Esoteric Software

[terrymisu]

Hi,

I know this is somewhat of a nitpicky request, but I think it would serve the OS X users better.

Is it possible for you guys to host the DMG files up on the server raw? (i.e. not in a zip file)

You can actually make the DMG a compressed DMG with hdiutil, or if you're doing it manually, via Disk Utility, so there's no need to zip it. The compression on the dmg might even be better than zip, not sure about that.

This has the added benefit that users who have "automatically open safe files" set in Safari (or other browsers) will have the disk image automatically mounted.

It also has the added benefit that it won't annoy users who have "automatically open safe files" disabled, because they won't have to open the zip and then open the DMG.

[Nate]

Yep, this was done just before your post. See this post about the updated Spine launcher on Mac.

[terrymisu]

I think having a drag/drop DMG is probably slightly better etiquite... often what'll happen is the software manufacturer will put an alias (symlink) into the DMG with their logo in the background, and you can just drag whatever directly into the resources folder, unless you're actually sprinkling stuff into other folders on the system.

It's just a little easier to drag-and-drop than running an installer. It's kind of considered a "Don't do it unless you have to.". I know, we're picky.

Here's an example of what it could look like:



You could also put the orange spine on the Disk Image icon if you wanted to get really fancy.

Here are some links to explain how it's done:

For setting up the folder view settings and disk image icon:

http://el-tramo.be/guides/fancy-dmg/

For setting your background image:

http://iconfactory.com/home/show/1152

[terrymisu]

Oh, and you can attach your EULA to the disk image when it mounts if you're concerned about that.

It'll prompt the user before the mount completes and if they don't accept it, they can't use it.

[Nate]

We used an installer because there are issues if Spine is run from the DMG. If the .app is just sitting in the DMG, nothing stops people from trying to run it there. The installer seems to work well as is and I don't really want to mess with it anymore. Lots of more important things to do than packaging the app for 4 platforms and dorking around with embedded JREs and auto updating. That was necessary to get Spine running well on all platforms, but it took 4+ days and certainly wasn't fun!

[terrymisu]

Haha fair enough. Things seem much improved, but don't worry, I'll find some more bugs.