Although the Socialize SDK comes with a great ready made ‘Action Bar’, the appearance of it didn’t quite suit the style of SwiftKit Mobile. So a custom social bar was made to include views, share, like and comment. You can see the new social bar in action in a couple of the screenshots below.

When you first update to the latest version you will automatically have a ‘profile’ created for you. If you wish to you can then link your Facebook and or Twitter account. It’s recommended that you link your profile with Twitter or Facebook as that way if you re-install the app or upgrade to the full version all your likes, comments and views will be kept. To do this simply hit the comment button on the social bar and then hit your menu key and go to settings. From there you can customize your profile.

Currently the social bar is available in the Android version of SwiftKit Mobile. If all goes well we will look into integrating it into the iOS version.

The day Lion was released every Mac user was complaining about the lag. RuneScape was completely unplayable. Many people thought this was a symptom of SwiftKit, but it happened in any browser. Somebody on the RuneScape forum figured out how to use the .jar from the Windows client and mix it with the .jar loader template app to create a playable executable that would open just an applet. This applet was also plagued with problems, one being if you resized the window the game would crash. The upside was that issues from loading RuneScape in a browser/SwiftKit (which also runs in a ‘browser’, technically) were now gone, with the addition of a few others (such as odd behaviour on Software mode, and graphical glitches

At this point it looked like this was going to be it for RuneScape on the Mac, inside this volatile client. I decided to take a look at tracking another application’s window. This was easier said than done, it’s something there was little to no documentation on. Eventually I used AppleScript, which I admit is definitely not the best and most elegant solution but it’s all I could come up with at the time. It did work, but only managed to get me position and size updates after they had been made, they were not live, meaning if you moved the window around the screen the client would only adjust it’s window’s positions after you let go of your mouse. A feature I am quite proud of is a resize window that sat over the client’s window, allowing you to resize the client without crashing (again, this was done with AppleScript, bridging my resize window’s position and size to the applet window’s position and size).

I played with this for a week or so to test it out, it was good for what I had to work with but I wasn’t 100% happy. Just before we planned to release this, Jagex made yet another update to their game, popping out the applet from the game when loaded in a browser, which was now made the gameplay perfect, there was just one problem, having the game in another window was quite annoying, not to mention if you closed the window that spawned it, the spawned applet would close. I decided the client-based version I had created just wasn’t going to cut it, so I scrapped it. This was the version 0.2.0b nobody ever saw.

The SwiftKit Mac project was becoming quite messy. Previously a lot of things were setup in “Interface Builder”, which is a tool that allows you drag buttons, images and other controls onto a canvas to populate your interface, which I consider to be lazy. Since then I have done all my other interfaces (on other projects) in pure code. Doing it this way makes it very easy to make interfaces dynamic, and being able to reuse custom components, the downside being coding things takes about 3x as long as using IB.

SwiftKit was now going to be completely focused around this pop out applet. There was going to be an immense amount of code to make this experience as seamless as possible for the user. Taking this and the messiness of the current state of the projects into account, I decided to recreate everything from scratch, starting with the hardest part, tracking the applet.

My previous method of doing this using AppleScript no longer worked. It would only work from anything launched from a .app bundle. This pop out applet was different, and launched directly from a process instead. If you open the Activity Monitor while the pop out is running, you will see it under the list identified as ‘Java’. I managed to find another way of getting another process’ window position and size, again very undocumented. This was a lot faster than my previous AppleScript implementation, and now I could get another windows’ frame even when it was being dragged around the screen. With this out of the way I found a way to reposition and resize the applet, which allowed me to restore the applet’s previous frame whenever SwiftKit was opened (by default it opens to a set size in the middle of your screen).

