Kanaka Hana | Hana, the Web-app App!

Psst...

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:07:02 -0600

Check this out about a new version of Hana being out...

Hana 1.1.1

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:06:10 -0600

Hana 1.1.1 is ready for download! Check it out by downloading it via the Check for Updates... item in the Hana application menu.

This blog will not be updated after this. Well, not at this location! A new Kanaka Hana blog has been created and can be found here.

Almost there...

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:48:31 -0600

Hana 1.1.1 is done. It is being tested and the new web resources are all done and up and being reviewed. Release should be very soon...

I had hoped to release tonight, but it is getting late. So I will give it some face time tomorrow and hopefully get it out to you tomorrow night (30 January.)

Thanks for your patience!

Quick update...

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:55:27 -0600

I have been busy adding some new stuff and bug fixes to 1.1 and hope to have 1.1.1 to you soon. Some of this stuff is behind the scenes stuff, some not so much.

Tomorrow is Cocoa Coding Night here in St. Louis. This is the night we Mac geeks in the Gateway area get together to geek out together. On my agenda is getting the new Help file built into Hana and the dead end help buttons pointing at actual content! (Sorry about those!) 1.1.1 will be mostly done then.

[UPDATE: 25 January 2008]

So I did get some help file work done, but one of the things I forgot to mention is that I am moving this blog and the Hana Web App Directory to a sub-domain here and trimming out all of the AOS look and feel. This blog is already opened in its own window in 1.1, and it looks a little goofy to you, my totally awesome customers to see a huge BUY button right there! Sorry about that! Anyway, that is all easy enough to do. The Web App Directory though is flawed and that is one of the big changes. I have the page mostly done, but building the new hana:// protocol links is time consuming. So I created a simple javascript page to help automate making Web App Links. What is cool about this is that after 1.1.1 goes out and I can get back to it...let me tell you about life!...I plan to clean it up a bit and publish it so that Web-App vendors can use it to build their own hana:// links.

Anyway, once the new web app directory is done and I get the help file integrated we should be close. Soon, I promise! :-)

Thanks for using Hana! We greatly appreciate the support and your feedback.

Hana 1.1

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:07:53 -0600

Hana 1.1 is available for download!

So what is new in Hana 1.1? LOADS!

We added a toolbar, status bar, new preferences, loads of bug fixes and a bunch of minor bug fixes. Some big bug fixes too!

Two bug fixes that missed the release notes. First, hana:// links meant to add web-apps to Hana NOW work IN Hana too! This was an embarrassing oversight! Second, the progress wheel code was causing massive error logging operation on Leopard users' systems. This is why you will notice that this is now missing from Hana 1.1. We plan to add this back in the future.

Got lots to do still, 1.1 was going to include some changes to the Hana web pages, we will get those done as quickly as possible and get 1.1.1 or 1.2 out as soon as we can!

Almost there...

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:38:02 -0600

I upgraded my system to Leopard over New Year's and have been finishing up work on 1.1. This is good news. I was still unhappy, though with my artwork for the Back, Forward and Refresh buttons in the toolbar. So I kept trying to get them just right. THEN I discovered a way to get them perfect...and that way IS much better, but it involves scrapping all of my toolbar code and using the new toolbar features in Interface Builder. Which means rethinking some things and rewiring others. And postponing 1.1's release

The short version: We are close, very close. It will be worth it too.

1.1 will probably work in Tiger, almost certainly work in Tiger. But until we verify this, no guarantees!

[UPDATE: After chasing my tail for too long, I reverted to my original toolbar code and got all the other bugs fixed and features added and voila! 1.1 is done and available for download. New downloads require downloading 1.0.4 then having Hana check for an update for 1.1. This will be fixed in the next day or two.]

Hana 1.1 & 2.0

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 21:39:00 -0600

We are going to push Hana out soon without our big new super-secret feature. We have to trim out some code and do some testing. We expect to release 1.1 later this week or early next week with toolbar, status bar and other new feature support and bug fixes.

2.0 will be released later in January or February with our new awesome feature. 2.0 will require new licenses, upgrade pricing will be provided. We have not yet determined how we will price it yet. For now, though we are shifting focus to 1.1.

I think Jobs quoted someone else well: "Real artists ship!"

It is presently time to ship Hana 1.1. Look for it very soon.

Mac Santa 07

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:58:58 -0600

For the rest of the month of December, Hana is 10% off via the Mac Santa promotion at MacSantaDeals.com!

