The Breakroom

The Darkest Time of Year

October 16, 2018

By Craig Hockenberry

App icons of all our Mac apps lined up on the chopping block with a cleaver through the skull of Twitterrific's Ollie. Sad birdie!

For over 20 years, we’ve been celebrating our favorite holiday on the Iconfactory home page. Yes folks, it’s that time of year again: Halloween!

It all started long ago with The Great Pumpkin and we haven’t looked back. If you love this holiday as much we do, there’s a page that will give you an endless source of joy. And terror.

But one thing makes this year even better than ones in the past: our site decorations are to die for, thanks to macOS’ new Dark Mode! (Be careful around the new scrollbars, you might get cut.)

So we’ve decided to do a killer sale on ALL our Mac apps and celebrate Mojave’s turn to the dark side. For the next week, you can get these great apps at prices that are CUT IN HALF:

  • xScope — Measure. Inspect. Test. $25 savings
  • Twitterrific — Tweet your way. $4 savings
  • Flare — Your photos are just the beginning. $5 savings
  • iPulse — Keep an eye on your Mac. $5 savings
  • Linea Link — Works hand-in-hand with powerful sketching apps. $2 savings

And here’s one final treat: after you turn on Dark Mode, set your Accent color to orange in the General panel of System Preferences. Boo yah!

All Linea Systems are Go!

September 26, 2018

By Webmaster

Picture of all Linea apps

Many of you have been waiting eagerly for today’s release of Linea Go. We’re pleased to announce immediate availability of our popular drawing app on the iPhone! If this is the first you’re hearing about Linea, check out what it’s like to have a sketchpad in your pocket.

In our announcement for the pre-order, you might have noticed that we mentioned new features like broadcasting. The phone’s aspect ratio also means new canvas sizes. We’re happy to say that all this functionality, and more, is on the iPad in today’s release of Linea Sketch.

Our goal is to make apps whose capabilities are the same no matter which device you’re using. There are a few small differences between the platforms and we’ve covered them in our updated Tips & Tricks page. Take a quick look and you’re sure to learn something new!

With this week’s release of Mojave on macOS, you won’t be surprised to hear that we’ve updated Linea Link to be compatible with Dark Mode. It’s also now able to handle any documents you create on your iPhone.

For an overview of all the products and how they work together, check out the Linea product site. Enjoy the launch!

Darkness This Way Comes

September 24, 2018

By Craig Hockenberry

Flare running in macOS Mojave with the dark theme in all its mysterious beauty

Wait a second… It’s not October yet, so what’s with the spooky title? A new version of macOS, that’s what!

As you’ve probably heard, the latest version of our favorite OS has a fantastic new Dark Mode and we’re pleased to announce that we have a bunch of updates to support this new feature.

Flare was designed from the start to work with the new dark appearance introduced in Yosemite and looks fantastic with the new content-centric desktop theme. Your photos will come to life in version 2.2.7!

We’ve also released updates for iPulse, Twitterrific, and xScope. Although these apps already have highly customized interfaces, we’ve made sure that preferences and other windows look right on the new macOS.

One app that hasn’t been updated yet is Linea Link. We’ve been busy getting a new companion for the iPhone ready and need to do some simple tune ups for device compatibility. We’re on the case and you’ll soon be able to get your iPhone drawings onto your Mac without any hiccups and with full Dark Mode support.

Thanks, as always, for your support!

Introducing Linea Go for iPhone

September 19, 2018

By Ged Maheux

Linea Go Logo and Hero Illustration - Treehouse and sunshine

On the eve of Apple shipping the most advanced iPhones in the company’s history, we’re pleased to announce a brand new version of our elegant digital sketching app. Designed specifically for iPhone, Linea Go is an amazing companion to the critically acclaimed iPad app and is now available for pre-order on the App Store.

Sketch Anywhere

When we designed Linea Sketch for iPad, we crafted it to be elegant and powerful enough to record your thoughts and ideas, but without overloading you with a myriad of tools, options, and settings that are common in other drawing apps.

Little did we know we were also laying the groundwork for Linea Go and the need to conserve real estate on a phone’s screen. The result is an app that’s always with you, simple, and ready to take notes, sketch concepts, or record ideas with either your finger or a stylus.

Linea Go's toolset

Linea Go’s concise set of tools puts focus on your work, not the interface. Choose from a small but powerful set of best-in-class drawing tools like the Art Pencil, Technical Pencil, Marker, or Pen. Effortlessly switch between pre-defined brush sizes, blending modes, and even quickly switch to Linea’s eraser with a long press of the selected tool. So easy!

