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Comment by Ensorceled | Hacker News Reader

EDIT: Just to be clear, because I missed it, the app doesn't HIDE other applications it aggressively CLOSES other apps. Including some background processes, system preferences etc. Luckily it doesn't shutdown dropbox and backblaze. If you want that functionality (and can live with bug below) this might be useful to you but I'm no longer interested.

So, the - hotkeys - spotlight / alfred integration - Adding Sep Sep 0 CoreFoundation 1 libobjc.A.dylib 2 CoreFoundation 3 CoreFoundation 4 CoreFoundation 5 Foreman 6 Foreman 7 AppKit 8 AppKit 9 AppKit 10 Foreman 11 AppKit 12 AppKit 13 AppKit 14 AppKit 15 AppKit 17 AppKit 18 AppKit 19 AppKit 20 AppKit 21 Foreman ) The syslog app crashed while I was configuring it. It shutdown ever app I had added to Foreman, unsafely, and a few others I hadn't yet added (like Terminal! WTF?).

DO NOT USE. It's a nice concept but not ready for prime time.

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I'm sorry that happened to you, Ensorceled, and I hope you didn't lose any work.

The way it's supposed to work is, if you click on a horizontal row then it opens all the apps in that row (if they're not already open) and closes any apps that aren't in that row. So, for example, Terminal was closed because it sounds like it wasn't in your app group.

About "unsafely" - it should behave just as if you had hit command+q in the app. So if you have unsaved documents, the application should prompt you to save them.

Sorry again for the frustration it caused you!

The terminal close didn't work this way, normally it won't quit if there are processes in the windows. With Foreman it just closed up.

I was kind of surprised at the behaviour, mostly because of the superlatives ... fast app switching doesn't imply opening and closing to me since some apps are VERY slow to start up (excel, numbers, xcode, eclipse, )

You should make sure you are very clear about it CLOSING apps.

Also, the first time you should not close apps but instead ask the user if closing all the non-listed apps is ok. So the first time they run it the are not surprised by everything going away. Especially losing all my Chrome tabs :-(

You need a "stop list" so that apps in the list are not shutdown.

This is all very helpful feedback, and I really appreciate it. I've put your suggestions in my todo list. Thank you!

Nah, some of it's my fault for not reading closer. I didn't lose data, only time.

One thing that might help is to have an option for Foreman to only manage the apps that are in at least one app group.

In other words, if I don't put terminal into an app group, it doesn't get closed, etc.

I'd be nice if you could just _hide_ apps not in the group, not kill them... But I guess that would mean they still show up in command-tab.

It sounds like you're forcefully killing processes - can you at least kill them more gracefully? Basically "kill" vs "kill -9".

I wonder if there is a way to programmatically hide apps from the cmd-tab switcher? I know some apps (e.g. apps that have a system-wide menu) let you hide its open status from the dock (which in turn hides it from the app switcher); Can you show app icons in the dock and not in the cmd-tab switcher? I'd like to be able to access certain apps through the dock but don't want them cluttering up my precious cmd-tab.

Here's the method being called: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/AppKi...

From the docs, "attempts to quit the receiver normally." I'm not sure why ensorcled's terminal was closed while a process was running, but I get prompted to confirm closing terminal when a process is running.

For the record, I totally got what is supposed to happen. I wonder if you should have a list of apps that can be configured to be ignored. For instance, I always have emacs open and would never want it closed (even for gaming configurations). I would rather say that once than for every configuration I have.

This is the next item on my todo list :)

Might I suggest different utilizing desktop management? A mode where application aren't closed as aggressively just opened in a fresh new desktop? This allows the user to abstract away the other programs and focus on those in the new desktop window.

Other suggestions include macros to launch when click a new set of apps

I would like to see people be a bit more supportive when someone announces their first app and asks for feedback.

I understand you have provided feedback, but perhaps put yourself in the shoes of the developer and consider the way you put the message across.