Check our their web site for other deals too!

Use the Coupon Code: MACSANTA07TEN while purchasing Hana at the All Out Software online store to receive your 10% discount.

Happy Holidays from All Out Software!

Gmail with Hana and Safari 3

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:50:04 -0600

So Google has updated the code at Gmail. I noticed this in Safari 3 for Windows. I had not noticed it in Hana. Hmm. Same rendering engine. Should be the same User Agent (I'm set to spoof Safari 3.) But no joy. So I started playing around before getting my conspiracy theory glasses out and found a couple of things to do to fix this problem. This only applies if your system is updated to use Safari 3 for Tiger OR Leopard. This will probably not work for Safari 2.

1) Update your Safari 3 User Agent String in your preferences*. Use this one: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/523.12 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.12

2) Update your Gmail base URI in Hana in the web-app edit panel**. Use this URI: https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox

* To update a User Agent String, open Hana Preferences and then click on the User Agents tab icon (the glasses and nose icon.) Select Safari 3 and then paste the above string into the field labeled User Agent String. Click into another field and you are finished.

** To edit a web-app, select Edit Web-App from the Web-App menu with that web-app selected in Hana. You can also press the keyboard shortcut of cmd-i. Paste the Gmail URl from above into the App URL field in the sheet that opened. Click Okay and Gmail should update to the new UI.

Update on 1.1: We hit a major snag on the big kahuna feature of 1.1. It looks like we have finally gotten our heads wrapped around the problem, but more pondering, figuring and coding remains. If we cannot get it sorted by the end of this week or so, say next Sunday, 16 December, then we will get 1.1 out without the big feature and ship it as soon as we can. We are hesitant to do this since our plans for 1.2 revolve around making Hana a first class Leopard citizen while not compromising our Tiger citizenship.

1.1 Feature Preview: Bars

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:39:32 -0600

One of the earliest feature requests was for a status bar in Hana. I agreed that this was a good idea, but at the time I had no idea how to implement it and was busy just making Beta 5 or whatever work! :-) Well, the status bar is done and in the newest builds of 1.1. It can be hidden or shown via a Window menu item. It includes three elements: the status message, Update Hana button (this may be removed) and Hana News button. The message will show information about the link your pointer is over. Now you can know where the link is going! Hana news will open this blog for news about Hana. For now it is enabled all of the time. In a future release we will show it only when a new post is up.

That is ONE bar, what is the other? Hana now features a basic browser style toolbar. It features back, forward and refresh and a READ ONLY address field. It is read only because you should not be using Hana for general surfing. We might add a preference later for changing this behavior, but not right now. Lastly, we added a Make Root button. This button will make the current URL being displayed the root URL of this web app in Hana for you. So if you mistakenly set the root URL to the login page and you want it at that main page, this will allow you to easily reset this. This button may be moved to the Web-App menu, removed altogether or removed from the default toolbar options, but be an option you can add. This is a standard Mac toolbar. Click the toolbar button on the title bar and it will show and hide all day long! :-)

BONUS: We added a menu item to the Web-App menu for Showing the current URL. This is a customer request and is handy for viewing the URL without having to show the toolbar.

We are still working on what we are still hoping to be a major new feature, (known as CJs) but we are struggling with Webkit so it is taking longer than expected. Of course, this delay allowed me to do the bars, so it was a good delay! :-)

The other major new feature is fixing all of the new bugs we have introduced. In fact, besides CJs, Help updates and these bugs, no more new Hana features in 1.1. I have posted a lot about Hana 1.1 and shipped nothing. But we have not been only typing into Sandvox! Oh no. We have been spending hours in Xcode and Interface Builder making Hana better for you. Soon you will have your hands on it!

This is the eighth in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November soon! In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

1.1 Feature Preview: Visible SSL Indicators

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:48:22 -0600

In Hana now, you have to use the preference for being alerted to security level changes to know if you are accessing or not accessing a site using SSL. (The first part of the URL is HTTPS.) SSL is Secure Sockets Layer and it basically means that your data is mostly safe between your browser and your web host. In most browsers, a visual indicator is visible on screen when you are on an SSL page. In Hana 1.1, there will be a small lock on the left end of your web-app's tab if the current page is using SSL.

