"Battle of the notification systems"
Sven Walther
on the Snarl blog or not - and decided not to do so. Lifehacker just
started a shoot-out with GfW against Snarl (see http://lifehacker.com/5350422/battle-of-the-windows-notification-apps-growl-for-windows-vs-snarl
).
First of all maybe you want to vote there for Snarl...? GfW also
"cheated" in this way in it's own discussion group ("cheated" is not
how I would call it - but I found one comment on this vote calling it
in this way and found it funny ;))
Now some personal notes speaking from myself as being an extension
developer but *not* the developer of Snarl itself. I don't like the
wording "battle" at all - there are now two systems making some
similar thinks. Both have their advantages and disadvantages so why
shouldn't there stay two. In the economy it's also not good if you
have only a monopoly...
I see this very hard on my Mac - while Growl there is great as many
apps support it (this is in fact the hardest thing here on Windows I
think - getting more apps to support it natively out of the box) I am
very disappointed about it's progress in the past. How many real new
versions of Growl for Mac have been out the last months/years(!)?
Right, some dotdot release (1.1.1, ..., 1.1.5) only.
On the other hand - think about Snarl and GfW one or 1 1/2 years ago -
that's real progress. The crazy thing for me is that I already
(personal opinion of course) find Snarl much better than it's original
inspiration Growl for Mac - which I do have (of course) running on my
Mac.
But the discussion which is attached to this vote seems to bring some
interesting points we could learn from. First of all (and I read this
some times in the past) is that one of the major plus for the users of
GfW seems to be Gnarly which lets them use Snarl apps. I already
thought about building the other way around for quite some time now
(so Snarl would be able to use GfW apps) but didn't find one app I
would need it for myself. But this could be different to you - so let
me know if I shall spent some time on that... The other reason I
didn't do so was a unlogical feeling (as feelings are not logical at
all...) that I as being the developer of many Snarl apps did my work
to support Snarl and this is now used as plus for GfW (once again this
is a feeling and I don't like a battle at all).
So vote for Snarl at Lifehacker and let's start a discussion here what
you are really missing with Snarl.
Sven (who didn't sleep enough because of his cat ;))
Chris Peel
Just to echo Sven's comments - I would like to think that Brian
Dunnington (author of GfW) and I have an excellent working
relationship in regards to GfW and Snarl. Brian's contributed some
significant effort into Snarl and I hope that between the two
applications the Windows user base gets a top-notch notification
product that they want - whichever one they choose.
All Snarl messaging protocols (Win32 API, SNP and the JSON-based one)
are in the public domain. They may not be fully documented but that's
just me being lazy. ;) This means that anyone is free to develop a
Snarl-adaptor for another product (as in the case of Gnarly) or a
completely Snarl-compatible alternative to Snarl if they so wish.
As for acrimonious battles, I had enough of them with Cloud:9ine vs
geOShell, and eggShell vs eggShell. I'm older now and - hopefully - a
lot wiser.
We've got a lot of cool stuff planned for Snarl, from R2.21 (when Sven
finally gives me the green light to release it) onwards - some of it
is stuff that's been asked for many times on the forums but quite a
bit of it is new and - hopefully - innovative.
briandunnington
I agree with Chris and Sven in everything they have said, and I am
proud that, although our apps could be considered 'competitors' by
some, we have both managed to fill a niche and have a great working
relationship.
Neither of us wants to 'win' - in fact, there is nothing to 'win'.
What we both want is for users to be able to get timely, useful
notifications from all of the software that they care about, while
being able to manage and handle those notifications in the way that
suits them best.
Cheers to civility and working toward the common good. Keep up the
great work guys.
- brian (of GfW)
On Sep 3, 10:10 am, Chris Peel <chris....@fullphat.net> wrote:
> Just to echo Sven's comments - I would like to think that Brian
> Dunnington (author of GfW) and I have an excellent working
> relationship in regards to GfW and Snarl. Brian's contributed some
> significant effort into Snarl and I hope that between the two
> applications the Windows user base gets a top-notch notification
> product that they want - whichever one they choose.
>
> All Snarl messaging protocols (Win32 API, SNP and the JSON-based one)
> are in the public domain. They may not be fully documented but that's
> just me being lazy. ;) This means that anyone is free to develop a
> Snarl-adaptor for another product (as in the case of Gnarly) or a
> completely Snarl-compatible alternative to Snarl if they so wish.
>
> As for acrimonious battles, I had enough of them with Cloud:9ine vs
> geOShell, and eggShell vs eggShell. I'm older now and - hopefully - a
> lot wiser.
>
> We've got a lot of cool stuff planned for Snarl, from R2.21 (when Sven
> finally gives me the green light to release it) onwards - some of it
> is stuff that's been asked for many times on the forums but quite a
> bit of it is new and - hopefully - innovative.
>
> On 2 Sep 2009, at 6:22AM, Sven Walther wrote:
>
>
>
> > I've thought quite some time if I shall write an "official" blog post
> > on the Snarl blog or not - and decided not to do so. Lifehacker just
Ted
Applications won't support every possible notification app available
for Windows, so as long as there are two good products there might be
less or no snarl/growl integration at all.
Maybe I am wrong, but monopoly means easier decision for application
programmers which one they should support. On the other hand, there
will be way less "competition" or better "collaboration"...
Best would be to have ONE protocol/api/whatever to utilize in apps. I
used Snarl4Java and can't use it anymore unless it will be updated -
then I used the Java lib for GfW, worked good but can't send network
notifications to snarl. Now im using snarl jave network bridge but
can't show user specific icons.
Don't know which way I should go to build an application which will
work with snarl/growl and will be compatible in a year... Maybe I
should develop in C# ;)
anyway thanks again, brian and chris
thancock20
notifications at the moment - simply because Gnarly exists. It's the
only way to really ensure that the end user could get notifications
the way they choose. That being said, I think a bridge going the
other way could only help both apps. Developers would, hopefully, not
have to wait around to see which "wins" and becomes the "standard".
They could just add support for whichever they want. Likewise, the
end user could choose whichever app they like best, for whatever
reason, and be certain that they can be notified regardless of which
one the app they are using "officially" supports. It would be a win-
win situation for everybody. So, in conclusion, please do build that
bridge. :)