QuickNailer Help | Advanced Topics

Advanced Topics

Design Philosophy

Performance

QuickNailer uses efficient algorithms and optimized software objects to overcome limitations of operating system software. Development and testing is done on low end hardware as proof of concept.

Flexibility

QuickNailer is a general purpose tool that can be used for many tasks. It can be used to view a few picture files or create a web site using all digital media files from every available file server on an AppleTalk network. It can run in a 1 MB memory partition on an older System 7.1, 16 MHz Macintosh computer with a black-and-white monitor or PowerPC accelerated on the fastest MacOS or MAE workstations with multiple monitors.

Interactivity

A psuedo-threaded design has been used to keep the application program as available to the user as possible. Feel free to use the program even when the busy cursor is blinking. If a thumbnail can not be created or an image window summoned due to low memory or limited file access permissions you will be informed without being pestered with alert boxes. Modal behavior has been kept to a minimum.

Stability

Rigorous stress testing, solid programming methodologies, and maintenance friendly engineering have been used to ensure that QuickNailer behaves in a civil manner. However, see Known Bugs.

Expandability

QuickNailer is invested in future versions of QuickTime being faster and capable of importing and exporting more file types. QuickTime is one of the few things Apple has gotten right these recent years and will hopefully take over the known universe in our lifetimes.

Future

General

Correct known bugs
Saving Settings files
Import EPS, QD3D, images mentioned in web page
Export GIF, Animated GIF, Transparent GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP, qtif, MooV
Import sound files
Import font files
Import resources: 'cicn', 'ICON', 'PICT', 'ppat', 'icl8', 'SICN', 'ICN#', 'PAT#'
Scripting

User Experience

Multiple thumbnails windows with auto-synch catalogs
Smarter keyboard thumbnail selection
Various transition modes between frames in slide show and animation
Custom control definition #0
Custom menu definition for color palette
Floating command tool bar

HTML

Indexes mirror media file folder structure
Cascading style sheets
Stripping outside of <BODY> tags for snippet files

Image

Create custom icon or image preview
Strip custom icon or image preview
Strip resource fork
Convert to PICT or JPEG
Adjust contrast, brightness, hue, rotation of image
Photoshop filter support
Save modified image
Please let me know what QuickNailer can do better for you!

Known Bugs

Displaying progressive JPEGs with QuickTime 3 sometimes does not work as expected. Try viewing the image at 50% reduction.
In versions of the operating system before MacOS 8.0, dragging thumbnails to another volume does not work as expected. Dropping files from Find File™ does not work as expected. Dragging thumbnails to an alias of a folder might not work as expected.
Color depth info for line drawing/vector PICT's is shown incorrectly as 0 in the Thumbnails Window. Assume 8 bit color depth.
Sorting thumbnails by Dimensions, Depth, or Size does not work as expected. For proper ordination, ensure that all thumbnails have been drawn, then reselect your desired sort method.
Identical file names with extensions differentiated by an appended character will confuse the HTML generator. Make sure files that have extensions have recognized extensions. Use: .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, et cetera. Do not use: .jpg1 or .gifA. However, legal extensions can be upper or lower case: .jpg or .JPG.
* QuickTime 2.5's 'gif ' image decompressor can not properly handle corrupted GIF files. Your computer will lock up and require rebooting. This will typically manifest itself when importing a web browser's image cache folder. Turning off Use File Name Extensions With {????} or {TEXT} Files in the Import panel of the Settings Window will filter out Netscape 3.0 cache files. This has been fixed in QuickTime 3.0.
QuickTime 2.5's 'jpeg' image decompressor will not display some corrupted JPEG files. A white thumbnail will be displayed. This has been improved but not completely fixed in QuickTime 3.0.
QuickTime 2.5's 'gif ' image decompressor can not properly handle GIF files wider than 640 pixels. A white thumbnail will be displayed. This has been fixed in QuickTime 3.0.
QuickTime 2.5's '8BPS' image compressor can not properly create a Photoshop 2.5 file. For the lossless image compression that '8BPS' would have provided, save your contact-sheet as a Macintosh Picture. Hopefully this will be fixed in later versions of QuickTime.

Testing Matrix

Series Model 7.1.0 7.5.5 7.6.1 8.1 8.5 Virtual Memory

Apple PowerMac G3 iMac 0 0 0 * - on

Apple PowerBook 1400cs/117 0 - * * * on/off

Apple PowerMac 7300/180 0 - - * - on

Apple PowerMac 7200/90 0 * * * - on/off

Apple PowerMac 6100/66 - * - - - on

Apple PowerPC Upgrade Card PDS Slot - * - * - on

Apple Quadra 840AV * * * * 0 on/off

Apple Quadra 610 - * - * 0 on

Apple PowerBook 145B * - - 0 0 on/off

Apple Macintosh ColorClassic * * - 0 0 on/off

Apple Macintosh IIcx * * - 0 0 on/off

Apple Macintosh MacPlus x 0 0 0 0 off

*	Passed
x	Failed
-	Not Tested
0	Not Possible Configuration

Contacting The Author

Advanced Topics