This version was looking to be pretty good, but it needed just one more thing. Because the applet is another process none of my shortcut keys would work outside SwiftKit. I had to register all the shortcuts I wanted the applet to access as global, meaning you could use them anywhere on the Mac, even if SwiftKit was in the background and another program was in the foreground. Of course, I didn’t want Command + S (used for screenshots) overriding save functionality in another program, such as Word, so I have to turn them on when either SwiftKit or the applet are in the foreground, and then turn them off when any other program is moved into the foreground.

Obviously there’s a lot more work involved in all of this, compared to me explaining it in a 2 minute blog post. I also work as a full time developer during the day, and coding when I come home is usually not a priority. I will end this post with a reassuring final note, I have tested v0.3.0b on Mountain Lion, and it’s flawless

(RuneScape on the other hand, not so great, it only works in OpenGL mode, although it could be worse)

We’ve also fixed a few other bugs, mainly one being with dragging a screenshot while using multiple monitors.

Change Log:
+ ADD: Host Redundecy
+ ADD: Remove Icon.
+ ADD: UploadHistory.xml now has a remove value for Imgur Images.
+ ADD: “Remove from web” added to history right click menu for Imgur Images.
+ ADD: Imgur Delete button (undo upload) to upload form
+ ADD: Imgur Host, as well as Host provider option.
+ CHANGE: Copyright info updated.
+ FIX: Bug with Drag Screenshot and multiple monitors.

Both the drag screenshot and full screenshot functions will now capture all active monitors in your setup. We’ve also added a new setting in the settings form to disable this and revert it back to the old ways of only screenshotting the primary monitor.

In other news, we’re attempting to get access to the imgur API which seems to be a much more favourable service over ImageShack, but haven’t had much luck as of yet.

High-resolution (512 x 512)

I wanted to keep it the same with it’s windows counter-part. Now that it required a much higher resolution I took the time to add a few features to it.

Feel free to use it for promotion or personal use. Just if you modify it or use it for any of your projects please credit me (zpoon.ca).

Let me take you back roughly 18 months.

<insert crossfade here>

I was exactly the person I described above, looking multiple times for a SwiftKit version for the Mac. Mac users will know what I’m talking about here, but if you have ever tried playing RuneScape through a browser and browse the internet at the same time it is very unstable and the browser sometimes crashes, ending both your RuneScape and web browsing adventures. I had waited long enough and decided to put an end to this myself by creating an Application that was simply a website that loaded the RuneScape homepage – keeping my ‘scaping and web browsing to separate Applications. It worked very well, and if the browser crashed it would no longer take RuneScape with it.

This simple client was pretty much a mimic of the official RuneScape client Jagex released. It was written in Objective-C, which is the standard programming language for all things Mac. At this stage I barely knew anything about Objective-C so it was a stretch for me doing what I actually managed to do.

I used this client privately for 6 months, before somebody from Runescape Community (Maxman) messaged me asking about RuneScape on his newly acquired Mac. I sent him a version of my private client, which a few days later I posted in the programming and web development section and created a SourceForge page for. As it gained popularity the suggestions were always the same, which as you can probably guess was the suggestion of a highscore lookup feature. I ended up teaching myself the bare bones of Objective-C to get this implemented (it was also my most desired feature too). This version remained the same for about 7 months (with a few minor updates when new skills/minigames were released).

There are probably quite a few Mac users reading this right now that actually use that version to play.

Here is the original forum thread that I used

After finishing a unit in mobile development at Uni, my name came up when my lecturer’s friend was looking for a developer. This job was coding for the iPhone – in Objective-C. A few months later I decided to recode my RuneScape client project from scratch, as the older code was horrible compared to what I had learned at work. I recoded it including a price lookup and a custom links section, very similar to SwiftKit… which is what I’m getting to.

Just before I was about to release this new version the SwiftKit team contacted me asking if I would consider joining them to bring SwiftKit officially to the Mac. I accepted of course!

<insert another crossfade here>

In the past few weeks I have been adding some additional features bringing it up to par with the Windows counterpart in terms of basic features – and a few extras (get working Strider, *whip*).

