A dog wearing sandals

New Blog!

2010-01-25T07:43:00.001-08:00

The all new Escapers blog is here....

http://theescapers.tumblr.com/

Flux 2 Screencast

2009-06-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

We've just posted our first screencast on using Flux 2! If you've been intimidated by Flux before, this is a really good intro.

www.theescapers.com/screencast

The voice acting was provided by the very talented Jennifer-Jay Ellison, at

http://jenniferjayellison.net/

Win a copy of Flux!

2009-06-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Want to win a copy of Flux, check out macstories.net...

http://www.macstories.net/news/giveaway-contest-win-5-copies-of-flux/

MacStories is quite a new blog, so head over there and show your support!

Cheers!

MT

Flux 2 - the story so far

2009-06-05T12:28:00.001-07:00

Hi,

This is just a quick message to keep everyone up-to-date on what's going on at The Escapers.

Very soon, Flux 2 will be in a 'feature-freeze', for those who don't know, this means we will soon stop adding features, so we can concentrate on fixing bugs, and of course, completing the documentation (documenting a moving target is very frustrating). It's basicaly the process of removing the word 'beta' from our website.

The second part of this message is to ask for everyones help. I honestly believe Flux is turning into a great application, it's not perfect, we're working on that :wink: But we need to polish it, fix the niggles. So we really need you guys to tell us what is stopping you from *loving* Flux, what bugs need fixing, what annoys you, what's stopping it from kicking DreamWeaver into the trash.

I'd like to thank everyone for all their bug reports and assistance, it's helped us more than I imagined it could.

Flux 2.18 now out!

2009-05-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

2.18 is now out, and for those still using Flux 1.x, start using v2, it's about 5-10x more awesome. Oh, and it's a free upgrade.

Flux 2.08 BETA release

2009-02-25T06:55:00.001-08:00

Flux 2.08 is out, with a big load of fixes/additions...

Title element and other meta data inserted by default in new files
Much more advanced Undo
Fixed occasional focus issues when using Inspector
Icon on Page Designer window title corrected.
Specific 'meta' tags supported in 'Page Attributes'
Support for Validator S.A.C as a preview browser
Tags such as 'p' are no longer obscured by the parent 'div' tag.
Flash files can now be embedded properly

Get downloading, or send an email to us@theescapers.com if you'd like to get involved in testing.

Cheers!

MT

2.06 BETA is out!

2009-02-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

2.06 BETA is now out, so download now....

If you want to get involved in the beta process, send a mail to us@theescapers.com

Remember, it's a beta, so backup, take care, and get on the forum!

2.05 BETA out now!

2009-02-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

Get your downloads going, 2.05, with a HUGE number of changes is out now!

2.04 out now!

2009-01-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

For those following the beta releases, update now, there are loads of fixes and tweaks for you all to try out!

Also, we had short server outage today, so the auto-update may have failed, it should be OK now though.

New Beta of Flux 2!

2009-01-19T07:22:00.000-08:00

Fire up your Flux 2 beta and check for updates now, it's well worth the download.

There are a huge amount of changes in this release, including an embedded Inspector, CSS style reordering and editing, better (but still not complete) support for @imports, and so much more other stuff.

Please download and let us know what you think!

Phones and Christmas

2008-12-23T15:01:00.000-08:00

Firstly, The Escapers would like to wish all our customers a very happy christmas and new year, and thank you all for your continued support!

In amongst the work I do at The Escapers, I've been looking for a replacement for my iPhone, yes, I know, it hurts me too, but the lack of a keyboard and reliable email is just getting too much for me, and don't get me started on Copy/Paste situation (try emailing a user a lost serial key, and you'll see where I'm going with this)

So, I've just bought myself a Nokia E90, and after owning it for around 48 hours, I thought I'd note a few initial reactions to it....

The UI is ugly, well compared to the stunning iPhone OS anyway, but it's probably more functional, the 'Desk' screen shows me appointments for the day, a few recent emails and todo items, it's a simple thing that the iPhone really needs to have. I can go to all my regular apps through a single key press, nice.

The keyboard is great, the first time I picked it up I could type faster than I could on the iPhone, and I don't suffer finger fatigue like I do with the Apple creation.

Push email works! For all my accounts! Delivered within a minute! Not just Yahoo! (You may be able to tell I'm quite excited about this). I'm using the new Nokia Email system (catchy name guys) , which is in beta, but is really great and reliable, even in low signal areas like my flat (It's like a faraday cage, I don't know why....) For someone who can spend hours everyday travelling, this is very important.

Copy and Paste, I keep forgetting I can do this now, it's great. The iPhone needs it, I don't care how, but it needs to get done, seriously.

The web browser, it's WebKit (Safari) based, so it's rendering is fine, just as good as the iPhone, just not as slick, movement around the page and selecting things is a bit of a chore due to lack of touch screen, the iPhone browsing experience is still the best on any handheld IMHO.

