First blog entry for a while

And it's not about Flux, or even Macs, it's about the Psion Series 7. I just bought one on eBay, slightly begrudgingly, simply because there wasn't anything more modern that would fit the bill. If you don't already know, the Series 7 is a tiny little PDA/Sub-notebook, about the size of a largeish hardback book, it runs EPOC, which is the ancestor of the Symbian OS, which runs on Nokia and other mobile phones, including the N95, and the E61 (more on this device in a later blog, it won't be flattering).

EPOC is one of the finest operating systems ever made, if only for the reason that it does everything it needs to very, very well, and nothing that it doesn't. If you like PalmOS, you'll like EPOC.

What saddens me a little though, as I write this article on my little Series 7, as I sit on the train going back to my flat (well, a train station quite near my flat, I won't have a train terminal at my flat until 2012, just in time for the Olympics.), is that there is no real modern replacement for it, the eeePC maybe, but certainly no Apple product that comes close to fitting the bill (the long dead eMate is similar, but quite a bit larger, I would have got one of those, if only it had been a little bit smaller.)

Anyway, the point of this post, is that there was no modern replacement for a very old product, and in a similar way there is no modern 'Mac', i.e. the Mac Pro is a very high end Mac, and the Mac Mini is quite a low end Mac, there isn't a *Mac*.

A little bit late

Well, we finally got our new version of Flux out the door, over a week later than intended, so I apologise for that, but I guess we're not a real software house until we start missing self-imposed dealines :-)

So, the latest version of Flux has quite a few new features suggested by our lovely userbase (they really are lovely, smell like freshly cut grass on a summer's day). The big addition is support for multiple CSS files, that's going to allow us to provide a lot more pre-packaged add-ons for cool Javascript/CSS effects, so stay tuned for that. It's also to going to make Flux's import of existing sites somewhat better, still not perfect, but it's a marathon not a sprint, and we'll get there in the end.

We've also put in quite a few UI fixes, text-handling in Flux 1.0.14 is now a lot more fluid and more Mac-like. For those who needed Flux to be a bit faster, we've optimised some areas to make it a bit more responsive, particularly on less-nippy Macs like G4s. We're continuing to work on the speed of Flux, so stay tuned.

Finally, I know a lot of you have told us that you need more docs for Flux, and we've got to hold our hands up and say we've failed you somewhat in not providing documentation sooner. The reason is mostly that at the moment, Flux is in a state of, well, flux, and if we wrote docs right now, they'd be out of date in a month. But that's no excuse, and we are working on it, so we'd like a little input, what sort of documentation do you prefer:

1) Traditional instructions.
2) Online FAQ and quick examples.
3) Screencasts

We'd hope to have all three, but if we were to prioritise one of them, what should it be?

A big thank you

Just a quick post to say thank you to everyone who has emailed us and commented on this blog so far, we've had so many positive comments, feature requests, and some <whisper class="under my breath">bug reports</whisper>.

We're trying really hard to get another release out the door this week, incorporating quite a few features that have suggested recently. Please keep them coming, we welcome constructive criticism as much as the praise (that's a lie, I prefer the praise).

Thanks!

The Leopard Question

With Leopard on the horizon, the issue of OS support becomes apparent, is it important to support Tiger, or do we embrace Leopard with a great big hug, and forget about previous OS versions?

Leopard introduces lovely new features, which the Escapers would love to use, but do we do this at the expense of backwards compatibility?

We really want to know what everyone thinks about this, so let us know.

Flux 1.04, and also, Woo! Die Hard!

Flux 1.04 is now available, so for those already using Flux, go ahead and do an update, for those not using Flux, why on earth not?! :-) Get on over to www.theescapers.com...

Watched Die Hard for about the 20th time last night, so again, for those already regularly watching Die Hard, do so once more, if you've never seen Die Hard, why on earth not?!

Finally, another shout out to those who continue to give us suggestions for improvements to Flux, we're getting those features in as quickly as we can, and getting releases ready for download soon after. We're trying to get most ideas implemented in a matter of days, not weeks or months. If we've not got your idea in yet, please be patient, they are all in the bug tracker waiting to get done. If you've got an idea but not told us yet, don't be shy, we really want to hear it!

So anyway...

I'm playing Tekken again on the PS3, and realise it's been over 24 hours since the last Flux release, so after a few more bug fixes, and implementation of a few ideas from our lovely, handsome/beautiful, charming and witty customers, we've now got version 1.03 out the door, you can download it from www.theescapers.com, or use the auto-update feature in Flux.

Seriously though, thanks to everyone that's suggested ideas and reported issues, it helps us out so much.

Back to more important matters though, anyone know how to save progress in Tekken? Everytime I load it, I'm starting from "Beginner", and it's not keeping my "7th kyu" or whatever.

1.0.2...

oops...

The obligatory 1.0.1 release

Time has passed, bugs have been found, pixels have been tweaked, and the time has come for the first update to Flux. You can update automagically from the 'Flux' menu, which will download it from the webanet.

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs and feature requests, we are working on them, I promise.

FIRST POST!!111!!

Only joking. Well, here I sit trying to write the first blog post for the new Escapers blog. Much as I'd love to tell you all about The Escapers, and our new Mac program Flux, I'd probably rather buy Tekken 5 off the Playstation Store, and play that instead. However, I'll get told off if I don't do this, so here goes...

I'll start off by saying a little something about The Escapers. We're based right in the middle of London, England. You know, the city that made that awful logo for the 2012 Olympics. We started The Escapers, principally to escape from our day jobs, and do what we actually want to do, which is write cool Mac software. We're hoping Flux is the first step in that direction, and I'll let you know how we get on in this blog.

At the moment Flux is in beta, and it's possible that when using you'll find bugs that would scare your mum, but rest assured that we're going to stamp them all out, and anyone that buys Flux while in beta, will get get free upgrades all the way to the point where that beta badge is removed, and probably beyond.

We've all been in the position where we've had to pay for upgrades rather more than feels natural, I know I have, so we'll make sure we don't fall into that trap.

But we're not just going to use this blog to talk about The Escapers and Flux, we'll probably also pay homage to the good people at Panic (although we won't mention Coda, not ever) and review tasty snacks from this side of the pond. We like to read about the crazy stuff you can buy in the U.S.A., so we'll take the opportunity to spread the word about the stuff you can find over here (feel the love).