As development is now coming to an end you can prepare to see an open beta released very soon, so keep an eye on www.swiftkit.net!

Don’t get too excited now, but here’s a few pictures.

If you’re a Mac user and you play RuneScape then chances are you have looked at SwiftKit praying for a Mac OS X version, but got delivered that dreaded “SwiftKit is Windows only, there will never be a Mac version” answer.

Let me take you back roughly 18 months.

<insert crossfade here>

I was exactly the person I described above, looking multiple times for a SwiftKit version for the Mac. Mac users will know what I’m talking about here, but if you have ever tried playing RuneScape through a browser and browse the internet at the same time it is very unstable and the browser sometimes crashes, ending both your RuneScape and web browsing adventures. I had waited long enough and decided to put an end to this myself by creating an Application that was simply a website that loaded the RuneScape homepage – keeping my ‘scaping and web browsing to separate Applications. It worked very well, and if the browser crashed it would no longer take RuneScape with it.

This simple client was pretty much a mimic of the official RuneScape client Jagex released. It was written in Objective-C, which is the standard programming language for all things Mac. At this stage I barely knew anything about Objective-C so it was a stretch for me doing what I actually managed to do.

I used this client privately for 6 months, before somebody from Runescape Community (Maxman) messaged me asking about RuneScape on his newly acquired Mac. I sent him a version of my private client, which a few days later I posted in the programming and web development section and created a SourceForge page for. As it gained popularity the suggestions were always the same, which as you can probably guess was the suggestion of a highscore lookup feature. I ended up teaching myself the bare bones of Objective-C to get this implemented (it was also my most desired feature too). This version remained the same for about 7 months (with a few minor updates when new skills/minigames were released).

There are probably quite a few Mac users reading this right now that actually use that version to play.

Here is the forum thread that I used: http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1330565-open-source-mac-runescape-client/

After finishing a unit in mobile development at Uni, my name came up when my lecturer’s friend was looking for a developer. This job was coding for the iPhone – in Objective-C. A few months later I decided to recode my RuneScape client project from scratch, as the older code was horrible compared to what I had learned at work. I recoded it including a price lookup and a custom links section, very similar to SwiftKit… which is what I’m getting to.

Just before I was about to release this new version the SwiftKit team contacted me asking if I would consider joining them to bring SwiftKit officially to the Mac. I accepted of course!

<insert another crossfade here>

In the past few weeks I have been adding some additional features bringing it up to par with the Windows counterpart in terms of basic features – and a few extras (get working Strider, *whip*).

As the development is now coming to an end you can prepare to see the it released very soon, so stay tuned.

Don’t get too excited now, but here’s a few pictures.If you’re a Mac user and you play RuneScape then chances are you have looked at SwiftKit praying for a Mac OS X version, but got delivered that dreaded “SwiftKit is Windows only, there will never be a Mac version” answer.

Let me take you back roughly 18 months.

<insert crossfade here>

I was exactly the person I described above, looking multiple times for a SwiftKit version for the Mac. Mac users will know what I’m talking about here, but if you have ever tried playing RuneScape through a browser and browse the internet at the same time it is very unstable and the browser sometimes crashes, ending both your RuneScape and web browsing adventures. I had waited long enough and decided to put an end to this myself by creating an Application that was simply a website that loaded the RuneScape homepage – keeping my ‘scaping and web browsing to separate Applications. It worked very well, and if the browser crashed it would no longer take RuneScape with it.

This simple client was pretty much a mimic of the official RuneScape client Jagex released. It was written in Objective-C, which is the standard programming language for all things Mac. At this stage I barely knew anything about Objective-C so it was a stretch for me doing what I actually managed to do.