The E90 is a bit of a brick, so it's two handed operation only really, which I don't like, as on London public transport, sitting is a luxury only afforded to the lucky few, and on the Tube, holding on to something is important unless you want to end up in another travellers' lap.

The verdict so far....

The Nokia is a much better email device, but the iPhone is great at everything BUT the email.
If email is not important to you, get the iPhone, if it is however, the E90 may have the edge....

Happy holidays!

More on Flux 2.0

2008-11-15T04:17:00.000-08:00

A quick update on Flux 2.0. Well, first of all, for those who have asked... it's going pretty good, we've been able to dedicate a lot of time to it, and we're pretty much ahead of schedule at the moment. We've been focusing on a few different areas, almost all of which were suggested by our lovely and remarkably handsome user base...

1) Speed. We all know that Flux 1.0 can get a bit bogged down on a complex site, we're made many efforts in the past to fix this, but our efforts have only got us so far. For Flux 2.0, speed was a number one priority and as of right now, the speed is incomparable to Flux 1.0, to the point that we'll probably downgrade our suggested minimum specs, I've not yet tried Flux 2.0 on a G4, but I'd hazard a guess that it would be pretty useable.

2) Site import. Flux 1.0 was designed to be a ground-up editor, and site import was limited to well-formed XHTML sites, and even then, there was a limit to what Flux 1.0 could import. That's all changed now, and site import is dramatically better, we've been importing loads of sites from places like csszengarden.com, no problem on any of the sites.

3) UI, major changes are to the CSS editing, which has been re-written from the ground up, to not only support much more CSS, but make it easier, quicker, and take up less screen real estate. We've also made a lot of changes to the code editor to make updates much more "live" and snappier to update changes in code to the WYSIWYG view.

Just one last confirmation to those who have asked, Yes! Flux 2.0 will be free for all users! Even if you bought Flux from MacZOT or MacUpdate, or some other deal, it's still a free upgrade! :-)

What's going on at The Escapers...?

2008-11-05T06:28:00.000-08:00

Since we released Stuf a few weeks back, we've mostly focused on that, getting out lots of free upgrades and answering questions on our forum. Now that things are beginning to calm down a little, and we can get back to business as normal, we've started to re-apply our focus back to Flux, at least in part.

So, what does this mean for Flux? Well, what it means is that we're working now, not on little updates, but on the biggest change Flux has ever had, both under the hood and in the UI. This new version will be released as Flux 2.0, and improves upon Flux 1 in a host of areas, such as vastly improved site import, huge speed increases, and major changes to palettes and other areas of user interface. We've not put a timeline on this, as we'd hate to miss the date and disappoint all our users, but we hope it's going to be sooner rather than later. The good news for existing users is that this will be a free upgrade for all.

We've got Flux 2.0 working on our machines right now, and so far it's looking great, so much faster on PowerPC machines, as well as Intel powered Macs. Flux 2.0 will be Leopard only, as it incorporates many features of that OS, and maintaining two code bases would be just too much for a small company like ours.

We'll keep you up to date on progress as best we can, and make this the best release of Flux we've ever had.

Shadow exits beta and gets a new name!

2008-10-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

Launching tomorrow on MacZOT.com, Shadow goes on full release under it's new name "Stuf"!

After something like 17 beta releases, and incorporating many user requested features and ideas, we decided it was time to put Stuf out on the open market. We felt it was the right time to release as we felt that Stuf is now strong enough to face a much wider market, and the very different concerns and needs that each of these many users may have. Stuf will still get constant development, as is the policy of The Escapers and will take pride of place as the second ever product from us at The Escapers.

Why did we change the name? Well, the first reason is that there is already an application on the Mac called "shadowClipboard" and we simply felt that it was unfair and wrong to keep calling our app Shadow, particularly as they serve fairly similar purposes.

The second reason, was that the name "Shadow" was meant to portray the idea of a "shadow" clipboard on different computers, but as time went on, we found that most users were not using the network capability much, but more as a general repository of text, pictures etc. so we tried to think of a name which would represent this better. We came up with "Stuf" and I hope you like it and consider it an improvement!

So, what's next from The Escapers? Well, right now, we're going not going to think about any new apps, and focus on Flux and Stuf, we're going to be adding many features and improvments to both and I hope you'll notice these in upgrades to come.

All the best!

New releases abound!

2008-08-31T06:45:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, this is one of the best blog posts I've written in a while, because it's not a groveling apology...

We've finally got a release of Flux out the door , which addresses a lot of known issues, and maybe best of all, there is now a PDF manual! The manual is an ongoing work, which we'll update along with Flux releases. We've also overhauled the website, and new screencasts are on the way.

In other great news, we've released a new product! It's called Shadow, and it's multiple clipboard manager, which lets you copy on one computer, and paste on another. It's all done with network trickery and Bonjour. Right now, it's in beta and it's free, so grab yourself a copy on the house. We've made it free right now, because a zillion apps on the Mac use copy and paste, and we need to make sure there are no gotchas we've missed.

