OmniGraffle Tip: Scaling with LinkBack

Posted by Bill Van Hecke on 09.12.06 | Comment

Martin Jaggi brought up a good point on the OmniGraffle mailing list: it would be nice to resize objects in OmniGraffle as if they were an image, not a set of objects. LinkBack makes this possible.

Say you have a nice bunch of objects in OmniGraffle you'd like to scale while having the text, stroke width, corner radii, and such scale along with them:

If you just select them all and Shift-drag the corner handle, the lines stay the same width, the corner radii stay the same, and the font size stays the same; not quite what you want:

But! If you instead select them and choose Copy As PDF from the Edit menu, you can paste a representation of all the objects as a single object:

Then you can scale the PDF like a normal image; everything scales with it:

Here's the cool part: because the PDF contains LinkBack data, you can double-click it to open an OmniGraffle window with your original objects! Edit them however you like, and when you hit Save, the PDF version updates!

The end of a dark era

Posted by Joel on 09.08.06 | Comment

Oh, OmniWeb 5.5—How shiny and final you are!

However, the recently released revision is not the point nor purpose of this post.

Yes, gentle reader—It's me again, and it's about coffee. The Omni Espresso Machine has finally been fixed. The machine's broken status (as well as its top placement on the Colbert “On Notice” board) has plagued me for far too long now.

Not that I have anything particularly against the Zoka coffee shop next door, it's just that I'm the sort to demand that I be self-reliant when it comes to caffeination, so this whole “You can't make your own coffee/NOT YOURS” routine really got me down. Heck, I even took a week off in hopes that when I returned, OmniEspresso 2.0 would have been declared final and all that.

No such luck.

Apparently the whole dealio was so dire that we had to call in Doctor Duff to save the day. Duff, who is like some sort of coffee machine witch doctor, some sort of mocha medicine man, this koffee kahuna, a layer of hands for lattes, umm, well I just ran out of synonyms so I'll just cut it out right there. Anyways…

The good Dr. appeared, spent some time examining the chi of our espresso machine, and then took off again, presumably to go get an assortment of chicken heads or ashes of baristas gone past, and returned a few days later. Deftly deconstructing its innards, like a modern-day MacGyver he mended the machine without a part left over, and I'm pretty sure the thing can make rocket fuel now as well.

So, at long last, all is well in the world, or at least my little awakened apse of it, so long as nothing else goes wrong with the machine I can go back to spending my time on OmniGraffle, apart from the occasional klatch.

OmniWeb 5.5 released

Posted by Linda Sharps on 09.07.06 | Comment

It seems like a very, very long time ago that we were mired in planning sessions for OmniWeb 5. By “we” I mean “people much smarter than myself”, of course, although I do take credit for the never-implemented Wholesome History Populator feature (replace your day of youtube surfing and WoW geekfests with the browsing history of your choice! Pre-loaded contents include “Honey I Was Thinking Of You”, several hours worth of Amazon-combing for that perfect birthday gift; “Just Doing Some Market Research”, a trail of crumbs leading through a variety of industry topics to impress your boss; and, in worse-case scenarios, “What's This Funny Rash”, a thorough search of WebMD that virtually guarantees the subject of how much time you spend online will never be questioned).

But anyway, back then we put a lot of effort into building new features for OmniWeb. It was an exciting time for the OmniWeb development process as things like workspaces and graphical tabs and shortcuts started emerging from the alpha-soup and we all started using them. A huge amount of work later, OmniWeb 5 shipped: ta da!

Then, after a while, we had to catch up with WebKit. We had to get OmniWeb's compatibility and performance back up to par, we needed a Universal release, we needed some fixes. And so for many months now, the OmniWeb dev team has been chipping away at the non-fun stuff; not cool features or eye-popping UI, but the complicated headachey stuff under the hood that makes a web browser, you know, work.

(“Stuff”. Niiice. Once again my less-than-viselike grip on the technical aspects of our work has failed us all.)

We realize that in order for OmniWeb to stay in your Dock, we have to continue innovating. We need to do what we're best at: developing useful, fun features that work the way you want them to. Upcoming versions of OmniWeb need to kick ass and take names, basically. And that's what we want to do.

However, in the meantime, I don't want to lose sight of a huge accomplishment by our Web team: OmniWeb 5.5 is out. The final release, after months of hard work and persistent beta testers (for whom we are insanely grateful) and an espresso machine that has broken about fifty-three times from overuse.

If you haven't used OmniWeb in a while, I recommend trying 5.5 out. This version doesn't provide you with many citrus-scented whistles and bells, but it's faster. It's better. It's performance is vastly improved, and hey, it still has all the unique stuff that 5.0 was touted for.

A big congratulations to the OmniWeb team, and now we can start turning our attention to the next versions of OmniWeb. Yes, there will be some small fixer-upper 5.5x releases, but then? Features, by god. Honestly, I don't know if the coffee machine can handle it.

OmniWeb 5.5 is now available

Posted by James on 09.06.06 | Comment

View the release notes.

Download OmniWeb.

Software we like

Posted by Linda Sharps on 08.29.06 | 34 Comments

I thought it would be interesting to find out what non-Omni software our employees enjoy using, and share that information with the rest of you. You know, paying it forward, just like that endearing movie with Kevin Spacey. Get out the hankies!

