June 2021

Jun 30, 2021

Having discovered posting here on Buy Me A Coffee, I've decided to try to post a summary each month of anything interesting I've shared in the past month. A way of seeing what the caffeine consumption has created if you will for anyone who might be following me here.

Doctor Drafts

Back in mid-March I launched my Alfred workflow for Drafts - Doctor Drafts; but at the start of this month I released what I think is a pretty notable update with v1.2.0.

First of all, the release addressed some issues that were raised on the Drafts forum about non-admin installs and some issues with dealing with accented characters. I'm always happy to try and get rid of any bugs or edge cases, and these were really good ones. Hopefully, the result is a better workflow, one that more people will be able to benefit from using.

Secondly, I put quite a bit of time into adding file actions into the workflow. Alfred's workflow actions on the Mac are quite similar to services, but I think a little more friendly to access for keyboard afficionados. While that isn't quite me, I do find them easy to access quickly, and by utilisng the existing power built into Doctor Drafts, I was able to create a number of actions that I think are really useful. In particular I tried to ensure that where logical to do so, the actions can deal with selections containing multiple files.

There were a number of other smaller tweaks including one where you can specify your own audio file to be played on completion of a Doctor Drafts action. I like having audio notifications when I manually trigger automations. It fits less distractingly into my flow of work, so I thought it might be nice to offer some more flexibility here.

Of course, the workflow isn't the whole story. I also added and updated a big chunk of documentation on the Doctor Drafts website (where you can also find a detailed list of changes for each release). There is even a new use case on building a quick action using Doctor Drafts.

ThoughtAsylum

Last weekend I posted some new posts on my personal web site.

The first was a return to an earlier post where I'd made a modification to how I'm using a titling macro in Keyboard Maestro (on the Mac) to accommodate a change that had occurred. If you like to be consistent with your titles, then this is worth a look. I'm pretty sure it could be easily translated to the new Alfred beta feature too, so even if you are not a Keyboard Maestro user, if you're an Alfred user who likes consistent titles, then this is probably worth a look.

The second is my take on Safari Tab Groups. While I'm not rocking the Mac beta for Monteray just yet, tab groups struck a chord with me. After hearing quite a few tech journalists and pundits note how they were not getting why people would use it over traditional bookmarking, I thought I'd share my insights in this post.

Professional Site

As well as my personal web site, I also have a small professional web site too at stephenmillard.com. I spotted a few issues in the site construction this month (it's based on a Jekyll template I did not write, but have had to patch in a few places) and spent some time fixing that and some typos that had slipped in. If anyone does happen to spot any issues there, please do let me know.

Upcoming

As ever, there are quite a few things I've been working on and have not released just yet. But, with any luck, in early July I'll have a few extra things coming out for Drafts courtesy of TADpoLe and the ThoughtAsylum Action Groups for Drafts.

Doctor Drafts might also see an update, but I'm not quite as confident I'll have things ready for release on that.

I'm also hopeful that some things I've been working on through the day job might see the light of day. If anyone does happen to have interests in payroll outsourcing, or learning development, then you may just see my name pop-up. And yes, I do realise those two topics are almost worlds apart, but let's just say that my work sees me making use of my wider skill set.

It did not feel like I had put much out this month, but looking back on it now, I certainly put out a lot more than I had realised. Here's hoping I can do more of the same in July.

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