This is the seventh in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November. In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

1.1 Feature Preview: User Agents Upgrade

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:48:33 -0600

Hana 1.0.3 highlighted a problem with how User Agents are managed in Hana. We want you to be able to add, updated and remove user agents, but we also want to be able to add, update and delete them too. Now, we will not be deleting any. But the code is there in case we are ever required to do so. More importantly, we can ADD and UPDATE these when we see a need to do so. For instance, we list Firefox 2 as an option. If we discover a new version of Firefox 2, with a new user agent, we want to update it for you. We also want to be able to add Firefox 3 when it comes out too.

We also took Hana out of the list of editable user agents. You can always add it, just call it something other than JUST Hana! The Hana user agent is now built dynamically based on the version of web kit installed on your system and the version of Hana installed on your system. Hana's user agent cannot be deleted OR edited.

BONUS NEW FEATURE #1: Hana web-apps are auto-saved every 5 minutes. NOT YOUR DATA IN THE WEB-APPS, but your web-app settings. This is really only an issue should Hana crash, your system crash or in either case a force quit is done.

BONUS NEW FEATURE #2: This is a bug fix. The user agent in the User Agent Sub-menu was not checked on the first web-app right after launching Hana. This is fixed.

BONUS NEW FEATURE #3: Clicking the Hana icon in the dock when the Hana window is closed will open the Hana window.

BONUS NEW FEATURE #4: On adding your first web-app when the "Welcome" or "No Active Apps" placeholder apps are displayed will have the placeholder app deleted.

BONUS NEW FEATURE #5: Not so much a new feature or bug fix, but we have been cleaning up the code as we go along. Mainly reorganizing our classes for future ease. This will make fixes and feature enhancements easier to implement.

BONUS NEW FEATURE #6: This one is actually in progress. Updated Help, new screen shots and Help buttons on the Preferences panes and in the Web-app edit sheet will open help pages about these three views.

Two new things to go! Check back soon! We are hoping to have Beta testing under way by the end of the weekend!

This is the sixth in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November. In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

1.1 Feature Preview: Delete by Name

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:07:38 -0600

The Delete Selected Web-App menu item has been upgraded to show the selected Web-Apps given name. The verification sheet will also use the app's name. You can now be sure about the web-app being deleted.

This is the fifth in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November. In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

1.1 Feature Preview: Better Error Handling

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:37:35 -0600

We have been using a few classes (source code files) from the Shiira project in Hana for HTTP error handling. We upgraded this code to the latest version. As a part of this, we also upgraded HTTP error handling. You will most likely notice this when accessing a SSL secured site (HTTPS will be in the address instead of HTTP at the beginning.) Before, Hana just stopped you in your tracks. Now, Hana asks if you would like to continue if there is a certificate error.

BONUS NEW FEATURE: I also added a menu item to the Help menu called Hana News which will open a new Hana window with this very blog in it! Now you can check on the latest Hana news from within Hana!

This is the fourth in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November. In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

1.1 Feature Preview: New Preferences

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:51:12 -0600

A couple of original preferences that got lost in the stampede (imagine a stampede of slugs) that was the rush to release 1.0 of Hana involve your default browser. The first is "Open External Pages in Default Browser." This allows you to have links with a different host than that of the web-app being used open in your default browser, as opposed to a simple Hana window. This is a very highly requested feature. We still have one glitch with regard to Gmail. When this happens, Gmail complains that a popup blocker is blocking the new window. But the window still opens. We will be looking into this. Regardless, it will ship!

The second preference is "Open Default Browser in Background." This forces your browser to open behind Hana. So you can keep working and get to your browsing later.

That is it for now, but so you know, with each post, we have completed another feature that has not yet been posted. This means we have at least one feature queued up for you. And in fact, I know of at least two. I am shooting to be done crowing about our progress by the end of this week. No promises though! :-)

Thanks for using Hana. It makes a difference for us and we hope it is making one for you.

This is the third in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November. In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

1.1 Feature Preview: Connected URLs

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:03:15 -0600

One of the existing features in Hana is to ignore external clicks. Another is to open links to external sites in a new window. These features can be handy for focus. But what if your web-app opens a link that Hana thinks is not internal, but it is? For example, Gmail from Google can have several different host URLs: Gmail.com, mail.google.com and google.com/mail. With Connected URLs, you just enter each host, separated by commas into the tokenized box in the Web-app edit sheet. Easy-peasy!

