Den
The birds are chirping obnoxiously and my yard is steadily transforming into a jungle. Spring is in full swing and what better way to celebrate than a fresh release of Den. Version 1.24.0 is now up on the App Store with a few new features, a bunch of bug fixes, and removal of a feature that has me feeling both slightly anxious and freed up.
There’s a new option for hiding unread counts and the built-in browser now supports file downloads, but the biggest change is the deprecation of multiple profiles.
Multiple profiles has been a core feature since near the beginning of the project and I’ve spent countless hours on it. It almost physically hurt throwing out all the work. So why go through the pain? Put plainly, it was a shining example of over engineering that became a roadblock to further development.
I originally added it for separating home/work feed collections. Though, since I generally use a separate Apple ID on my work machines, it ended up not making much sense. I added my work feeds to to a profile under my personal Apple ID, but I would never switch to it. Given the additional complexity and challenges it presents for building out new features I finally decided multiple profiles had to go.
For example, in regards to refreshing in the background and adding widgets. With multiple profiles a bunch of questions come up. What profiles get refreshed? The last one used? Make the user pick which ones? What would happen if an item in a widget that belonged to a different profile than what was currently in use was opened? It was already awkward if you wanted to add feeds to different profiles, with more global type features the awkwardness would just be amplified.
Speaking of, background refresh and widgets are top of mind at the moment and I’m going to start working on them soon. I’m looking to ship out at least one, if not both, in a release sometime this summer.