Posts tagged with "mac"

VLC 2.0 for Mac Final Design Previewed, Coming This Week

Popular media player VLC is about to reach version 2.0 final and Felix Kühne, current lead developer of VLC’s Mac OS X port, has posted a series of screenshots detailing the final user interface design that we’ll see in the 2.0 update once it goes public “later this week”. The screenshots, available over at Kühne’s blog, show a dramatic change from VLC’s current design on the Mac, with a new sidebar for your playlists, Internet sources, and media on your computer and local network. The new design was created by Damien Erambert, and the first concepts date back to 2008. The interface of VLC 2.0 for Mac will offer a series of advantages over the older version from a functionality standpoint as well:

VLC 2.0’s interface for Mac is dramatically different from its previous revision, both technically and usage-wise. Playlist and video output share the same window, service discovery modules can be easily accessed through a sidebar and various audio + video filters are available through the respective panels. Besides that, the interface is noticeably faster and easily expandable. Speaking of that, we also added support for VLC’s lua-based extensions, which allow you to get info about the current movie from Allociné, post to Twitter, fetch subtitles automatically, etc.

Previously known as VLC 1.2, VLC 2.0 is a major rewrite of the application, which now includes several bug fixes, new features, and a redesigned interface. Alongside improved performances and optimizations for Lion, VLC 2.0 comes with many new features including initial support for Blu-Ray Discs, new subtitle management and blending in video outputs, support for multiple files inside RAR archives, and an all-new 64-bit version for Windows users (VLC 2.0 for Windows won’t feature a new interface as seen on OS X). A complete list of changes from VLC 1.x to VLC 2.0 is available here; the developers didn’t mention anything specific about the “mobile port” for iOS and Android devices.

VLC 2.0 will be available later this week at VideoLAN’s website. More screenshots of the final Mac UI have been posted on Flickr.

Favs: An App For Your Internet Favorites

A few weeks ago, I tweeted I’d like to see some sort of Twitter client with its only focus being on Favorites – I keep Twitter open all day, and I save a lot of links. Prior to ending up in my Evernote or Pinboard accounts, the tweets I want to “save for later” are marked as favorites, which, I believe, provide an easy way to use a built-in Twitter functionality for general-purpose “bookmarks” that I may or may not consider for a post or more serious bookmarking in a second service. As you can see, I have a lot of favorites. The same is true for other services I use on a daily basis, such as Google Reader, Vimeo, YouTube, or Instagram: I like to be able to “star”, “like” and mark things as favorite so a) the service knows the stuff I’m interested in and perhaps will leverage this data sometimes in the future or b) perhaps other apps will. And while I’m still waiting for the ultimate app that looks at your Internet favorites and delivers content intelligently to you every day (albeit Zite is on the right path), it turns out someone has built a functional and nice-looking desktop aggregator called Favs.

Favs for Mac is in beta, so don’t expect a full review now – the developers are still polishing the interface and adding features, and it wouldn’t make sense to give a final verdict whilst the app is still being worked on. But the underlying concept is there, and it’s one of those things I’ve been looking for: a single app that collects favorites from a variety of services.

Currently, Favs lets you fetch favorite items from:

  • Delicious
  • Dribbble
  • Facebook
  • Flattr
  • Flickr
  • Github
  • Google Reader
  • Instagram
  • Pinboard
  • Stackoverflow
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
  • Zootool

The list is pretty impressive already, and I assume it can only grow before the final release. I don’t know what else I’d add to that list (multiple accounts are already supported) as most of the services I use are already covered – perhaps some kind of Evernote and Instapaper integration, though I honestly can’t imagine how Evernote could work with Favs. Right now, I’m just happy Favs is shipping with a solid selection of services, and I like how the developers also implemented a unified inbox for all your favorites.

Favs, in fact, uses the old Tweetie-like interface with narrow sidebar + right panels (the one we’ve already seen in a multitude of Mac apps such as Sparrow and Reeder) to lay out service icons, unified inbox, and controls to manage settings and refresh all services. The app supports Lion’s full-screen mode, which is probably a good choice considering you’ll want to run Favs as a standalone app that is not your main Twitter or Google Reader client, as it’s focused on letting you view items that you wanted to save for later. Obviously one could easily dismiss this interface approach as “easy” or not innovative, but I believe this design can work for an application like Favs where you’re supposed to quickly switch between sections (sidebar), take a peek at headlines (mid panel) and read the actual content (right panel). As I’ve said this is a first public beta, which means features like keyboard navigation, sharing and contextual menus haven’t been implemented or refined yet. I was able to test Favs with my huge collection of Twitter favorites and it reliably loaded items from 500+ days ago without a single slowdown. I can only imagine things will get even better come the final release.

To me, Favs is a web nerd’s dream come true already. It’s got my Twitter favorites, my Google Reader stars, the stuff I like on Instagram, and it even lets me add multiple accounts if I really want to keep tabs on everything I save online. I look forward to reviewing a final version in the future, and I hope the developers are at least considering an iPad version for this.

For now, you can download the Favs public beta for free here.