This is the second in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November. In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

1.1 Feature Preview: Find on Page

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:21:47 -0600

This is the first in a series of posts about the near future of Hana. Hana 1.1 is under development. We are making steady progress on it. We are hoping to move into Beta testing around the middle of November. In the meantime, I will write about the coming features in Hana 1.1 in this series. Each feature has been completed and tested, so we are comfortable sharing that it will be there for you in 1.1!

Our first feature is a bug fix!

In Hana 1.0.4 and before, Find just doesn't work. This is actually somewhat embarrassing, but it is what is so. This has been fixed and in our development builds, Find and Replace, Find Next and Find Previous and all of the Find submenu works as you would expect it.

Hana 1.0.4, Leopard Support!

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:56:27 -0500

Hana 1.0.4 is now available for download. This brings Leopard support only.

Some display issues remain in Hana 1.0.4 for Leopard. Mainly the resizing thumb is goofier than before and the progress wheels on your web-app tabs always will display the spinning gear AND the pie chart at the same time. Kinda cool, but not what we meant to show!

Let us know if you find any other issues.

Hana and Leopard

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:18:23 -0500

I didn't realize we were going in alphabetical order by first name Gus, but here we go, even if we are a little late! :-)

Hana crashes and crashes hard in Leopard. This is at least partially, if not entirely due to a third party library that should become available Friday afternoon of the 26th. I will be doing a test build of Hana using a test build of the library on Thursday and if possible ironing out any other Leopard issues. UPDATE: DONE!

A Leopard friendly build, numbered 1.0.4 will be released sometime this weekend or we will post an update to this post and explain what the hold up is.

UPDATE: We have implemented a preliminary build of the 3rd party library and fixed a bug in Hana which also caused a crash in Hana. Hana 1.0.4 will be released by 11:59 pm CDT on 26 October 2007.

Well, actually, I will release it as soon as I get home from the Apple Store, install Leopard, test a final build of 1.0.4 and can get the distribution components all put together.

1.1 continues to mature and should be ready for public introduction within the next two weeks.

Hana 1.0.3

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:32:55 -0500

A big thanks to Mark Dalrymple for chiming in with a suggestion when I asked for help on this. I was barking up the wrong tree and Mark's casual suggestion to try a different User Agent string showed that the tree wasn't anything more than a clump of thick grass. Sigh. Still, THANKS!

So what is this update all about? User Agent Strings! The only change was the addition of more User Agent Strings to the default list that gets installed on first run of Hana. You will need to delete your Hana prefs to get these to display. Instructions for this are below.

What this means to you is that Hana now works with Safari 3 in Tiger! Actually, it ahs ALWAYS worked if you went through the trouble of putting the Safari 3 User Agent into Hana. In fact, that is all you need to do to get Gmail to work right when you have Safari 3 installed and to gain access to Google Docs. Yes. Google Docs works with Hana if Safari 3 is installed and set to be the User Agent for that Web-app.

Deleting prefs:

1) Spotlight search com.alloutsoftware.hana.plist

2) Hit return to open the Spotlight window.

3) Drag the found file into the trash.

4) Launch Hana 1.0.3 and then reset your User Agents for each Web-app to the newly labeled User Agents. Your default choices are: Hana (Safari 2), Hana (Safari 3), Safari 2, Safari 3, Camino 1, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.

Note that Hana (Safari 2) and Hana (Safari 3) are the Hana user agent strings that correspond to the versions of Webkit that Safari installs. If you want to spoof as Safari, then select Safari 2 or 3. This little bit of confusion is scheduled to go away with Hana 1.1. We will have Hana build its own User Agent based on the version of Webkit installed on your system. We will also modify Hana so that it no longer requires the prefs to be deleted.

iPhone Web-apps Directory

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:51:53 -0500

Here is another directory for you to search for web-apps to use in Hana. It is the Apple iPhone Web Apps Directory. Some of these are tailor made for the iPhone, others work in Safari (and thus Hana) just fine!

The Apple iPhone Web-apps Directory

What's in your Hana?

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:57:11 -0500

I thought you might like to know what I use Hana to access. Some I use more than others. Some web-apps are better than others. Some lead to dead ends (I'm looking at your Dream Host!) and others are very good at not leaving you stranded, (thank you Google!)

Gmail : I have a host of All Out Software accounts, but my Gmail account is my only purely personal account any more.

G Cal : My wife and I have both read Getting Things Done by David Allen. At the same time we are doing a bunch of other things to bring our life into order. G Cal has become an indispensable part of bringing this order.