I used this client privately for 6 months, before somebody from Runescape Community (Maxman) messaged me asking about RuneScape on his newly acquired Mac. I sent him a version of my private client, which a few days later I posted in the programming and web development section and created a SourceForge page for. As it gained popularity the suggestions were always the same, which as you can probably guess was the suggestion of a highscore lookup feature. I ended up teaching myself the bare bones of Objective-C to get this implemented (it was also my most desired feature too). This version remained the same for about 7 months (with a few minor updates when new skills/minigames were released).

There are probably quite a few Mac users reading this right now that actually use that version to play.

Here is the forum thread that I used: http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1330565-open-source-mac-runescape-client/

After finishing a unit in mobile development at Uni, my name came up when my lecturer’s friend was looking for a developer. This job was coding for the iPhone – in Objective-C. A few months later I decided to recode my RuneScape client project from scratch, as the older code was horrible compared to what I had learned at work. I recoded it including a price lookup and a custom links section, very similar to SwiftKit… which is what I’m getting to.

Just before I was about to release this new version the SwiftKit team contacted me asking if I would consider joining them to bring SwiftKit officially to the Mac. I accepted of course!

<insert another crossfade here>

In the past few weeks I have been adding some additional features bringing it up to par with the Windows counterpart in terms of basic features – and a few extras (get working Strider, *whip*).

As the development is now coming to an end you can prepare to see the it released very soon, so stay tuned.

Don’t get too excited now, but here’s a few pictures.

The icons should be pushed with the next update, along with a few other features that we’ve added. The next area I’ll focus on is the main screen, and making that area a bit more pretty. The current brown mess isn’t going to be sticking around for long.

Version 1.0 at the moment features a highscores lookup. However with future updates we plan to expand on the content to include database lookups (prices, items, monsters, clans), Adventure Log, basic calculators, notifications and much more.

If you do have an Android device we encourage you to install it and let us know how it performs, positively or negatively.

Database Editor
This is a new tool that has been developed to allow SwiftKit staff members to access, modify, add and delete data within the SwiftKit00x.skd files. The SwiftKitData00x.skd files are used for the calculators, quest center, atlas, achievement diary center etc. The tool was written in .NET and connects to a MySQL database on the SwiftKit server. Currently the changes made are not live, in order for the changes to take effect the data needs to be exported, packed and then uploaded. The main benefit of the tool is that it allows other staff members to manage the data instead of just myself.

SwiftKit Control Panel
This is a tool that I wrote for myself back when I was initially developing SwiftKit. The main purpose of this tool is to allow me to manage updates for SwiftKit (including SwiftKit MS). While the tool doesn’t actually do the uploading it more or less does everything else. Including packaging, compressing, signing integrity, version control and placing all the update files in a holding directory ready for upload.

The first screenshot is where I grab the world info for all the RuneScape servers and pack it into a single file. The second screenshot is where I come after I have compiled a new version of SwiftKit. Clicking one of the update buttons increments the version number, compresses the executable and signs its integrity. The last screenshot is where I package and compress all the SwiftKit000x.skd data files into a single .skd file. The SwiftKitData001.skd file has over 670 calculator images compressed into it. This is why you see an unpacking images progress bar in the Calculators utility.

So there’s a quick look the two main tools used for managing the SwiftKit project. Not an ordinary Dev Blog post but hopefully still informative for those who had been wondering – or had asked me about them in the past.

Changes and Fixes:
+ ADD: The ability to right click upload images in Windows Explorer. (If selecting multiple images they must be same format)
+ ADD: Multi Uploader.
+ ADD: The system tray icon now changes if SnagIMG is disabled.
+ ADD: SnagIMG will now check for updates on startup.
+ ADD: New option in Settings to disable update check on startup.
+ FIX: Panning in the Viewer should now work correctly.
+ FIX: Few glitches fixed with the Drag Screenshot feature.
+ FIX: No longer crashes on startup after reboot/logoff.
+ CHANGE: Update process is now a little more automated.
+ CHANGE: You can now open multiple instances of the Viewer.

To update, either right click the SnagIMG system tray icon and check for updates or go to the downloads section.