Recycled Air

Loro second release!

2007-03-24T02:58:00.000Z

Here it is, the much improved, stabilised Loro 0.6 public build. Since the awesome Affinity came out a few days ago, I have tweaked Loro to offer the same kind of functionality. This includes;
- Mentally fast spotlight searching
- The use of filters, so music:the strokes will only show music files etc
- Built in Yahoo! search results with the filter yahoo:

For this release, I have scrapped the favorites as it was causing too many problems. I can only test Loro on a couple of Macs but it seems much more stable to me - feedback would be gratefully received. Loro is a universal binary and so available for Intel and PPC macs.

As always, you can grab it from my Google project page (linked on the right)
Documentation for this build which I highly suggest reading (especially for the keywords info) can be found at http://code.google.com/p/loro-launcher/wiki/Documentation

Touch wood

2007-03-22T03:19:00.000Z

Evenin' all. I've just finished implementing the majority of the next Loro release. Hopefully this release will be infinitely less buggy than the earlier version I released and generally a whole lot better. I've completely recoded the spotlight front end so Loro can now perform searches almost instantly and I'm currently working in meta data to appear in the results, something Neil has done with Affinity. I've still got to implement filters but that shouldn't be too hard ;) Expect a public version in the next few days.

NilObject Exception

2007-03-17T13:42:00.000Z

Many of you have encountered the NilObject exception error with Loro, which is weird because at the same time, many haven't :) I think this is to do with the preferences file, try seeing if the solution I posted here (http://code.google.com/p/loro-launcher/issues/detail?id=1&can=2&q=) works. That manually creates a preferences file which I think the problem is to do with. Secodnly, thanks to Neil for the mention of Loro on his blog :D he has massively helped in drawing attention here which is really appreciated.

Bug fixes a plenty coming next week.

New UI

2007-03-06T00:17:00.000Z

Since the first public release, I have improved the user interface of Loro slightly by changing the top search bar and how results are displayed - both are very much influenced by the ui design of the iphone. I have been working on making the file browsing faster and also working on Spotlight compatibility. I am also working on an entirely new, more osx native UI for Loro that will be based on the Unified look, introduced in Tiger. I will post screenshots of my work on this new interface soon.

Loro first public release

2007-03-01T00:19:00.000Z

It's finally landed, the first public alpha release of Loro. Please note that this is still in alpha testing so there is many bugs and functionality that is still to be implemented - however, saying that this release has many features and should be stable enough. Click the link on the right to download Loro 0.5 and be sure to read the readme included otherwise you might be a bit lost.

Have fun!

Public release soon!

2007-02-27T02:31:00.000Z

Sooner than you might think. The first public release of Loro will be available freely by the weekend (friday or saturday). To run Loro you must be running Mac OSX Tiger. I will build a universal binary so PPC and intel users can both enjoy it. Today I implemented the integrated web search (see above) I was talking about in my last post which can be accessed using the keyword 'yahoo'. I'm also still working on the Google Maps stuff but I've put it on hold for the second release. Please note that when released Loro will still be in very early development and so there is probably a host of bugs for you all to find, i'll set up some sort of project site for that.
I'll update you if I add any last minute features before it's released ;)

New features

2007-02-26T02:04:00.000Z

Evenin' all. I've just finished coding another couple of features into Loro and also have been doing some heavy bug fixing. Here's a list of the new features;

New keyword to access Google Maps. Queries are in the style of "map west street, brighton"

Loro now handles application files properly

The meta data toolbar I talked about in the last post is now well on the way to becoming a reality and has already been integrated into the preferences so users can chose to show or hide it

Preferences are now saved correctly regardless of where application is placed

Now those are out the way, here's a few of my ideas to start implementing;

Tight integration with Google Maps. Curently Loro simply opens up a web browser and searches for the address, however I want this feature to become far more sophisticated and have the map actually show in the Loro window (mockup below)

Web search within Loro. Similar to the above idea except integrating Google results into the main Loro window.

When those two are done, then I think the first public release will be out :)

I've currently got a couple of beta testers helping me find and get rid of any bugs so hopefully by the public release it will be a very stable little app.

More On Spotlight

2007-02-21T21:43:00.000Z

Well after being disappointed with the previous spotlight implementation, I have now completely recoded this feature of Loro and it is now much faster and provides much better results. Following on from my last post, I am currently implementing the meta data pane which can be shown by pressing a hot key and shows information on a file that spotlight has indexed. Below is a mockup of how this will look.

I think that's looking pretty nice :). I've also been fixing the favorites feature and I'm pleased to announce that it's very near completion.

Favorites

2007-02-21T01:40:00.000Z

Well, I've been coding up a load of new functionality for Loro recently. I've almost finished implementing the 'favorites' feature, which keeps 10 of your favorite documents or applications close to hand on Loro's 'home' screen. I've also fixed a major bug in the file browser so thats almost rock solid now :) I'm currently working on implementing the preferences system and ui which is already looking nice :D
My next idea for loro is to implement some sort of 'preview' for files so that information about files including meta data etc can be called up. I really want to release an alpha version of Loro soon so I can get feedback, so keep checking back for releases in the near future.

Spotlight + Loro

2007-02-16T04:01:00.000Z

I've been working for the past few hours to integrate the Spotlight index with Loro so that you can search for files by meta data attributes such as; artist, album etc and the basic functionality is working well - Spotlight can be accessed by adding the keyword 'Search' and then the criteria as you can see in the picture. It's still a bit slow but it's a very useful feature and necessary to make Loro central as a file browser. I'm going to improve upon the default Spotlight experience by allowing powerful operators such as AND and OR to be used.

Presenting Loro

2007-02-15T21:06:00.000Z

Hey everyone, I've started work on a new application for OSX called Loro. Loro is a keyboard-centric file browser and launcher with a lot of eye-candy and functionality. Loro can also be used to search Google, Wikipedia, send emails and play music. Best of all, it's completely free.

The app is very much under development at the moment and is very much inspired by the work of Neil J. Patel
(http://njpatel.blogspot.com/index.html) and his mockups of an application he is planning to make for linux. I should make it clear that we are not working together.

Things currently implemented;

Auto complete

File browsing (not bugfree but getting there)

Simple actions, typing a web address or email address

Lots of eye candy, translucency and show/hide effects such as genie and fade

Hope to release an alpha version soon.