Basecamp : All Out Software uses the 15 project subscription. We use this to track Hana bugs and development. As well as future projects.

Backpack : I use this for my personal to-do list. Before I upgraded our Basecamp account, this was our non-Hana project tracking.

PR Mac : I use PR Mac to distribute Press Releases for All Out Software. Not the best example of a web-app, but it is periodically useful.

Y!Mail : Once upon a time my principle personal account was a Yahoo mail account. I keep an eye on it so that I can be in touch with any old friends or colleagues. Also it is tied to my account at Yahoo!, which is also used for Yahoo! Groups.

.Mac Mail : This is a very good web-app. Sadly, my .Mac account will expire in about a year. It is too late to make an efficient jump from .Mac right now. I mainly keep an eye for messages from friends and redirect them to my Gmail or All Out Software addresses. Very nice web mail app though!

G Analytics : This is a very cool web-app for tracking the traffic to your websites. It has loads of other features I have not yet even begun to scratch. Hello MacAppers! :-)

PR Writeboard : This is a 37 Signals Writeboard that is used by us to edit our press releases prior to submitting them to PR Mac.

Puzzles : IndigoPuzzles.com For fun. I am kinda burnt out on Sudoku at the moment, so it is very dormant. In fact, I just deactivated it!

AOS @ DH : This is the dashboard at Dream Host. Not the best web-app. Lots of stranding. Should use more popup windows and/or include navigation links. Not a bad dashboard, just needs a little work to be a better web-app!

Maps : Google Maps. What is there to say?

Y! Groups : For managing my Yahoo! Groups. If you are a Mac developer in St. Louis, find the GAMProg group and request a membership in Gateway Area Mac Programmers!

If you have read this far, and it is still October 2007, go to MacApper.com and look for the Hana review (There is a link to it from the reviews section of this site...) for a goody if you are not yet a licensed Hana user! :-)

September Promotion Has Ended

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:13:41 -0500

It is with sadness that we announce that the September 2007 Hana promotion has concluded. Hana is still a bargain at the full price of US$19.91!

What you use: KashFlow

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:14:41 -0500

One of our very first customers reported one of our very first bugs. And a nasty one it was. This was the PDF printing bug. Alas, we squashed it but not before trying out the web-app our customer was using when he discovered the problem. This web-app is the accounting package called KashFlow. KashFlow is very handy and if not for already having a solution implemented, we at All Out Software might very well be using it now.

It is very easy to use and has some very powerful features. If you are looking for an accounting package, you would be remiss to not give KashFlow a quick look and try out. It features a 60 day trial period which is very handy.

Give KashFlow a try in Hana by clicking the link above. It will add KashFlow to Hana to the right of all existing activated tabs. We recommend using the Safari user agent for KashFlow.

KashFlow is a trademark of KashFlow Software Ltd. Trademarks are used without permission and for illustrative purposes only. No endorsement of any kind is implied or explicitly given. We just like to share what our customers are using Hana to work!

What we use: Google Calendar

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:50:26 -0500

What I actually use for my calendar needs is Google Calendar from Google. It works well and when you set Hana's User Agent for Gmail to Safari (see here for more information,) It works just as if you were in Safari.

If you are a user of Google Calendar, click the link above to add it to Hana as a web-app. It should appear to the right of your existing tabs and be labeled: GCal. It's User Agent is set to Hana. This will restrict you to a simple view. Select User Agents from the Web-App menu of Hana to select Safari as the user agent for accessing GCal. Once this is finished and Google Calendar has reloaded, you are ready to begin bringing order to your life.

My family uses Google Calendar to track all of our activities. We can access it from anywhere and by separating all of our activities by family member and in some cases by team schedules, we are able to use the built in color coding to more easily see who is doing what and when!

Hana will alert you when Google Calendar wants to alert you with a reminder. Just like your browser. It is very handy and has had a profound affect on how my family manaeges our time.

Google Calendar and Google are trademarks of Google, Inc. These trademarks are used without permission and for illustrative purposes only. GCal is not a trademark of All Out Software and is simply used as an abbreviated name for display purposes in Hana. The user is free to use whatever label they choose. Some length restrictions apply, naturally. No endorsement of any kind is implied or explicitly given. We just like using Google Calendat and wanted you to know that!

Hana Update

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:00:04 -0500

We have begun work on Hana 1.1. Work is progressing.