Or…not. Anyway, via an email tangent that came about during the polling process, I learned that out of 24 employees, NINE of us are left-handed. Isn't that amazing? Aren't you totally freaking out right now?

I mean, considering 13-30% of the population is left-handed, that practically makes Omni a team of mutants. Like the X-Men. Personally, I hope my thus-undiscovered superpower has to do with setting things on fire…with my mind. I'll start with Paris Hilton. You're welcome.

Onward to the software recommendations! Note that I asked for “lesser-known” apps, because you've probably already heard of a little thing called iTunes.

Aaron: iSquint. “It's pretty awesome.”

Joel: “I used to play Tranquility a lot, nice pleasant game.”

Ryan: “My vote is for TextWrangler and SuperDuper! (sic) - I use both everyday.”

Terry: “Final Draft - script writing; Ableton Live -  audio/loops; Waves - Audio Plugins; ARTURIA minimoog V - soft synthesizer.”

Liz: “Snapz Pro X—that screenshot-grabbing app plus a little mark-up in Graffle makes it really easy for me to communicate with our engineers about bugs and UI improvements.”

James: “TextMate, Quicksilver, and Adium are 3 that I really like.”

Troy: “Here's something that I've been using a lot lately…Art Collector: a small app that makes adding artwork to your itunes library a breeze.”

Brian: Endicia, “'cause getting your face on postage is cool, especially when it's written by Pat and Aaron of buyolympia fame.”

Tim:  “The 3rd party things I use most often are pretty common and well known :/ (TextMate, Quicksilver, SuperDuper!)

Ken: “I have just one app in my dock that isn't from Omni or Apple: Quicksilver.”

Bill: “I have a lot of happy apps I love to use: Transmit, SubEthaEdit, Tensai, Chax, ChronoSync, Delicious Library, iScrobbler, LaunchBar, NetNewsWire, Teleport.” (Damn, Bill. Rock on with your software-loving self.)

As for me, the most exciting software I've used lately is Barcode Producer. It generates barcodes, like for retail packaging. Handy if you need to, say, produce a whole new size of retail box required by the Apple Stores that renders your entire line of inventory obsolete. You know. For example.

So there you are. If you're of a mind, let us know what cool apps you're using, too.

A bunch of betas

Posted by Ken Case on 08.24.06 | Comment

Yesterday we released a new beta of OmniDazzle 1.0.1, and today we released new betas of OmniPlan 1.0, OmniOutliner 3.6.1, and OmniWeb 5.5.  So if you're a user of any of these products, you might want to check out the latest versions!  There are links to all of these at www.omnigroup.com, or you can go directly to the beta of your choice using one of these links:

• OmniDazzle 1.0.1 beta 1
• OmniPlan 1.0 beta 6
• OmniOutliner 3.6.1 beta 3
• OmniWeb 5.5 beta 4

Enjoy!

OmniPlan 1.0 beta 6 is now available

Posted by James on 08.24.06 | Comment

View the release notes.

Download OmniPlan 1.0 beta 6

Gooffle!

Posted by Tim Wood on 08.23.06 | Comment

Occasionally I'll stumble across an image on the web that looks strangely familiar.  Aah, the smoothness of line, the roundness of clouds, ... smells like Graffle!  Most recently I was wasting time on digg and saw some interesting network packet diagrams.  Looking at the PDF file, I could plainly see the evidence!

This got me to wondering—how many Graffle-generated PDF documents are out there.  Google to the rescue!

This turned up a bunch of interesting and strange results.  Here are my favorites from the first five pages of hits.  What other fun Graffle documents can you find on Google?  Gooffle, the sport of kings!

• Pretty pictures, really, that's what drew me to this one.  That and the math (presumably from TeXshop and/or EquationService).
• Ruby Method Dispatch.  The Kernel bone's connected to the Object bone, the Object bone's connected to the Module bone… Nice use of line hops, too.
• More line hops.  Someone probably understands this graph, but I just like trying to count the line hops.
• State of Mac Web Design, In which we learn that we need to send one Mr. Teague an OmniWeb license.  And that he considers Safari only half a browser.
• Worms!  These guys are probably pretty smart and serious, but their box titles hint at humor. The Worm Menace!
• Vassar Router Setup gives us advice that every student should learn:

  DO NOT use the “internet” port (put a piece of tape over it)

• Things that make you go, “huh?”  A WinXP memory layout diagram, made on a Mac.
• DOE Annual Review  Fermilab pimps their tape storage.
• DOJ this time.  I don't want to live in this neighborhood.
• Cake or death? A nice advert for a talk about death, but at the bottom there is a reprieve of refreshments.

Rawr, I'm a panther!  Now that I'm done wasting time on digg and google, I have something else to go do…

OmniDazzle 1.0.1 Beta 1 is available

Posted by James on 08.23.06 | Comment

This is a small maintenance release to address some stability and usability issues found in OmniDazzle 1.0. A new feature release is still in planning.

• Added workaround for bug in the Accessibility support in Mac OS X that would cause crashes when Focal Point queried menus or popups in other applications in some cases.
• Help pages now have individual titles for improved searching.
• Pressing the escape key with the Zoom plug-in with the selection indicator still active now also marks the screen 'clear' so you no longer have to manually do this to use the plug-in again.
• Added correction to the software update query to avoid reporting incorrect data.

Download OmniDazzle 1.0.1 Beta 1