A Bundle of Bundles

Allow me to preface this post with a disclaimer: It may be a little technical in the way of OSX development. I will add Wikipedia links for those still interested in reading on.

What is a bundle?

A Bundle is ultimately a folder in file's clothing. They are a great part of OSX and you already use them everyday. They allow people to write code for a program without muddling through the actual code of the program. Essentially, people can jump into the project without having to familiarize themselves with the existing code-base of Shift.

I know what a bundle is; get on with it!

We wanted to add support for RDBMS in a completely modular fashion. This way someone could easily add support for something like PostgreSQL without ever having to touch Shift code. We are in the process of nailing down a Formal Protocol which can then be implemented by different people to add support for a specific RDBMS. The planning for the protocol is definitely in it's infancy right now. If you're interested in getting involved with Shift or possibly adding support for a specific RDBMS you can see our notes on what we've started in the wiki. Our goal for the 0.5 release is to have support for both MySQL and SQLite in Shift. We've set up a separate repository for the bundles. To checkout the repository just paste this into terminal:

svn co http://svn.shiftosx.com/bundles

Once the protocol reaches a comfortable level of maturity I plan to add a semi-in-depth guide on creating a bundle. Until then I'll leave you with this screenshot.

Jonathan

New Core Team Member - Lauren Herda

Hey everybody. I'd like to introduce you to the latest member of the Shift Core Team: Lauren Herda. She will be taking on the Lead Designer role and will be in charge of the visual direction and branding for the Shift Project. She has already begun work on new icons for Shift and you can follow her progress on the Shift Ohloh Page.

Posting has been slow as of late, but we are still working hard and have some very, very cool things to release in the next few days. If you can't wait, check out the current 0.5 branch and you will see a small bit of the fruits of our research and labor.

Until then, - Nate

BRB

Just wanted to write a quick note to update you all on Shift. There has been a little bit of development done on 0.5 since the last update, but we have been distracted as of late by a paid iPhone development job. On top of that, Crossman leaves for vacation today and gets back the day I leave on another business trip. Ugh.

Anyway, things are still alive over here, but it will probably be another week or two before any more commits appear in trac. We will still be monitoring the blog and trac, so feel free to connect with the team at any time.

Shift Mockup PSD

In the spirit of OSS, here is the mockup from the 0.5 post below. It's nothing magical, but we would love to see people hack it up and/or tweak it to make it better. Feel free to link to it in the comments or email it to nate(at)shiftosxcom and I'll put it up for review.

mockup_v1.zip Note: may require CS3

Note: I've temporarily disabled the download until it can be cleaned up. Thanks Stefan.
-Jonathan

And we're back!

Donations? Logos? Leprechauns?

Time for a few quick updates.

We have received a couple requests to put up a donation button. While we really like the idea of making a little bit of cash (really, who doesn't), Crossman and I have decided to hold off on any donations at least until the release of 0.5. We feel that we need to get a release out there before this really becomes a legitimate project.

Thankfully, Shift has received a decent amount of attention lately. Thanks for the kind words in the comments and on the interweb tubes. To those who offered to help, thanks a million. To those who didn't, and can, you really should. We are looking to keep the core of the project small at the moment, but we need contributors to UI, logo/brand development, testers, and brainstormers. However, if you are a true cocoa ninja, there is definitely a place for you here. MySQL experts (and after 0.5, other databases) are totally welcome as well.

We have some new ideas and hopefully some new mockups coming down the line. We also will be drafting a requirements list on the trac wiki here in the coming weeks to help guide development through 1.0. Please post any feature requests so we can get them in there.

Let's be honest, most database apps suck. We have the power to make a better mousetrap, so we're going to do it.

Leprechauns? No comment.