shutting this post down, please see the updated one for new info:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/4kbccn/osx_juice_calculator_beta_2/
drumroll time. whoop. I've got this functional enough I feel comfortable pushing it out for some feedback from actual users.
update 05.20.2016 ~5:00pm EST: woo.. bigger update coming tonight. added some cool shit.
DROPBOX LINK -- UPDATED 05.20.2016
[REDACTED]
That being said, there are a few caveats and some things that don't work 100% yet, namely:
- The stretching and constraints aren't working 100% the way that I want to and such yet, but it doesn't cause a problem as long as you don't resize it too wonky. Shouldn't be a massive issues.
- Copy recipe functionality isn't there yet.
- Organization of recipes/ingredients by category isn't functional yet.
- Once an ingredient has been modified you'll have to click the little refresh button on the ingredients table for it to refresh that ingredient in the MixLab/Lefthand ingredients table. This is a bug I'm still trying to track down and the refresh button is just something to manage it for now -- i'll sort it out.
Definitely looking for some feedback here, unfortunately my time is going to be stretched here soon with some upcoming work projects so I'm not going to be able to get a ton of things implemented asap, but I did promise early this week for an initial release and wanted to live up to that.
NOTE: Any recipes/ingredients that you've added in since the most recent build WILL BE LOST. If you need to save these, open up the AlchemyLab.app and pull the RecipeLibrary.xml and IngredientLibrary.xml files and send me a PM and we can setup an exchange and I can tweak them to the new format required for you. The XML Schema has changed and this is unavoidable and will be the case during beta builds potentially as the schema may need additional information.
BETA BUILD 05.20.2016:
- Flavors now allow for PG/VG ratio input.
- Recipe sequencing working properly
- This means that you can order ingredients to display in a specific order in the recipe view and (maybe? lol I didn't test that. I think so though.) mix lab view.
- Recipe ingredient editor window will now auto increment your next ingredient when adding a new ingredient to a recipe.
- Ingredient Library now sorts alphabetically. This is still a bit of a work in progress but makes things much easier from a quality of life perspective until I add some sort of search feature for ingredients.
- Fixed bug with VG/PG Ratio of recipe not loading in properly when a recipe was clicked.
- Fixed bug with editing a recipe not causing proper refresh of all controls in the main mix lab window.
- Added function in MixLab to 'Print' a recipe (I save mine once I mix it to a PDF and then look @ the PDF on my iPad at my mixing station. This might not be functionality everyone wants but I like it so it's there :P)
- Fixed bug with nicotine strength not accepting decimals.
- Added quick-add ingredient to recipe function. From the ingredient library click the little share icon and it will quickly add that ingredient to your current recipe and bring up the edit popover for your percentage/etc.
- Deleting an ingredient will now prompt you to make sure that you really want to do that. I accidentally deleted a few and thought that would be good functionality to have.
Aw, no love for Yosemite?
You are the best. I have been doing everything on pen and paper because I refuse to input anything into the internet.
Put a few of my recipes in, have a few critiques.
Make changing flavor percentages easier? (Double click percentage in bottom area to allow to change quickly?)
Make adding flavors to the recipe easier? (Maybe a search function on the ingredient library, and double click at add to recipe?)
PG/VG ratios for flavors? (There's PG and VG selection in the flavor options, but I have a few that are mixed 60/40 or 50/50)
Other than that, I will be using this constantly! I like the fact that you've kept it basic and didn't try to go to intricate.
Also having PG/VG/Nic automatically added to the recipe would be nice, with a PG/VG selection for the nic in the output section?
Yea there are some definitely quality of life changes coming. my "shit that'd be nice" trigger hasn't started to kick in until I've been using my own app in practice -- the mix lab is definitely going to become editable for on the fly adjustments. One thing I'm going to tweak is adjusting for when you've overfilled one ingredient (i.e.: oh shit I put 3.7g of strawberry instead of 2.4, what's the adjustment for the rest of the mix to compensate?)
Adding flavors/ingredients/etc needs to be made easier, I agree. I'll work on that in the days and weeks to come, just gotta get it sorted out.
PG/VG Ratios for flavors has been implemented (it's in my working build, I haven't released an updated build yet. Probably end of the week for the next build. I'm trying to release builds with sets of fixes/features instead of one-offs.) I'm working on adding flavors to recipes easier right now -- changing mix lab data for the recipes themselves is going to require some re-work, but i'm going to work on that here soon. Also make sure to close the window itself for your ingredient/recipe libraries to save, I don't have the recipes/ingredients saving when you cmd-quit the application right now, but i'll be implementing that at some point as well.