I asked a fellow developer and St. Louisan to try out Hana. He mentioned that it crashed on launch. (OUCH!) It turned out he was running Leopard. Leopard is still a beta and Hana does not support it. In fact, we the developers have not yet tried it in Leopard.

We promise Leopard support shortly before or after Leopard ships.

Hana's Bane: Safari 3 Beta

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:48:07 -0500

Hana 1.0-1.0.2 depends on Safari 2.x being installed on your Mac OS X Tiger Mac. Safari 3 causes many strange occurrences in Hana. Sometimes links do not work. Sometimes specialized pages will not load, such as PDFs.

If you are not actively testing and reporting Safari 3 bugs, perhaps reverting to Safari 2 is the right way to go?

Regardless, Safari 3 and Hana 1.0.x are incompatible. You can try to use them, but your experience may be less than optimal.

That being said, we are looking into making the version of installed Safari moot. Stay tuned!

Hana v1.0.2

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:12:37 -0500

What's fixed?

Printing. Printing worked, mostly before. The big gap was with PDF printing. This now works just fine. Our original direction on pursuing this proved to be correct. Unfortunately, we also pursued a few other solutions, which WOULD have worked. One requiring major changes, which thankfully was necessary! Phew! This bug was fixed by a team effort of Jay, Mike and I. Mike actually made the changes (and led us to the solution.) Jay introduced us to a practical application of FScript Anywhere, which allowed us to refine our solution. I investigated stuff and chased a dog up the wrong tree. Whoops! Alas, it is fixed, so all is good!

I gratefully thank Jay Tuley for his Cocoa/Obj-C Guru-ship. Without Jay's help this would have taken longer that it did! Thank you!

I gratefully thank Mike Jorgensen for his dogged pursuit of this bug and while learning Xcode, Interface Builder, Cocoa and Obj-C all on the fly. You rock! Thank you!

Known Issues:

The Ignore Clicks To External Links Preference will open a window if the web-app specifies for this to happen and then not load the page, per your preference setting. This is a problem for Gmail specifically. This has been added to our checklist of fixes for Hana 1.1.

Links to external sites are not opening in a new window. This is based on the URL you specified in the web-app. This will be fixed in 1.1 with the addition of the ability to add additional URIs, such as mail.google.com and gmail.com for Gmail.

What's Next?

Unless we have any new user reported major bugs, the next version of Hana will be 1.1. This will feature over a dozen minor improvements including those listed above. We plan to include a build of Webkit inside of Hana (as opposed to using the system's version.) This will allow Safari 3 Beta testers to use Hana and for Hana to include other future niceties. We also have one awesome new feature which we can't wait to unveil that will make Hana an even better solution for some of you. I can't say more right now, but it will be very cool!

Update

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:27:58 -0500

We are busy investigating and fixing the PDF printing bug. We beg your pardon for not fixing this faster. We take being a software publisher seriously.

But at the moment, I am looking for a new day job and splitting my evenings between Hana, some minor contracting work and coaching a volleyball team! The contracting work will clear up tomorrow and the volleyball, now that practices are happening, should only take up part of my Mondays and Wednesdays. So I think we will get this bug sorted soon.

That bug and hopefully some new small features will be 1.0.2. We will then choose some additional small features to add to two medium features which will make a difference for you for 1.1.

In the meantime, if you have not yet dipped into your cookie jar and bought your Hana license, we have a coupon for you. Use the coupon code: September, in September 2007 to get US$5 off of the regular US$19.91 price!

Early Bird Sale is Almost Over!

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:58:25 -0500

The early adopter discount of US$10 has expired! will expire on 20 August 2007. (11:59:59 PM St. Louis, MO, USA time, (Central Daylight Time.))

Take a break from working and buy your license before your demo period expires!!

To our customers we say thank you for helping us pursue our dream. Let us know what you are doing to pursue yours. Maybe we can help you out too!

Shiira

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:54:41 -0500

Hana is built on the Mac OS X Cocoa Frameworks and the Webkit Framework. The Webkit framework is great, but incomplete. This is good in that the incomplete parts are what different products use to set themselves apart. All Out Software discovered that web page loading errors were not being handled to our pleasure by Webkit and sought out a better solution. This led us to checking out the Open Source Webkit based browser called Shiira.

Hana uses several classes from Shiira, mainly for reporting web page loading errors. We plan to utilize more from Shiira in the future. It is a very cool browser and includes many very innovative features. Check it out at http://shiira.jp

Hana v1.0.1

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:36:57 -0500

Our first update to Hana is complete and available for download now!

