Kanaka Hana | Hana

Hana 1.2 and Hana 2

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:00:19 -0500

I am working on Hana 1.1.4. It will be released soon. I need to put a few things back together that got pulled apart. A couple of major bugs will be fixed in this. First, the address bar crasher is fixed in this new version. Second, the focus preferences for opening external links in the default browser is fixed. I am also tweaking the behavior of the Hana News button on the status bar so it will only show if there is a new post AND you have not clicked the button since then.

In my last post, I said no Hana 1.2. I have changed my mind on this. Hana 1.2 will be the launching point for Hana 2 development of the model part of Hana. I took a big step towards this with 1.1.4, so it makes sense to go the rest of the way. However, 1.2 will not be released until 2.0 is released. Hana 1.2 is meant to be the Tiger version of 2.0. It will not have the full features of Hana 2, but it will have the most important ones. I am not making ANY commitments about when 1.2/2.0 will hit the market.

I will commit to 1.1.4 being released by 19 26 August though. I have other commitments that I must see too by then and want to get 1.1.4 out of the way way before then.

[UPDATE: I am testing 1.1.4 and it looks mostly good. But there is a crasher lurking in the toolbar still. I will not get to look at it until next week, so look for Hana 1.1.4 by 26 August. I will then move straight to 1.1.5!]

Thank you for using Hana. Thank you for patiently waiting for these bug fixes. I appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

Fred

Bad News & Good News

Sun, 25 May 2008 14:04:16 -0500

As I worked to add a new feature to Hana 1.2, the tendrils of this new little monster was finding its way deeper and deeper in to every other part of Hana. The longer I worked on it, the more I lamented that I was not yet working on the new Hana code base for 2.0. What's worse is that this code would not be reusable in Hana 2. So, just a few moments ago I stopped lamenting and decided that there will be no Hana 1.2. I will begin work immediately on Hana 2.

What this means is that there will not be any updates to Hana between now and the release of Hana 2.0. This is planned for late in the summer. I will be looking for a small group of active Hana users to beta test 2.0, but that is still 6 weeks or so away from being released. The first Beta of 2.0 will have feature parity at the very least with Hana 1.1.x.

Hana 2.0 will be free for all customers who purchased Hana at any price. As of right now, this only excludes user who acquired Hana via the MacHeist promotion. If you are an active Hana user and you got your license from MacHeist, fret not. I will be announcing a short period, say a fortnight, in which any Hana from MacHeist user can get a free upgrade. I am doing this not because I want you to pay, but because I want the license that can be found on the web to not be valid in 2.0.

What can you look forward to in 2.0? First, Leopard only support. Apologies to my Tiger lovers! But I want to use several new technologies and for that I need to push Hana forward. I also expect Apple to announce Mac OS X 10.6 at WWDC. I do not want to be TOO far behind the curve! :-) Second, you can look for much more complete web browser features. While Hana is a web worker as opposed to a browser conceptually, technologically it is a browser. Third, options for focused working will be expanded and settable globally and by web app. Fourth, workspaces. You will be able to group your web apps and yes even have settings per workspace. Fifth, I have a few REALLY cool ideas for Hana that will make it a better site specific browser than others. And lastly, but not all by any means, I plan to add plug-ins for badging and other features.

I have already started design and am quite excited about the project and will be getting started as soon as I finish posting this entry. If you are in the US, I hope your Memorial Day Weekend is going well!

Fred

Progress

Sat, 03 May 2008 13:29:49 -0500

Things have settled down a bit now that I am a month into my new day job. I have been reading up on loads of low level EFI and UNIX stuff until recently. The last couple of days have been all Cocoa development. I found my groove and made very good progress on that part of my porting project. It also got the juices flowing for getting back into Hana. I have been so overwhelmed with the transition that finding time to get the one major bug fixed and the new features implemented has been very hard. And when I have, I have found motivation severely lacking.

Today I sat down and got some code written. I have one feature about 33% implemented. It is a new preference that can also be set by Web-App. Of the features being added, this is a power-user feature. I hope to get it done this weekend and then move on to the other features. I am shooting to complete coding and major debugging by the middle of May. I will then test it for a week or two before releasing it.

In other news, being a Mac developer at my day job has me eligible to use Hana every day at work. And I do. My employer does not have their Microsoft Exchange server set up to support Entourage, so I have to use Outlook Web Access. Which is not very good, but I do like having it available in Hana without being worried about quitting Safari and losing my session. One of the features that I was planning to add and one suggested by a customer like you is a timer to automatically refresh the page. This is the next feature to implement. I need this BAD.

Lastly, you may have heard of Fluid. Fluid, like Hana is an browser meant for specific work. This cateogory of software is called Site Specific Browsers. Hana being a Tabbed Multi SSB. I am drawing lots of inspiration from Fluid for Hana 2 and have tentatively chosen to not add a feature to implement a similar feature in Hana. Instead, Hana 2 will feature an option to open a Web App as a Fluid SSB. Anyway, if you are using Hana to access ONLY one web-app, you might check out Fluid. It is very slick and currently free. Check it out here.

