At the time of writing this, we distribute Spotify for Mac OS X as a regular DMG (disk image). The user experience is not really what I would call smooth:

• Download the DMG file.
• Open the DMG (implicitly mounting the disk image. Safari does this for you, BTW).
• Move Spotify to the Applications folder.

Now, for a unexperienced user double clicking the app icon inside the DMG feels like a natural action. It’s there, I’ll just open it then. Later, she restarts her computer, the DMG gets unmounted and “Hey, where’s Spotify?”.

Our solution is to use an internet-enabled disk image which automatically unpacks Spotify upon download. We then use some magic in the app to check if it was launched from another place than the Applications folder.

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The latest version of Gitblog got a new posts manager, which has been inspired by the inbox of Google Mail.

As a post can be in several states (and versions) at the same time, I had to use multiple dimensions of visual cues — row colors, labels (”Draft”, the “scheduled” clock) and hierarchical rows in the case when there is a work version alongside a cached version.

• Yellow marks a modified, uncommitted (but tracked) working copy with an older cached version live.
• Green marks a scheduled, tracked post (which will appear live once it’s future publish date is reached).
• Red marks a post which has been removed in the working stage, but is still tracked (previous version is still live).
• Grey marks a uncommitted (untracked) post, a post which does not have a record in the repository.

To get this feature, simply perform a git pull in your gitblog directory:

cd path/to/my/blog/gitblog
git pull

For quite some time I’ve been investigating and researching on how to best theme/skin/style a desktop application. Espresso from MacRabbit, available in public beta, takes an approach to themes I’ve been thinking about – CSS. Of course you should use CSS! Every kiddo knows it and those who don’t can quickly learn.

Espresso CSS-based themes (click for better quality)