It would be great if every piece of software was perfect and awesome on first release, but really iterative development is what gets us there. I hope the developer and also other potential users aren't discouraged by your "DO NOT USE".

I've been in those shoes many times. I was actually not addressing the developer, I was addressing possible users.

After all, the app did crash about 30 seconds after I started it up and closed EVERY app I was running at the time even though I hadn't started actually using it yet. I could have lost data and I certainly did lose time.

People need to know that. Imagine if this happened to numerous people but nobody mentioned it because they were all being supportive?

If you read the website it does say it closes the apps. An easy solution to your problem would be to add a "whitelist" where you can specify apps that Foreman will NEVER close.

In the interest of fairness I've tried a couple of times.

On Lion, this is crashing consistently and automatically closing all the apps added to Foreman and some random apps besides.

Is this a troll or trojan? Why is it closing other random apps that it shouldn't even know about?

I think you misunderstand how the app works. It closes all apps except those that you have defined in the app group.

You're right, I missed that it CLOSES apps, not hides. And it closes things very aggressively, including system apps.

Definitely not the app for me.

Can you post some more information for the author to address / fix this? OS version? Hardware?

10.7.4, MacBook Pro, 2.2 Intel Core i7

    Sep  7 10:29:14 wwd2-robert Foreman[3030]: 15.000000Sep  7 10:29:20 wwd2-robert Foreman[3030]: Exception detected while handling key input. 7 10:29:20 wwd2-robert Foreman[3030]: -[__NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: mutating method sent to immutable object 7 10:29:20 wwd2-robert Foreman[3030]: ( 0x00007fff8dd9df56 __exceptionPreprocess + 198 0x00007fff94046d5e objc_exception_throw + 43 0x00007fff8dd9dd8a +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 106 0x00007fff8dd9dd14 +[NSException raise:format:] + 116 0x00007fff8dd5abd0 -[__NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:] + 96 0x0000000100002bf2 -[AppGroupController saveName] + 103 0x0000000100002c5f -[AppGroupController control:textShouldEndEditing:] + 17 0x00007fff8e83d5ff -[NSTextField textShouldEndEditing:] + 236 0x00007fff8e89f0ca -[NSTextView(NSSharing) resignFirstResponder] + 426 0x00007fff8e38a429 -[NSWindow makeFirstResponder:] + 429 0x0000000100002cb2 -[AppGroupController control:textView:doCommandBySelector:] + 76 0x00007fff8e83c7ac -[NSTextField textView:doCommandBySelector:] + 105 0x00007fff8e86db48 -[NSTextView doCommandBySelector:] + 160 0x00007fff8e6c6c93 -[NSKeyBindingManager(NSKeyBindingManager_MultiClients) interpretEventAsCommand:forClient:] + 1799 0x00007fff8ea1b6ca -[NSTextInputContext handleEvent:] + 747 0x00007fff8e8e5298 -[NSView interpretKeyEvents:] + 248        16  AppKit                              0x00007fff8e85dec5 -[NSTextView keyDown:] + 691 0x00007fff8e33b7ac -[NSWindow sendEvent:] + 7430 0x00007fff8e2d4a55 -[NSApplication sendEvent:] + 5593 0x00007fff8e26b0c6 -[NSApplication run] + 555 0x00007fff8e4e7244 NSApplicationMain + 867 0x0000000100000fe0 start + 52 also contains a list of all the apps that are running and the list of apps to close,  the apps to close include things I didn't add to Foreman and other things like /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/backgroundinstruments.app which I'm not even running.   When it catches an exception it seems to shutdown everything in the "to close" list.

Thank you, this is useful.

Another suggestion, don't close any apps when exceptions are raised :-)

Man, yeah, that shouldn't happen :)I've fixed the bug and updated the download. It would occur when you created a new app group and then changed the app group name. Thanks again for your detailed feedback, it helped me fix this bug.

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