The Cat is out of the bag!

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:35:24 -0500

I have made no secret that I have a day job other than All Out Software, which is effectively my night job. Last week I received and accepted an offer to start a new day job. This time, instead of doing web development, I will be doing Mac development.

This has been a dream of mine for many years and the excitement I have is hard to describe. At the same time, I am leaving a fantastic job for a great firm doing wonderful work at my awesome client. (Did I miss any superlatives?) To say this is bittersweet is not capturing the true depth of the situation. I really love my current client and the work I am doing.

What this means to you, dear Hana users, is better work from me and hopefully more updates as I get a deeper knowledge of the Mac OS and Cocoa.

About due...

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:36:51 -0500

...for an update. Sadly not a new version. But an update on All Out Software. I have begun design work on some much requested new features for Hana. (No, no 1Password or Login/Form Data saving yet! Sorry!) I have a new practice of not talking about them. You'll just have to wait.

That being said, I do have some news. Some enterprising web developers pinged me about their web-app called Awesome Highlighter. I think it is pretty cool. It allows you to highlight part of a web page and then email a link to that highlighted page to a friend. So all those times your friends sent you a link and you were wondering why, well, now you can show them how to keep you clued in! In truth, it does not seem like a great fit for the Hana Web-App Directory since it is not necessarily something you will be using in Hana, but I included it since it is cool and I have not yet anything to show you for 1.2!

There is another HUGE piece of news for me that will indirectly affect you. More on that later this week. In the meantime, know that I have not been twiddling my thumbs. My day job is as demanding as ever, but not anymore of an impact on Hana than before. I have been working to bring more order to All Out Software over the last month. My desks are clean (well, one is ALMOST clean and the other is just a tad further behind.) But my business is in order and I have a much clearer grasp on how things are running at any given moment. Being an entrepreneur can be whelming. Overwhelming even! :-) Alas, order has be sorted and I have begun work on 1.2. I think it will be one of the better releases. I am shooting for middle of April release.

No one has pinged me about the iPhone yet. Bad customers! Ha! :-) I will buying mine later this week possibly. SO let me know what you think about Hana on the iPhone!

Blech!

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:27:19 -0600

I had not realized how badly my organization was until I had to assemble the numbers for the accountant. Alas, that onerous task is complete. I have a date with myself to get this fixed for 2008 (and the future) and to schedule a time each month to reconcile the books. This should go fast. I am telling you this because this is why one known issue with Hana 1.1.3 still floating in the wild.

If you attempt to drag an item out of the toolbar (when in customization mode of course,) Hana will lock up and crash. Not cool.

This will be the first thing I look at when I resume Hana development in a day or so. I will probably add a few other things and get 1.1.4 out next week so that this crasher is no long there. Then 1.2.

If you have an iPhone and a few moments, please take a look at Safari, bookmarks and how it works for your web-apps that you access via your iPhone. I am considering Hana for iPhone and would like your feedback on what you think this would need. I have downloaded the SDK and will be getting up to speed on it soon. I will be acquiring my very own iPhone late this month or early April. Any input would be welcomed.

Thank you.

Hana 1.1.3

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:01:04 -0600

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is a medium bug fix update. It is recommended for all users.

Bug Fixes
- Gmail Perpetual Progress Wheel Bug (Affected Yahoo! Mail too!) is fixed.
- No we mean it. It is really fixed!
- The Toolbar (Address Field) Crasher bug has been slayed. You may now use the toolbar with confidence again!
- The addresses in the toolbar will now be mostly accurate. In some cases the address will be off. We are still defining these cases and will issue a fix when we have the problem defined more accurately.
Known Issues
- The aforementioned occasional inaccurate addresses. (For us "about:blank" when composing a Gmail message.)
- The SSL Lock icon issue is not yet resolved. Here too we have not discerned a consistent behvior.

Thanks for using Hana!

GAH!

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:36:08 -0600

As you would imagine, but possibly do not know are are willing to assume, I use Hana. Actually, WE use Hana, but I do all of the writing here. So who am I? I am Fred Priese. I founded All Out Software, invented Hana and do most of the work. We includes a couple of other people. David came first and he is not a Mac user (anymore and yet.) David wrote the EULA for Hana and is an attorney. He came on board after hearing about Slate. Slate is another AOS project, but one that has never really gotten going. (It starts right after Hana 2.0.) Finally Mike is new to Mac development and like me has a background in Windows based web development. (That means ASP.NET.) Anyway, I use Hana. Mike uses Hana. David can't.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I use Hana and so I too notice bugs. Like the Gmail bug I fixed last night. I mentioned in the release notes that this affected Yahoo! Mail too. It looked like it was fixed too.

Well, I just noticed that it was doing it again. I know what is happening here, so this too will be fixed soon. I am going on a marathon feature sprint over the next week to move Hana to version 1.2. It will include a few nifty features. While trolling through the long list of ideas, I tested a few things and just discovered another bug.

