Last week, we invited Alfred users to submit their own custom themes for version 1.2. You contributed in droves with over fifty themes to choose from! With your help, we have now picked the themes that will make it into the Alfred core.
Coming soon to your theme selection
Two themes from this competition will be added to Alfred; Dark and Smooth and Pistachio.
Dark and Smooth is a gorgeous deep grey theme with dark blue for the selected result, and was created by Brock Angelo.
Pistachio is the second theme we chose and was created by Chris George. Andrew and I liked this theme as it adds a bit of colour to the range of themes available!
The themes you loved
The creators of the themes you loved most will receive a Powerpack license upgrade and some very special Alfred goodies in the post too.
The first special mention goes to Javier Esquivel's Elegant theme which received the most votes and looked fantastic.
Unfortunately, we were unable to add it to the default themes as it doesn't display well over other windows due to its high level of transparency (for example, over text), making search results difficult to read. If you'd like to use it and perhaps tweak the opacity levels, you can install the Elegant theme.
The Sleek Professional theme by Greg Cruz was also very popular but exhibited the same issues when displayed over a busy background. Install Sleek Pro if it's the one that stole your heart.
And finally, out of left field came a bright and bold contender, Quick Purple, by Colin J. Kautz. If you love shades of pink and purple, this one is the one for you!
Thank you to everyone who let their inner artist out to play and created a custom theme! You can still download any of the themes created this week from our Facebook page.
Version 1.2 coming soon
The two winning themes will be added to version 1.2, which will be generally available within the next few weeks, alongside many more fantastic features. Check out the impressive change log for the list of new features and improvements coming in this next release.
Don't forget that you can download and create your own themes and do much more with the Powerpack! Stick around for more fun competitions, tutorials and great extensions in the coming weeks!
Every company has its own processes, numerous little cogs that work together to give a more or less smooth user experience. When one little cog doesn't work, it's like having a stone in your shoe; only tiny but incredibly annoying. Over the past two years, we have tried to refine the processes we use to keep Alfred users as happy as possible, whether they use the core version or the Powerpack.
When a few fellow small business founders asked me what tools we used when we were at South by Southwest Interactive earlier this month, I thought I should share more widely some of our favourite ones, in the hope that they can help others keep a happy community.
Cachefly
While we also use the Mac App Store for distribution, a large number of users choose to get Alfred directly from our website. With hundreds of thousands of downloads for every release, we needed a fast, solid delivery network we could trust to always be available when you needed your Alfred fix. This is where Cachefly came in.
The download comes in lightning fast so don't blink or you'll miss it! :D
Campaign Monitor
There are a few tools that, once discovered, stay with you for a lifetime. Campaign Monitor is one of those; it's an email marketing platform that allows you to send newsletters to your ever-so-precious list of customers. Their templates system make your life easy from one send to the next, and the support is friendly and second-to-none.
It's super simple to add a signup box to your site (like the Alfred newsletter one in our site footer) and the process of sending a newsletter couldn't be more straightforward.
Campaign Monitor have recently launched the Worldview feature, which allows you to see in real-time when your emails are opened. Inevitably, it makes me look like a complete lunatic as I say "Hi Stig! Oh hello Paul!" to my screen as I see Alfred users opening our newsletters. (Just think of me next time an Alfred newsletter lands in your inbox!) Every time, it's a pleasure to use and pretty affordable for small businesses.
FoxyCart
Those who bought the Powerpack in the early days will remember that we used Google Checkout as our payment process. It was straightforward to set up but the user experience was... not brilliant. Google Checkout customer service was non-existent so if we or a user had issue, Google wasn't there to help us resolve it as quickly as we like to.
A few months ago, we switched to FoxyCart, an e-commerce platform that was recommended to us by a few Alfred users. With a little bit of customisation, the Powerpack purchase process was fully branded in lovely Alfred colours and ready to be rolled out. We could now offer credit card and PayPal options to make buying the Powerpack a pleasant experience. The platform has been rock solid from day one so, conversion has increased and we've received many compliments on the friendlier process.
Twitter app
Every day, we receive dozens of tweets from you and we love reading each and every one. Andrew also tries to reply to as many of you chatty tweeters as possible.
Originally, we used Cotweet, a very useful if slightly hiccupy platform for responding to and archiving tweets. Unfortunately, a few months ago, Cotweet became a paid-only product with a high price tag, so we looked for alternatives. After experimenting with various apps, believe it or not, Andrew settled for the official Twitter app for Mac. This wouldn't be suitable for larger teams where many people tweet, or for fancy tasks like setting posts to publish automatically later, but we use Twitter to talk to you so the simplicity suits us just fine!
On iOS, we both use Tweetbot for iPhone and iPad, which has the most pleasant UI out of the flurry of iOS Twitter apps out there.
WordPress
WordPress needs no introduction these days, but we fly their flag high and proud. It's nice and simple to use, the Wordpress.com hosted platform is stable and fast, and it's a tried and tested solution. Through the highest peaks of traffic we've had, it's never let us down so we can sleep easy.
