YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – It seems that we are in the midst of the rainy season. Last week, the weather forecast said that it would be rain all week. Yet, it doesn’t really rain much over this week.

Last week, I released a desktop application titled Split 1-2-3. It’s been more than 10 days since I released it. But to my sadness, it hasn’t even been reviewed by Apple, Inc.

The first time I laid my hands on Macromedia Fireworks was around the spring of 1998 when I bought a package including Dreamweaver and Fireworks with a student discount while I was a graduate student. I think it was US$198. It’s been more than 25 years since then. In fact, I used it until my iMac 2011 died last week, so I need a bitmap editor to replace Fireworks.

Adobe Fireworks was a horrible software title to the extent that it crashed frequently although it was very easy to use. Therefore, I’ve developed something that I can use without an Intel-based Mac. Finally, I’m ready to announce another desktop application after 10 days or so. This new release is called Firestorms 2.

Firestorm 2 is a bitmap editor that lets you resize and rotate an image, making a selection of an area so that you can crop part of it. Besides editing an image you select, you can add circle layers, ellipse layers, rectangle layers, text layers and SF symbol layers to the document.

Although it lets you open it as a source of bitmap data, Firestorm 2 doesn’t use the PNG format as a document file. It has its own file type (.storms2) so that you can save progress and then recover it from a saved file at any time.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – It seems to me that the rainy season has started. Maybe, it’s because of Typhoon No. 6 that it’s been raining all day in the Tokyo area. Yet, according to the weather forecast, it’s going to be rainy next week.

It’s been just a week since I released the last software title? I thought that was two or three weeks ago. The last development project was relatively large, and I spent quite a lot of time for it although the initial iOS release took me just a week or less. Anyway, I’m ready to announce a new macOS software title. This new release is called Split 1-2-3.

Split 1-2-3 is a once-forgotten desktop application development project. I was forced to abandon it after spending two or three weeks because of Image Renderer, which rarely works in SwiftUI.

Split 1-2-3 is a mosaic style desktop application that lets you display a few dozen images in a grid at a time. The user starts by choosing a grid layout (for example, 3 rows by 4 columns), and the application splits the entire window into those exact divisions using interactive split view components. Each individual cell acts as an independent grid space where you can drag-and-drop or select an image file to display, scale, and reposition. Additionally, you can uniquely adjust the size of each space in the grid. If you select the Horizontal adjustment at the Startup screen, the grid space at 1,0 may have a width of 150 while the grid space at 2,0 may have a width of 200. Or you can adjust the height of each space if you select the Vertical adjustment at the Startup screen. The goal of using this application is to display fractional part of each of a few dozen images in a grid and then to export the exact layout as an image to disk.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – It’s been quite interesting days for the past two weeks. I started the last Design Mob project only reluctantly two weeks ago. And I’m releasing a desktop version of it today. This new release is called Design Mob Central.

Design Mob Central offers a real deal in designing mobile app and desktop application screen designs for a team of software developers and UI designers because it gives you full control of actual UI components from the operating system. As a team designer, you can publish the final design by selecting a project and then clicking on the Push button so that your entire software development team will receive it. And they will receive a notification alert.

Speaking of UI components, you can use actual tab names to create a picker layer. Use actual GPS coordinates with a map layer. Also, you can use the actual URL to show the web content with a web view layer.

Enroll team members by sending them deep links. There are no restrictions on how many people you can enroll. They don’t even need to sign up for an account. All you need is an Apple account. And they don’t have to be desktop computer users. iPhone and iPad users can use the iOS counterpart (Design Mob) to receive a design project through CloudKit.

In fact, you don’t even have to be constantly connected to the Internet. You can work on a design project locally. Once you are ready to push a project to CloudKit, make sure you are signed in to your iCloud account. And all team members will receive your design project with the click of a button.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – What a beautiful spring day! It was raining for days. Now, we have continuous sunny days. That’s what the spring season is all about, huh!?

Well, I know it’s been only 4 or 5 days since I released the last desktop application. And I’m ready to go for No. 2 of the month. This new release is called NameRanger 2.

The NameRanger is a 15-year-old desktop application project brought back to life. NameRanger 2 lets you rename all files and folders in a parent folder you select in a non-destructive manner. You can add an enumerating number to the beginning or the end of each file name and remove a certain number of characters from each name to make the modification list. Or maybe, you just want to change all letters to uppercase or lowercase? How about just removing all numbers, punctuation characters or currency symbols from each file name? If you have made a mistake and ended up with a list of files sharing the same name, click on the Undo button to revert to the last stack of file names. Only when you click on the Execute name changes button, will the application rename the files according to the modified file name list.

NameRanger 2 offers five different approaches to changing file names: Add, Subtract, Replace, Transform, and Remove. Additionally, you can select a particular file name in the list and change it to something else manually.

NameRanger 2 lets you create a recovery file so that you can restore original file names. After you execute name changes, click on the “Save Recovery File” toolbar button to create a recovery JSON file. When you realize that you made a mistake, let the application select this recovery file to restore the original file names.   Continue reading →