What's new? Three very minor bug fixes and one new feature!

Bug Number 1 was pointed out to us by one of our customers. Thank you very much! The short cut keys for navigating the tabs did not match those of Safari. This was an oversight and we are very sorry for the inconvenience. This has been fixed. Square brackets [ & ] now move left and right respectively.

Bug Number 2 was discovered while researching an unfixed, YET! :-), bug at the Shiira projects website. The problem was with our acknowledgment. We noticed this and fixed it ourselves.

Bug Number 3, to be quite honest with you, is very embarrassing. We mistyped our company name in the Help menu. An honest mistake. (One too many "L"s in Alll!) :-) This too is fixed. If you haven't yet updated your copy, check it out! Too bad there isn't a spell checking functionality in Interface Builder! :-)

We also added a feature to Hana with this release too! This was the result of a customer bug report regarding PDF printing. A side affect of researching this led us to discover that once a web-app displays a PDF, there is no way to go BACK. Not cool. Our fix for this dead end is to add Back and Forward to the Web-App menu. Shortcut keys are the Curly braces { & }, just like in Safari!

What's still broken? A number of things we plan to fix in subsequent "incremental" releases, the next of which will be 1.0.2 are on hold pending resolution of the PDF printing bug. This is a serious problem we need to fix. So what IS it? When attempting to print a PDF from Hana, the document is not sized properly and breaks into oddly sized pages, clipping the PDF strangely. The workaround is to Control-Click or Right-Click the PDF in Hana and choose to open or view it in Preview. You can then print just fine from there.

Hana has two minor display glitches. First, once you resize Hana during a session, the progress pie charts are overlayed with the spinning gear like indeterminate progress wheel. In a way it is cool, but it is unintended and mostly not-cool! Second, the resizing thumb in the lower right corner of the window is just not right. We have a solution for this that requires a little more experimentation and testing. It also involves a new feature that also requires testing. We plan to fill in some features we planned to ship but cut out so that we COULD ship! This post is already long enough. So we'll stop here. Get your latest version of Hana and get to work!

An update on Hana 1.0

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:03:19 -0500

The feedback on Hana has been fantastic! We are excited to be hearing back from Hana users and customers and have already gotten a much better idea of what Hana 1.0.1 and Hana 1.1 will include, feature-wise. Work has begun on 1.0.1 and we hope to have it out with a few minor bug fixes and a few minor, though hotly requested, new minor features!

Be sure to hit Check for Updates later this week!

What we use: Gmail

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:28:26 -0500

What I actually use for my webmail needs is Gmail from Google. It works well and when you set Hana's User Agent for Gmail to Safari (see here for more information,) It works just as if you were in Safari.

If you are a user of Gmail, click the link above to add it to Hana as a web-app. It should appear to the right of your existing tabs and be labeled: Gmail. It's User Agent is set to Hana. This will restrict you to a simple view. Select User Agents from the Web-App menu of Hana to select Safari as the user agent for accessing Gmail. Once this is finished and Gmail has reloaded, you will see this at the top of the page:

You are currently viewing Gmail in basic HTML. Switch to Standard View

Click the words "Switch to Standard View" and after Gmail is finished reloading, Gmail will be there waiting for you!

Gmail and Google are trademarks of Google, Inc. These trademarks are used without permission and for illustrative purposes only. No endorsement of any kind is implied or explicitly given. We just like using Gmail and wanted you to know that!

What we use: A series

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:14:27 -0500

In retrospect, I have been a web-app user for over a decade. I have been using Yahoo! mail for a very long time. Though I must admit that my Yahoo! account is mostly a spam collector these days! That is not due to any fault of Yahoo's, but the results of the meanderings of my life.

Some of this will come out over time, but for now, the turning point was iTools from Apple. When I got my .Mac address with web mail and pop access, I walked away from Yahoo as my primary email tool. Though I continued to use it for mailing lists and the like. I will talk more about Yahoo when I feature it in this series. But for now, my first piece is on the web-app I use the most: Gmail.

I will also be running a series called What you use:. This will feature articles by you, Hana users, about your web-apps.

Just a reminder, we have a fine directory, though small, of web-apps you can use with Hana. Check it out here.