Thanks to iCloud, your work is always in your pocket, ready to go. Start sketching an idea on iPhone and continue it later with Linea Sketch for iPad and an Apple Pencil. iCloud keeps your ideas in sync and provides a safe backup of your important projects.

Powerful Color

Like its iPad big brother, Linea Go offers top-notch color controls that are designed to take up minimal space while giving you the most flexibility for sketching or taking notes. Tints and shades are generated automatically, saving time and effort. Banks of pre-defined color sets let you choose a palette that’s right for the work, or you can create a new set with your own custom colors.

Be sure to visit Linea’s Tips & Tricks to learn techniques that will save you time managing colors, tools, and more.

Facing iPhones showing Linea Go's color palette interface

Watch you go!

Linea Go lets you record every movement while you work. Drawing sessions can be saved directly to your iPhone’s camera roll and make a great way to show your ideas to friends, followers, and colleagues.

Linea Go drawing with LIVE STREAMING indicator

You can also live stream to services like Mobcrush (or any other that’s compatible with the ReplayKit standard.) You can give play-by-play descriptions as you work, complete with video from the iPhone’s front-facing camera! Be sure to check out our knowledge base on how to set up live streaming in Linea.

So Much More

Linea Go includes innovative features that are designed to make sketching flexible and fun on your iPhone:

  • Landscape support lets you turn your iPhone on its side and get an aspect ratio that’s perfect for storyboarding or sketching the world around you.
  • Elegant layers let you compose drawings just how you want them: a small screen becomes expansive when you can move layered pieces around easily.
  • ZipLine provides an intuitive solution for drawing straight lines on the smaller screen of the iPhone: just hold the drawing tool still at the end and everything straightens out. Do it again and they connect to each other.
  • Quickly import images into a layer for reference or tracing. Marking up screenshots is a breeze!

Pre-orders for Linea Go will get an automatic download on your iPhone when the app becomes available on Wednesday, September 26th.

If you still haven’t tried Linea Sketch for your iPad it’s currently on sale but will be returning to its regular price with the release of Linea Go. Now is a great time to take advantage of the savings.

Have more questions? Be sure to visit the Linea Knowledge Base for answers and then head to the App Store to pre-order Linea Go for your shiny new iPhone today.

Streaming Into the Void

August 15, 2018

By Webmaster

Twitter's classic

Starting tomorrow, Twitter will begin to turn off, or deprecate, two important API’s that third party apps use to interact with their service. Twitter will start slowly phasing these features out on Thursday, August 16th, and completely shut them off by August 23rd. We’ve spoken about these changes at great length in the past but wanted to remind Twitterrific users about what is happening.

To summarize, here’s what Twitter’s changes mean for you:

  • Live streaming of tweets is ending
  • You will no longer receive native push notifications
  • Twitterrific’s Today view will no longer update

What Can I Do?

Although Twitterrific will no longer stream tweets in real time, we’ve implemented automatic refresh for both the iOS and macOS apps. This means that if you had previously enabled live streaming in Twitterrific, the app will now instead check for new tweets every two minutes. Unfortunately, this means that tweets and DM’s will be slightly delayed, but hopefully you won’t notice too much of a difference.

Since Twitterrific will no longer connect to Twitter’s push notification stream, we can no longer inform you immediately when someone likes, RT’s, mentions, or sends you a direct message. The app still badges the appropriate icon at the top of the timeline with an unread dot after loading the latest tweets, but if your iOS device is asleep, you won’t get a notification on the home screen.

To work around this problem we suggest you download the official Twitter client for iOS, add any and all Twitter accounts you want to receive push notifications for and enable them. Once you turn them on, be sure to head back to Twitter’s in-app preferences and then customize the types of notifications you want to receive.

The flow of how to activate push notifications within the official app. Open Settings and Privacy - Notifications - Push Notifications - Turn on Notifications

NOTE: By default, Twitter enables their “Quality Filter” so you’ll need to turn this off if you want to receive notifications for ALL tweets, not just those Twitter deems important. Once this is done, you’ll be notified of events like you’re used to with Twitterrific (except for Quoted tweets). You can then launch Twitterrific to respond to these notifications as needed.

Since the information displayed by Twitterrific’s Today view was collected using Twitter’s push notification stream, this feature will no longer function. We’d like to work around this limitation and once again provide a view where you can view your most recent activity, but additional future API restrictions may make this impossible. We’ll all have to wait and see.

