MarsEdit 3.5.2: Character Count
May 18th, 2012MarsEdit 3.5.2 is now available on the Mac App Store and directly from the Red Sweater Store. This is a free update for licensed MarsEdit customers.
Mostly just another batch of bug fixes here, but I snuck in one small feature-tweak that should please writers in character-based languages and authors who aim for character-based writing goals rather than word-based.
If you weren’t aware of MarsEdit’s live-updated word count feature, it’s located in the “Status Bar”, which you can activate by selecting View -> Show Status Bar. Here is an example of how it looks when editing a post in MarsEdit 3.5.2:
Here’s the complete list of changes for this release:
MarsEdit 3.5.2
- Status bar in post editor now includes character count along with word count
- Restore ability to paste HTML with “embed” tags in the Rich Editor
- Restore expected list manipulation behavior with tab and return keys
- Fix a crash that occurred when editing a Tumblr quotation post with no attribution
- Work around issue with WordPress pages showing up as empty posts if not permitted to edit
- Fix autoconfiguration of IBM Lotus Connections blogs
- Fix the scrolling behavior of custom fields text input
Onward to MarsEdit 3.6!
May 19th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Had you considered the option of toggling between character mode and word mode by clicking on the count? It might look cleaner/simpler, although you would probably have an increased support burden, because the discoverability of that approach is pretty low. Another way of approaching this could be with the different extra options appearing in the menu when you hold down the option key (which has even more discoverability problems).
Do you have any thoughts on having little secrets built into your app like Apple sometimes does that aren’t very discoverable, but makes your users feel cool and “in the know” when they learn them? I wonder if they can serve as a form of viral marketing, where your customers are making youtube screencast showing neat/clever tricks in your app that helps reach new customers and boosts your SEO in the process. Or perhaps this approach doesn’t work well for indie software simply because it adds to the support burden that ends up cutting into your development time.
I do think it’s cool to see how much effort/thought/consideration goes into these smaller details. Thanks for taking the time to post.
May 19th, 2012 at 8:27 am
Hi Scott – I am concerned about clutter in the UI, and I just decided in this case the status bar is already minimal enough that this wouldn’t bother many folks, and it will really help some. It also helps that the whole status bar can still be hidden completely for maximum decluttering.
I do have some less discoverable features in most of my apps, ranging from subtle option-key type discoverable things to secret user-defaults enabled behavior that I don’t think is suitable for mainstream use.
For example in FastScripts there are several behaviors that are triggered by holding a modifier key while selecting a script. I sometimes have the thrill of witnessing somebody sharing that they’ve discovered one, e.g.:
https://twitter.com/#!/tjw/statuses/199165150039781377
But it would probably be better overall if the features were more obvious.
Daniel