Gonna download and play with this tonight. I'm very eager to find a solid program to use, and your prior images look very promising!
Is this a project you'd consider open-sourcing? Allowing for a github/Jenkins style collaboration could reduce your workload and allow for the community to work out the bugs and create additional features?
Yea, I fully intend on open sourcing once I make my code less embarrassing. This was my first swift project, so the code is pretty ugly right now and things really aren't SUPER optimal. Once I get through beta and go through some revisions and get the code optimized/rewritten where necessary and where I feel comfortable with a GA build, I'll open source it at that point and the world can do with it what they wish.
Sweet, man, lookin' good. It's definitely prototype-y, but it's functional and the main bones are there.
Just a couple of things right off the bat:
- it seems that the "Max VG" check box when inspecting a recipe on the far-left pane (Unicorn Milk Leak, for example) doesn't affect the recipe's PG value. I'd also suggest having this check box placed near the "Desired Mixlab Output" area in the upper-middle of the screen.
- It looks like your particular naming convention for your ingredients is "[Manufacturer] [Flavor Name]". Of course, we all can name our stuff as we please, but it got me to think about perhaps being able to sort our ingredients stock by manufacturer, or even by flavor type (fruit, cream, additive, etc.). Maybe we could have individual drop-downs for these attributes, and then display them in columns? ...so we can click a particular column heading and sort it that way?
- I'm thinking of making a spreadsheet with as many popular flavors along with their specific gravities... could there be an option to import a list of flavors with these attributes?
Nice one, and thanks for releasing the app for us to test, as you promised!
Yessir. Max VG isn't implemented yet, thank you for calling that out. I will work on that code tonight.
Importing ingredients/recipes is something that I will be adding as a feature, it won't be immediate but it is on the shortlist of features to add.
I can look into displaying more information for recipe ingredients as well as ingredient library ingredients -- the original design/UI actually displayed quite a bit of additional information but the feedback I got was that it was too spreadsheet-like so I pared it down and used the popover logic to display additional info.
Thank you for the feedback -- I'll keep updates coming!
I've been thinking a lot about how to display more information without making the UI cluttered. I'm debating two things.
-
Collapsable UI Panel that will give you essentially the data that you see when you double click on an ingredient but it would be full-time displayed, so as long as you have the UI panel active, whenever you click an ingredient you can edit that specific ingredient, instead of having to double click and wait on a popover to display
-
Option to toggle between popover/tabular mode -- this would give you essentially two UI options altogether, you either use the popover mode or you use the mode of the application that looks more like excel/tables.
I'm leaning more towards the collapsable UI panel mode tbh, I'm really not digging making the app look more like excel, as some of the first iterations of the app looked like that and it didn't feel very cool, and didn't receive very good feedback.
I vote for collapsable!
What kind of data points are you thinking of gathering in the panel?
Right off the bat, I'd say (each in their own category):
- Flavor Name
- Manufacturer (either long name or abbreviation)
- Specific Gravity
- Flavor Category (Fruit, Cream, Bakery, Tobacco, Additive, etc.)
- Personal Rating (how much you like the flavor, maybe out of 5-stars)
- Color selection (to highlight it in the Recipe view... maybe have this a toggle-able View feature)
- Single-flavor ratio
- Mixed-flavor ratio
- Notes (to display on hover in the Recipe section, a la ELR)
- Cost-per 3ml/5ml/10ml/30ml, etc.
What do you think? :D
The panel will display a majority of the information that you're looking for, but not all of it. The data model just doesn't allow for all of that information and honestly it'd become a bit bloated if you add too much. The whole goal is to keep things pretty simple and relatively minimalistic. The panel is going to likely be a feature added a bit later down the road. Right now the focus is on core functionality and getting everything that IS in place already ironed out and working 100%. After that, I can/will look at adding additional features.
Does the calculator take a 1.5 reading for nic? I keep trying to put it in and it just converts it to 15. If it doesn't, how do I account for that when I'm actually mixing?
good catch and that was an oversight on my end -- it was a bug that was fixed. I have code in there that tries to stop users from entering in junk values, and it was trapping something that it shouldn't have. I've got this resolved.
Since this was a relatively major issue as far as utility goes, I'm going to push another release of the app this evening. I'll update this thread and PM you when it's available.
Thanks for the find!