Widescreen NetNewsWire

As much as I love NetNewsWire, I don't care for its classic three-paned layout.

NetNewsWire out-of-the-box

Typified by email programs, the three-paned view makes sense when your monitor is largely square. However, while monitors have traditionally been physically square, they've always displayed a rectangle wider than tall. That is, more pixels across than down. 512x384. 640x480. 1024x768.

Apple's been taking this further lately, with widescreen models abounding. For example, my Titanium PowerBook G4 has a 1280x854 screen. That's 50% more pixels horizontally than vertically.

So, vertical space has always been less plentiful than horizontal space. This is itself isn't bad. However, this fact should influence the layout of an interface. And here is where we meet the reason for my dislike of the classic email-style three paned view: it stacks two vertical-space-hungry views on top of another. Specifically, the "subjects" view and the "content" view both tend to want most of my vertical screen real estate. Of course, neither can win, since they're stacked up. The end result is that both scroll their content. Lots of scrolling is unfun.

My solution is simple: Widescreen NetNewsWire.

Widescreen NetNewsWire

Widescreen NetNewsWire puts each vertical-space-hungry view in its own column, greatly minimizing scrolling. Compare the out-of-the-box image with the widescreen image. Even though the window is the same size, notice how many more Subjects are listed, and how the relatively long entry view doesn't need scrolling.

In addition, you get a nice drill-down effect with the most general content on the left (subscriptions) and the most specific on the right (an individual entry). Great brain mesh for folks who natively read left-to-right.

I doubt Brent would be pleased if I were to start distributing hacked-up copies of NetNewsWire, but there should be no problem with me detailing how to hack your copy of NetNewsWire to be like mine. It's surprisingly straight-forward, thanks to the high-level GUI widget editing Interface Builder allows.

Step 0. Quit NetNewsWire

You weren't really considering operating on a running program, were you?

Step 1. Open the NetNewsWire package

Step 2. Open MainMenuPro.nib

(I'm operating on NetNewsWire Pro here, if you're using Lite, you may see something different.)

Path to .nib file.

Step 3. Profit!

Step 4. Open the "MainWindow" instance

Original MainWindow

Step 5. Select the embedded SplitView

Open the inspector and double-click on the horizontal separator. Notice the one-pixel-thick black focus ring around the splitview after you double-click it.

MainWindow's embedded SplitView selected

Step 6. Switch the SplitView to Vertical Orientation

SplitView vertically orientated

Step 6. Save your changes, close MainMenuPro.nib and relaunch NetNewsWire

If all went as planned, you should now be running Widescreen NetNewsWire:

Widescreen NetNewsWire

If something went horribly wrong, trash your munged copy, download a fresh copy and act like you never read this how-to.

Update: You'll need the developer tools installed (in particular Interface Builder) in order to be able to edit the .nib file.

Update: As of 1.0.7, Brent added an official Widescreen View to the full version of NetNewsWire. You probably can still use the above instructions to add the widescreen view to the free version, but why not save yourself the trouble and pay the man?

Friday, August 22, 2003
12:00 AM