guesses). WebPDF v1.0.1 is now available both by using the in-app software updater or by heading over to the WebPDF Product Page.

WebPDF has just been updated to version 1.0 finally bringing the software out of beta and giving it a solid foundation to build on. The initial purpose of WebPDF was to make a simple-to-use piece of software that could create PDFs from webpages without the annoying page breaks normal PDF-making had. At its time of initial public release it was the only free app that could do this, but there were many shareware apps, so one goal was to provide the free alternative. As of the v0.92 initial public release it could perform its primary purpose. However, it lacked some key features, as well as still held onto the old server-side connections. This finalized version 1.0 release changes all that. The main key feature that has been implemented for the first time in version 1.0 is the ability to open when a URL is passed to it by Mac OS X (think Safari’s Open Page With… menu item) and load that webpage instead of the default webpage. This is a huge improvement as now you can have a URL passed in instead of needing to type it out in the URL field yourself. We also implemented various changes and additions so WebPDF could come in line with the standards we have at Tenseg for Mac applications. These range from the mandatory inclusion of the CrashReporter and FeedbackProvider to including the standard Tenseg About window and using the Tenseg SoftwareUpdate mechanism. You can read the full release notes if you’re curious about what all has changed. WebPDF version 1.0 is currently available from the WebPDF Product Page, and as soon as Eric edits the old appcast it will become available from the built-in software update feature.

It was one year ago today that we brought the Tenseg website online and with that gave birth to Tenseg as it is known today. That first day all the website consisted of was your average raw WordPress installation. The appearance of this site today was not yet conceived for use here. However, it was pure hours that the site showed off its powerful WordPress core before we put a theme that Eric had recently designed for another site to use. After a couple of days we finally decided upon the theme that you see in use today.

The original push that led us to forming Tenseg was, as is well documented earlier on this Tenseg News page, my senior project at Avalon High School. We needed to have a company with which we could register for the iPhone Developer’s Program. Yes, individuals can register, but since both Eric and I wanted to have access to the vast resources Apple provides with the program, we needed to form a company. On top of the work for my senior project, we’d house all our existing and future software development projects under this company. Hence the basic working plan for Tenseg was born.

But we needed one final important thing before we could register it as a formal sole proprietorship company, a name for this company. Here’s what I remember of the path that led us to Tenseg as the final name. Over the past couple of years my dad had tentatively been using the name Appropriate Technology as a baseline. He’d started using it in product identifiers, created a logo, and also built a stub for a website. As you will notice the logo he designed is now Tenseg’s logo, and WebPDF is now a Tenseg software product for Mac OS X. I don’t quite remember what snag we hit when we tried to just use the name Appropriate Technology (it may have been that in Minnesota that name was already being used, or that the domain was unavailable), but we had to come up with another name. So how did we fall on Tenseg? Tenseg is short for Tensegrity, a term meaning tension with integrity. It is from this definition that we brought out the tagline “Software with Integrity” for Tenseg. My mom had already started using Tensegrity in her blog, Tensegrities. So we decided Tenseg was a good, and available, name for this company.

Once we had set up the website we needed some starting content beyond the “Tenseg is Born” post. We needed some actual software to publish here. So what we did was move a bunch of software that had been hosted on other sites of ours to Tenseg. I, personally, was maintaining most of the software that are now Tenseg software products. I’d linked a simple downloads page from my own Apple Home Page (this page now just links to the Tenseg website). As you can tell from the link above, Eric had been maintaining (and clearly still does maintain…) WebPDF at the old Appropriate Technology website. So between those two sources we immediately could publish software through Tenseg.

In this first year of life Tenseg has fully taken over the development projects we brought to it a year ago, and has started projects purely of its own (SubCalc and the two Useful but Random Scripts and Such). Further development on the existing software projects, and some new software products, are in the works, so there is definitely still improvements to come! This first year has been great, so lets see what this next one, and the ones to come beyond October 2011, bring us. Happy 1st Birthday Tenseg!