So we might have a 1.1.3 first. Sigh.

Our currently known issues:

1) Yahoo! Mail will periodically execute a request that will fail. Hana does not disable the progress indicator on this failure. (This is very similar to the Gmail bug.)

2) Hana will crash when certain pages are loading with the toolbar open. (Google Analytics for us.) If you experience this, hide the toolbar. The cause for this is unknown.

3) Hana will sometimes not properly display the URI for a web-app in the address field of the toolbar. (I think this is related to number 2.)

4) Hana will sometimes not properly display the SSL Lock icon. (I think this too is related to number 2 and definitely to number 3.)

So the Hana Roadmap has 1.1.3 coming out this weekend, we hope! 1.2 in the next couple of weeks and 2.0 in the next month or two. I will not be blogging about all of these. But will chime in from time to time.

Now get to work! :-)

Hana 1.1.2

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:56:30 -0600

The Gmail Perpetual Progress Wheel Bug has been slayed!!!!

Finally!

While testing the new version prior to upload I discovered another bug in the routine for updating the User Agents. This too has been fixed. You may notice some duplicate User Agents. If this is the case, you have a couple of options for fixing it. Well a few actually. First is to go into the Preference panel for User Agents. Select a duplicated user agent other than Hana (Hana cannot be deleted by you.*) Click Remove and then do another. Second, close Hana and then simply navigate to ~/Library/Preferences and drag the file named com.alloutsoftware.hana.plist into the trash and then relaunch Hana. Hana will rebuild the default User Agents. Third, let me know why neither or these will work for you and I will investigate how I can update your User Agents without messing up your setup.

* You cannot delete the Hana user agent because the Hana user agent technically only exists in memory. It is never saved. It is dynamically built each time you launch Hana. This allows Hana to always reflect in its user agent what version of Webkit and what version of Hana is being used.

As always, we test, but are not perfect. If we missed something, we WANT to know it. Please do tell us!

Thanks for using Hana!

Suggestion Box

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:03:40 -0600

We are evaluating features for a new major upgrade to Hana. We have already received many requests for new features and are looking for more. Not because we are bereft of new ideas, but more because we are not sure which ones should have priority!

The suggestion box is right here on the Kanaka Hana blog and requires a Name and Email address. If you wish to remain anonymous, leave the placeholder address in the box and let me know your favorite fictional character! Unlike the other contact forms here and at our main web site, no reply will be sent unless you specifically request for one.

You can also always use any contact form or send an email message to the support mailbox at our main domain (alloutsoftware.com.)

Note, the Gmail always loading bug is still there. I will be investigating this tonight and hope to have a fix for this soon.

Hana Store is Back Up!

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:16:14 -0600

The Hana store was down for an unknown number of hours due to a bug at Kagi. We are deeply sorry if your attempted purchase of Hana was thwarted!

Alas, the bug was found and fixed. The store is back up! (Actually it never went down, the bug was in a script that handled redirects from the address they issue for the store.)

We are sorry for any inconvenience!

What's new in Hana 1.1.1?

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:15:53 -0600

Hana 1.1.1 brings some minor bug fixes and two notable fixes. The first notable fix is the perpetually running Gmail progress wheel. This is now classified as "mostly" fixed since it still occurs occasionally. The second notable fix is that the crasher bug when attempting to download a file with no location set in the preferences for downloaded files to be saved. We removed the Help buttons that had been added to Hana as we have just decided to rewrite Hana's help file for a future release. The current help file is mostly accurate. The new help file was created, just not included in Hana. You can view it here. If you ever have any questions, please use any of the contact forms found at alloutsoftware.com or drop an email to our support mailbox at alloutsoftware.com.

What's new is that we have moved this blog from the main All Out Software website to a sub-domain. This provides a cleaner way to manage Hana's online resources. One of these is the newly revamped Hana Web App Directory which can now be accessed from the Web-App menu in Hana!

To use the directory, you can click on any "Information" link for information to show up in a new window. When you click the "Add..." links, the selected web-app will be added to Hana for you. You may still need to tweak the URI in the Web-App edit sheet, but it should help you get started.

We hope you like 1.1.1! We are investigating what new features and bugs to fix in 1.1.2 and 1.2. We plan to then turn our attention to 2.0, which will bring some really cool things!

Hana 1.1.1

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:30:48 -0600

Hana 1.1.1 is the second release of Hana in 2008. We rushed 1.1.0 out the door due to two major bugs that we just discovered that needed to be addressed. For the most part, this was okay, but we had a bunch of web changes we wanted to include in it, including this updated version of Kanaka Hana, "the worker" blog. This will now be mainly viewed via the Hana News feature of Hana.

We are definitely interested in what web-apps you use, how you use Hana, what makes you love it or what makes you hate it (or at least not love it!)

To contact us, you have a couple of options. First, you can just send an email to our support mailbox at alloutsoftware.com or use our contact form. We are committed to responding to all email within 24 hours.