We see Shadow as a great partner app for Flux, and was initially built in-house exactly for that reason, we got tired of emailing each other stuff, having to save everything down to a network share. I've forgotten who said it first, in a fit of frustration : "Why can't I just copy here and paste there, is that so much to ask!?".

So let us know what you think, drop us an email or write on the forum.

Cheers!

An update on developments at The Escapers

2008-08-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks we've had a lot of emails and posts on the forum asking us what's going on with the development of Flux. As most of our users will note, by our standards, we've not done a release in a little while, and to make matters worse we've not been very vocal in explaining why.

Well, while we've been working to make Flux use Core Animation, and along with it, make Flux go a whole load faster, We've run into a few problems along the way which we did not anticipate. Most of the problems relate to Core Animation not behaving in quite the way we expected, and also different behaviour on machines with varying amounts of video memory. Personally, I think that Apple has done a wonderful job of abstracting the idiosyncrasies of each GPU and making very different processors appear the same to the programmer, but there are still nagging problems which has made progress similar to wading through treacle.

We've also been overrun with work relating to other aspect of The Escapers and Flux, all of which will become apparent in the coming weeks.

So, please bear with us during this quiet time of updates, we're working hard to make Flux as great as we can and sometimes we forget to tell everyone what's going on, for that I can only apologise.

The Leopard question...

2008-06-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

Apologies to everyone for the lack of activity on this blog, but the thing is, we've been busy boys and it's all relates to the above question. The thing is, what we all know, but we at The Escapers choose to mutter quietly and while nobody is listening, is that Flux can be a little slow even on pretty fast Macs. We're been looking at all kinds of ways to resolve this problem, and while moving a lot of code to pure C rather than the Objective variety has improved things a lot, it's only got us so far.

So, in The Escapers "Labs" (That's my flat), we're been cultivating a Leopard-only version of Flux which makes heavy use of Core Animation, which is a Leopard only feature. This has given Flux an incredible speed boost, especially on Macs with great graphics cards, so even older Macs get a great benefit, as although say G4 Powerbooks lack a bit in CPU speed, they more than make up for it with the GPU.

The problem with all this is that if the "Labs" version goes mainstream, we lose support for Tiger. We could of course maintain two versions of Flux, building features into the "Labs" version, then if they're Tiger-compatible, use them in the older version. This is a lot of work, but could be worth it if we find we have a lot of users sticking around on Tiger.

Please let us know how you feel about this, either mail us if you want a personal response, or maybe post on the forum or here on the blog. We know that Tiger is not that old, I myself run a G5 with Tiger as well as my Leopard powered MacBook, but the benefits may outweigh the disadvantages. Let us know what you think!

Some screengrabs and a forum for your perusal

2008-03-29T11:51:00.001-07:00

Just a quick post to say we've got some fresh new screengrabs up at www.theescapers.com, just for those who asked nicely.

Also, due to popular request, we've set up a forum! We encourage everyone interested in Flux to sign up and start posting, hopefully we can build ourselves a community here:

http://theescapers.com/phpBB2/

Let us know what you think, suggest features, and you can play a role in shaping Flux into the tool you need!

Themes in Flux

2008-03-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

For a while at the Escapers, we've been looking at supporting 3rd party templates in Flux, although this is technically fairly trivial, we need the 3rd parties to support it, without them, it would be pointless.

So, simply, if you're a designer, and you fancy making some templates for Flux, get in touch!

Cheers!

Flux isn't beta any more!

2008-03-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

I find myself quite disbelieving as I write this, Flux is not beta anymore, it's just doesn't sound right, but it's true.

I'm sure bugs will turn up, and like all software, it'll never be perfect (apart from maybe TextWrangler, I'll have to think about that.)

We've added some really nice features too, like layers, so you can edit hidden areas without moving everything out the way.

We still want feedback, comments and suggestions of course, so keep 'em coming, especially the nice ones, helps me get out of bed in the morning.

Thanks to everyone who helped us debug the beta, you all know who you are.

Work on Flux is still happening!

2008-01-20T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hello all,
First of all, a belated happy new year to you all. Secondly, I'd like to reassure everyone who has expressed an interest, that Flux is still very much under development. We've missed deadlines more times than I really care to admit, and while I could offer a wide range of reasons and excuses why this has happened, I'm not going to. The simple fact is that we promised more than we could deliver in a relatively short space of time, and we're now experiencing some pretty bad karma for that. All I can really do is apologise right now and promise to all Flux customers that we WILL issue a release soon, and many more after that.

First blog entry for a while

2007-11-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

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

2007-08-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-06T13:49:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-23T06:11:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-06-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-06-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

oops...

The obligatory 1.0.1 release

2007-06-22T05:11:00.000-07:00

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!!

2007-06-19T03:30:00.000-07:00

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).