Tumblr
Andrew picked Tumblr for his Alfred development blog, and so did Anna for the Alfred tips one. Tumblr is quick to publish to, and a lightweight solution when you just want to get those tips out there!
Wikidot
One of the most important assets for an app as flexible and complex as Alfred is a good knowledge base and FAQ. Around a year ago, we moved to Wikidot, a wiki platform, for our help site. The objective was to make it as easy as possible to add new knowledge base items and edit them, to keep them up to date.
I don't know if I'll ever be 100% satisfied with the way we handle FAQs. I'll keep adding and refining content every day, but this platform makes it easier!
Get Satisfaction
One thing we've learned in the past two years is that Alfred users are tinkerers with a lot of ideas. From creating custom themes to sharing their own extensions, it made sense to have a user-to-user forum for swapping those ideas and tweaking extensions to make them just perfect.
Get Satisfaction is a quirky little support forum, which allows us to see the level of interest for certain features, and publicly help groups of users. Of course, it's no guarantee that a feature will be implemented, but it's a nice way to gauge interest and a great place for users to share their own extensions.
Ultimately, it's about more than the tools...
You can have the best running shoes in the world, but if you don't put them on, the miles won't run themselves.
It takes motivation, passion and a whole lot of stamina to give your users a good experience. No matter how good the tools are, you've got to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face and a willingness to do everything you do as well as it can possibly be done.
Use the tools wisely and get to know what matters to your users. Welcome feedback, listen hard and carry on creating great software!
It's that time of year again: We're all packed up and heading to Austin, Texas for this year's South by Southwest Interactive.
It's not often enough that we have the chance to meet Alfred users face to face so, while we're looking forward to the SXSW panels and parties, we're most excited to meet you.
If you're also attending, look out for us. We'll be wearing purple Alfred tshirts, occasionally bowler hats and will be carrying very special Alfred stickers and goodies.
We'll be tweeting throughout the week, so keep an eye out on the @alfredapp account for updates and do come say hi. :)
This week, Alfred celebrates his second birthday. And he likes to do it in style!
Hot on the heels of two big releases, we're offering a 10% discount on the Powerpack so if you haven't yet adopted the powerful add-on to Alfred's free version yet, this is your chance. With more useful features than a Swiss Army knife, you're bound to love this addition to your everyday Mac workflow.
If you're already a Powerpack user, be sure to tell your friends to take advantage of this week's birthday discount code while it lasts! You have until Saturday 3rd March to grab a single or family license at 10% discount.
Also, feel free to bake Alfred a birthday cake, cupcakes or cookies. We lo... ahem, I mean, he loves those very much.
Today, Alfred 1.1 is available on auto-update for non-Mac App Store users with lots of new goodies for you!
This release brings some great feature improvements to Address Book, Hotkeys and Extensions:
- In the Address Book contact viewer, take action on contacts' details. For example, dial their number or view their online profiles
- Select text in any app & open Alfred to take action on it with a hotkey
- Set default actions on filter extensions, like uploading a file to Flickr automatically
- Replace existing Powerpack extensions easily when updates are released
- Many more improvements and tweaks to make your Alfred experience even better.
Find out more about these features below, or have a look at the change log for the full list of features, improvements and bug fixes.
A Bit More About Address Book
The Address Book integration has received a lot of love and improvement in the latest release. With the Contact Viewer enabled (go to Preferences > Features > Address Book) you can now view notes as well as your messaging and social information for each contact right within Alfred. All this information is within easy reach, just a few keyboard presses away, and not just sitting there idly either because you can take action on what you see.
For example, you can ask Alfred to dial the phone number of your contact using Skype, or to pop up their Flickr profile based on their username. This is highly flexible as you can use a URL scheme or extension to do more with your contact's information.
Send Selected Text to Alfred
Got some text you want to take action on in Alfred? You can now create your own global hotkeys to send the text to Alfred. The best bit? You can prefix it with a keyword if you want to save yourself some typing. For example, I've set a hotkey (Cmd + D) to pop up Alfred with the text I've selected and the keyword "define" prefixed.
Get creative and use the keyword for your extensions to launch searches for your favourite sites, developer resources and more!
Set Default Actions for Filter Extensions
If you're already familiar with the Filter extensions, you'll know that by setting a filter, you can look for specific file types by using the keyword. And now, you can set a default action for these.
Open the image in Fireworks, upload the video to Vimeo or add the file to your to-do list... It allows you to improve your workflow by using extensions or scripts to set a custom action on the selected files.
And more...
Check out the full change log for all of the new features, improvements and bug fixes.
What about Mac App Store users?
As version 1.1 primarily consists of changes to the Powerpack, and the current Mac App Store version (1.0) is fully stable, this latest release won't be available in the Mac App Store. You can always download the latest version from our website.
In the next few days, I'll publish some examples of what you can do with both the Address Book and Filter Action features, including some hand-picked extensions you can download to improve your workflow!
Enjoy the latest features :)
Cheers,
Vero
