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Passwording, Favorites, and... Invitations and Profiles?
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Written by Thom McGrath on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 1:18 AM (-05:00)
Categories: Ham & Cheese (3), Mac OS X (23), REALbasic (14)
Tags: Hamachi (5), "Mac OS X" (19), REALbasic (8)

Tonight, I'm sharing two screenshots. Nothing fantastic on that front. But I'm also going to share an idea I just had that I think is very cool - and it's another unique feature!

HNCHNC
So I've added Keychain support to Ham & Cheese tonight. Nothing out of the ordinary here. I've also added access to the Mac OS X Password Assistant on the Create Network dialogs and setup assistant page. This way, you can quickly create some insane-to-crack passwords for your networks - and use Keychain to never need to remember them. Just imagine the poor Windows users having to join your network...

I described before how you can change the two "Favorite" buttons up top. Here's an actual screenshot. Just right-click and choose your service. Sorry though, the icons do not change. Basic logic issue - what would they change to? How would the app decide which to use? Offer more user options? Every option has it's disadvantage, so I stuck with the most basic - they don't change.

And another juicy chunk of fun: Invitations. By right-clicking on a network, you'll be able to send an invitation to anybody with an e-mail address to join your network. Ham & Cheese will write the e-mail for you. But what makes this really cool is how it's handled. When you do this, Ham & Cheese will ask if the recipient(s) is running Ham & Cheese. You'll answer Yes, No, or Don't Know. If you answer "yes," Ham & Cheese prepares a basic message with a clickable link to join the network. All the recipient needs to do is click and enter the password. In fact, this link will also be postable to web pages! If you answer "no," then Ham & Cheese will prepare an e-mail with instructions for users of the Windows client. Answering "don't know" will essentially include both.

Lastly, I think I've come up with something very cool. Ham & Cheese currently supports a great Backup / Restore feature. You can backup and restore to/from both GZipped Tar archives and a unique (and double-clickable) Hamachi Config Backup format. So I thought to myself ":I could imagine somebody creating a folder with a couple backups, and switch accounts on-the-fly just by double-clicking the backup." It didn't take long for me to realize I could easily build this feature in and call it... Profiles!

Did it just get more exciting in here, or is it just me?

License: Creative Commons (details) | Digg | E-Mail Thom McGrath
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Disclaimer: I am currently an employee of REAL Software. My comments and opinions are mine alone and do not represent those of my employer. My posts are not official REAL Software communications, and may contain information that is incorrect or misleading.