Glitch Number 1

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:32:12 -0500

I knew something would be overlooked. Alas, it is a store design oversight. The discount is not applied until Checkout. This is not stated anywhere on the product page. This is for online purchases only.

And for a limited time only!

Be sure to NOT submit payment until you see the $10 discount. If it doesn't show up on the checkout page, use our contact page to let us know about it and we will investigate promptly! If it DOES show up, then click on through and get to work! :-)

I am terribly sorry for any confusion on this.

Hana 1.0

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:19:33 -0500

Hana 1.0 is done! It is available for immediate download and, ahem, purchase!

The only difference between Beta 12/Release Candidate 5 is the version number. If you are using those versions you need not upgrade.

We recommend everyone else upgrade to 1.0 who has not already upgraded to Beta 12.

Not much else to say.

So what's next? We are looking into 2-3 changes in the next few weeks. First, we are looking at embedding webkit in Hana. This will make Hana available to Safari 3 Beta testers. That is the biggest change in all ways. For the most part you will not notice it except when you run software update in Hana. It will be a larger download. The other changes will not be announced until we make the move to publish.

Why Hana?

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:03:52 -0500

Hana was born as an idea about a year ago. I will not go into the long tortured story of its development, but I will tell something of its inspiration here and why you shoudl consider Hana as an alternative to Safari, Firefox, Opera, Omniweb, Camino and Shiira for usage with web-apps.

A long time ago...

Michael McCracken wrote this blog post introducing webmail.app. At the time, I was working from home and not using my Gmail or Yahoo! mail accounts so I silently saluted a wonderful idea and went back to happily using Apple mail. Then Tim Gagen wrote a Hawkwings blog post about Chip Cuccio's Gcal.app. At this time, I thought to myself, hey, this is crazy having a bunch of one-off native apps JUST to access web-apps! And so Hana, the TABBED web-app specific browser was born. But it wasn't called Hana. It was code-named Taumsauk (after the tallest "mountain" in Missouri.) In time, I discovered that Hana is the Hawaiian word for "to work." (This blog, Kanaka Hana, means "the worker." Or so the translater I found on the web says! :-))

Before I dive into WHY you should use Hana, I want to let you know about Geoff and Alan, the two up and coming developers that helped my get Hana started and without whom I would not be about to release Hana. Geoff did a fantastic job in getting the project started. Alan did a fantastic job in fixing the mess I made of Hana after Geoff handed off to me. Now that I have completed some training, I can bring my 13 years of programming experience to bear on the Mac OS X platform. I am really looking forward to pushing Hana forward!

So, WHY use Hana?

Primarily, focus. As Mr. McCracken alluded to in his blog post, using a web BROWSER to access your work spaces, is dangerous from a focus standpoint. Opening Gmail in Safari is like trying to work in a playground. You are just a few steps away from the latest in news about the St. Louis Rams (or your favorite NFL team, oh and I suppose other sports too!) Or the latest in news at CNN.com, Slashdot.org, witty observation at DaringFireball.net, a wonderful rant from Bynkii.com or, or, or whatever you find in your favorites or at the bottomless well that is Google (or your favorite search engine.)

But it is more than just focus. Hana makes your web-apps more like desktop apps. Sure, they are all bound to a single window, (for now,) but they are no longer in the same space as your non-work related sites. You can close Safari and know that your work is safe in Hana. You can close Hana and know that your web-apps will be right there the next time you open Hana.

Why not a plug-in to Firefox?

If you are one to try to bend Firefox to serve all of your needs, then I think Hana is not even a possibility for you. A better question would be why not make your own build of Firefox that strips away all of the chrome, manages User Agents and works around a small set of sites that are always loaded (though can be disabled.) The answer to that question is simply this: what are YOUR priorities? Getting work done? Then get Hana!

Be Organized!

Hana puts all of your web-apps in one place. Don't let your web-app bookmarks swim in an ocean of dead, forgotten and utterly chaotic bookmark clutter. Use Hana to bring order to your web-app experience!

We eat our own dogfood!

We at All Out Software, Mike and I, use Hana for our web-apps. It will grow for a while to meet our needs for sure. But in time, I expect we will need more input from you, our customers, to continue to grow Hana into the Web-app Suite we envision it will become. We already have lots of cool ideas. Look for periodic releases to bring new features to Hana.

Thank you for giving Hana a look. We are trying to make a jump in our lives from working in corporate IT to working for ourselves. To put it simply, we are pursuing our dreams! Please support us in this! Thanks!