Moving Forward

If you have additional questions about how Twitter’s API changes affect you as a Twitterrific user, be sure to visit our Knowledge Base to learn more. We’ll be responding to problems and questions on Twitter all week so be sure to follow @Twitterrific for the latest news and information. You can also follow #BreakingMyTwitter on Twitter to see what others are saying.

Finally, we’re committed to continued development of Twitterrific as long as it makes financial sense and is allowed by Twitter. Despite these changes, we hope you’ll continue to use and support us into the future. We’re not going anywhere.

Talking Accessibility & Twitter’s Upcoming API Changes

August 8, 2018

By Ged Maheux

The Blind Side podcast with Jonathan Mosen on iTunesPodcaster and accessibility maven, Jonathan Mosen, recently had me on his podcast to discuss Twitter’s upcoming imposed changes to their live streaming and push notification APIs.

On episode 98 of The Blind Side we talk about what these changes mean for Twitterrific users and how they affect accessibility within the app. Even if you’re sighted, I encourage you to check out this interview which gets a bit more in-depth about why we think Twitter is revoking these features, how we’re dealing with the reduced functionality and what this means for the future of third party Twitter apps.

I want to thank Jonathan for inviting me on and helping us get the word out about these unfortunate policy changes that will hit Twitterrific users on August 16th, 2018. Check out The Blind Side with Jonathan Mosen on iTunes or via his website.

Listening to Poo, Your Emoji and You

July 13, 2018

By Ged Maheux

A 1950's PSA style woman gazes up from behind a book to floating emoji above her head including the smiling poo

Let’s face it, it’s a struggle to get attention in 2018. Users wage a constant battle for eyeballs in the ever-widening war of compelling content versus fake news and funny memes. One of the ways people stand out from the pack is to employ Emoji and special characters in their names. Scroll through your Twitter timeline and you will undoubtedly spot more than a few people relying on this technique: it acts as a visual cue to pay special attention and adds an extra dimension of personality to a profile.

But these benefits have a significant downside.

The problem with using these special characters centers around how they are presented to folks with vision difficulties. If you’re relying on a screen reader, like Apple’s VoiceOver technology, Emoji can make browsing Twitter a nightmare. This is because VoiceOver reads the name of the character: you may see a simple 😊 Emoji, but a blind person hears “Smiling face with smiling eyes”.

In a tweet, it’s helpful to hear something like “Awesome job! Smiling face with smiling eyes Emoji”. But when this same character is used in a screen name, you’ll hear “John Doe Smiling face with smiling eyes” at the beginning of each tweet. This adds friction and dramatically slows down the process of “reading” your timeline because this longer phrase is read every time.

There are more characters within Unicode than just Emoji, and some of the codes let you change the way a name appears visually on your screen. You can pick a different font like Copperplate Gothic or add funky symbols – thanks to standard support across a wide variety of platforms, your unique creation will look great everywhere.

But what happens if you’re not looking at it and relying on a screen reader? Compare what you see for this tweet to what the VoiceOver user hears in the audio clip below:

Tweet from Janie Plum with her name defined in unicode characters

The user name takes over half of the total reading time and is difficult to understand because it must be spelled out as J-A-N-I-Pulsating heart-P-L-Small Latin Letter Capital U. You’ll also note that a few letters are missing as VoiceOver attempts to speed things up. Looks can be deceiving.

Now imagine hearing this over and over as you scroll through your timeline – a tweetstorm by Janie will be excrutiating! And then her friends pick up on the trend and add to your frustration!

So what’s the solution?

The Iconfactory recently introduced a new feature in Twitterrific that allows users to turn off Emoji in names. When activated, these problematic characters are no longer displayed or used by VoiceOver, resulting in a smoother reading experience. We’re also looking at ways to remove other characters that need to be spelled out. While this all helps our customers, it remains a problem on the web and in other apps.

If you want to make your tweets accessible to the widest possible audience, consider removing Emoji from your online user names. This goes doubly for the stylized Unicode characters that some people have fallen in love with. Sure, they may elevate your online profile to the social media equivalent of the Matrix code, but for folks with disabilities, it’s just making their lives more difficult.

Now you know, and as they say, that’s half the battle. The accessibility community thanks you!

Ten Years on the Aisles of the App Store

July 10, 2018

By Craig Hockenberry

Time flies when you’re having fun. Today marks the tenth anniversary of the App Store.

Of course there are a lot of people celebrating this event besides the factory workers. I was honored to be a part of the Appstories podcast where James Thomson and I chat with John Voorhees and Federico Vittici about those early days of selling iPhone apps.

