Giving MarsEdit A Voice
November 18th, 2008Peter Verkhovensky recently wished out loud on Twitter for a feature in MarsEdit. He wanted the application to play a sound when a post has been sent successfully to a blog, similar to how Mail can play a noise when sending a message.
Although MarsEdit doesn’t have built-in support for this, it turns out to be relatively easy to achieve if you take advantage of the built-in Growl support. Growl is best known for its ability to display small, floating notification windows when certain actions are performed in applications, but it also supports the ability to play a sound.
Peter describes the process of adding a successful post sound in this manner. Nice work, Peter, and thanks for sharing the details on how it was done.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Well, does that mean you’re going to add built-in support for audio feedback in the future, or not?
November 18th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Scott: I haven’t decided yet. I take it from the tone of your comment that it’s something you’d like to see?
November 18th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I’d suggest that the built in support for growl is more than enough to satisfy the need for audio feedback. as they say, ‘the wheel has been built once’.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I’ve frankly been amazed at how many people have commented that they love the posting sound in Pukka through the years. I don’t rightly remember where the idea for it came from, but I do remember first hearing the Mail sound in Panther and thinking it was a little much at first, but to this day, loving it on both my Mac and my iPhone.
It’s funny how much difference little sounds can make — even just today, John Gruber commented on this with regard to the Google mobile voice activation prompt and acknowledgement sounds.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Good points, all around. Thanks Ash for supporting the minimalist view, and Justin for more or less pointing out that sound might be one “superfluous” feature that is worth considering.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I think audio feedback is nice – I agree that given that it is doable with Growl, would be a nice low priority feature to add somewhere down the road, you know, like cut and paste on the iPhone (actually, not like that at all!)