A New Client for Mac OS X 10.5+

[aslj_client]

asLJ is a new client for Macs running Leopard that easily handles multiple accounts on LiveJournal and other LJ-based sites and facilitates cross-posting across accounts. Release notes and download link are in aslj_client. The community for users is aslj_users.

Comments

[aslj_client]

Thanks for looking at asLJ.

Would it be better if the security were a pop-up menu (like the account chooser), with the list of groups below it, so the list were the full width of that minor column? (And what if the list of groups stretched vertically as the overall window size was increased?)

I'm not sure what you mean by "alphaness" with regard to the userpic pop-up menu.

The "past entries" panel is bogged down by some implementation issues and is likely going to have to be rewritten into Objective-C for speed, but your experience is significantly different from mine. What kind of processor are you running on (G4/G5/Intel/etc)? Approximately how many entries per month do you have (under 10/10s/100s/more)? The count of entries per day is only loaded once (that one load is entry counts across all days ever) for one server call; the month view requires one call to the server to get the subjects; the processing bog-down seems to be in resetting all the buttons for the individual days. I'll take a look at Xjournal's column view at some point in the future to see what they've done.

In regard to how you interact with the window, it seems you are used to a paradigm where one window represents one entry, so that having multiple windows open means working on multiple entries and making subsequent changes and hitting post again is equivalent to editing the entry. This isn't the paradigm in asLJ. The main window makes new posts and controls logging in and all editing takes place via the past entries panel. In this regard, if XJournal works for you, you're probably better off with it than with asLJ.

[shatterstripes]

Would it be better if the security were a pop-up menu (like the account chooser), with the list of groups below it, so the list were the full width of that minor column? (And what if the list of groups stretched vertically as the overall window size was increased?)

Very much yes. Trying to stretch out the window was one of the first things I did.

By "alphaness" I mean, well, it's an alpha version.

I've got a two-month-old Intel Macbook. And an LJ that stretches back to 2002 with ~3600 posts for an average of 45 posts per month. Are you hitting the server for all that data? XJournal keeps a local cache of all that stuff.

I've been using Macs since 2000; I'm definitely used to the 'window = document' model. Having a window that I can't close except by quitting the program seems really alien to me; I probably will be sticking to XJournal. Still, it's good to see some competition in this field again!

[aslj_client]

The rearrangement of the security box will be in the next release.

What happens with the userpic drop-down? Does it not even open? show none of your userpics? only have some of your userpics? show something garbled? I've had one report of it only listing the first 100 or so, but that was in a previous version with a slightly different control.

The slow-down in the past entries panel must have to do with the overall number of entries or the number per month, as I regularly test on a much slower Core 2 Duo than would be in your machine, but I don't have an account with that many posts or that many per month. I don't think the data on count of posts per day can be cached, as there's no way to just get what's changed or to find out if it's changed without getting all of it. The data on a given month's entries might be cache-able, though. I'll have to investigate that.

I created asLJ with three aims:
1. fill my need for something more like Semagic but for Mac (hence the particular usage paradigm that I chose and the look of the past entries panel)
2. create a Mac client that interacted with other LJ-based servers
3. create more competition with the existing Mac clients in the hopes of de-stagnating the field

Hopefully, even if asLJ isn't for you, the competition will cause some improvement in XJournal for you.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[shatterstripes]

I got absolutely nothing happening when I tried to click on the userpic drop-down.

XJournal pretty much assumes that it's your only LJ update mechanism, and offers an 'update' button in the history window for when you do it by other means. It stores the full text of every entry in a big-ass plist. Hitting the update button takes a moment for it to check stuff.

I find the Semagic imitation to be profoundly alien and awkward, but if that's what you want, that's what you want - good luck with it!