I’m also enjoying the retrospectives about how apps have changed over the past decade. Michael Steeber’s visual look at the evolution of app interfaces and icons is fascinating. Alex Guyot takes this theme and adds some context from the developer’s perspective.

Another, but less obvious, benefit of the App Store is how it’s brought accessible software to folks in need. My colleague Sean Heber talked to Steven Aquino about this revolutionary change.

It’s been an excellent ride. Here’s to another ten!

Push Nope-ifications

July 5, 2018

By Ged Maheux

Today we’re rolling out an update for Twitterrific on iOS and macOS that addresses upcoming changes with how apps interact with Twitter. Unfortunately, these changes hinder the ability of third-party apps like Twitterrific to do push notifications and live-stream events.

We had hoped there would be cost-effective ways to work around these limitations, but since that’s looking increasingly unlikely, today we’re here to explain exactly what these changes mean to Twitterrific users like yourself.

Push Pulled

If you purchased the Push Notifications Advanced Features on iOS at any point in the past, you will continue to receive notifications until Twitter deactivates their API. Sometime after August 16th, 2018, Twitterrific won’t be able to receive and display notifications natively.

When this happens, you won’t be notified when someone likes one of your tweets, quotes you, replies to you, retweets, sends a direct message, or follows you. Since these notifications also power the Today view and Twitterrific’s Apple Watch app, we will be retiring both.

Given that notifications are going away, today’s iOS update removes the Push Notification in-app purchase for new users. There is now a single “Enhanced” in-app purchase item including ad removal and tweet translation for $2.99 USD. The Tip Jar remains for those who wish to contribute to Twitterrific’s long-term development.

Unrealtime

Twitter will also be removing the live-streaming service for third-party apps. This means that after the API is shut down, tweets and direct messages will be delayed by a minute or two, instead of displaying in real time.

Starting with today’s update, Twitterrific will still attempt to live stream tweets but will fall back to automatically refreshing your timelines every 2 minutes if it’s unable to connect. Automatic refreshing, unlike streaming, will work even if you are connected via a cellular network.

In most use cases you probably won’t notice the difference, except in cases like live events or with popular searches that update frequently. On the plus side, this change means that Lists can finally auto-refresh themselves like other timelines – something that had been sorely missing for a long time.

I Want My Ac-tiv-ity!

While there is little we can do to work around the removal of live streaming, it will still be possible to continue to receive push notifications for tweets. How? Simply activate all the notification types you want to receive in the official Twitter client. Then keep using Twitterrific to browse your timeline, tweet, respond to direct messages, read threads, like tweets, and much more.

Using notifications via the official app also means you can continue to receive them on your wrist via Apple Watch. Tweet text won’t be color-coded as it was in Twitterrific, but you’ll still be able to keep yourself apprised of the latest events.

The Bottom Line

We sincerely wish Twitter would have offered third party developers a better way forward for our customers. Apps like Twitterrific helped build Twitter’s brand and expand its user base. We even contributed to its lexicon and feature sets (Tweet tweet!) Twitter’s priorities over the last several years, however, have shifted away from end users and toward brands and big companies. We have no choice but to adapt as best we can.

As of this writing, both push notifications and live streaming of tweets will continue to function at least into August, 2018. Installing today’s update means you’ll lose Twitterrific’s Watch app, but as long as you’ve purchased them in the past, the Today view and push notifications will continue to work until the cut off. New customers will not be able to unlock these features going forward as we did not feel it was fair to continue charging for a service that we know is ending.

Thank you so much for your loyalty and support over the years! All of us at The Iconfactory appreciate it more than we can say.

Favicons. Finally.

June 7, 2018

By Craig Hockenberry

If you’re one of those people that got excited by Safari screenshots in macOS Mojave sporting favicons in tabs, we’ve got some good news: you can have them right now in the Safari Technology Preview. And you don’t even have to pronounce it fav-ah-con.

But there’s more to the new feature than you might think. Take a look at what appears on the Iconfactory home page in the latest Chrome and the Safari releases:

Why are the icons different? The answer lies in this one line of page markup:

<link rel="mask-icon" href="/favicon.svg" color="#990000">

We keep a favicon.ico file in the root of the website filesystem for compatibility with browsers that don’t support vector icons. But Safari knows that SVG will look better on a high resolution display, so it checks for a favicon.svg first.

Since favicons are an important branding element for a website, you’ll want to learn more about how this new format works. All the details are in our extensive tutorial. Enjoy!