Jean-Baptiste Bres

Chief Information Security Officer

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays from app.jbbres.com

2010 is almost over... Get ready as 2011 will be the year of Action(s). For a starter, a brand new version of Action(s) will be available in the first weeks of the year with new features and new actions.

Until them, have all a very mery Christmas, and see you all in 2011.

Action(s), as seen on TV

Action(s) is on French TV


source: GameOne

💡 The Robot, the Apple and the Coffee Bean

Article

For a change, let’s talk about technologies…
Have you heard about Java? No? Well, even if you don’t know it, you are probably using Java everyday: On your computer, your mobile phone, your TV and more. Action(s) is made with Java, and it is the reason why you can run it indifferently on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

Apple made recently two big announcements regarding Java:

  • The creation of a Mac App Store where Java applications will not be accepted
  • The end of Apple’s support of Java on Mac OS X

The question that a lot of you have been asking us is: will these announcements impact the existence of Action(s) on the Mac OS platform?
The answer is No. We are still very committed to the Mac OS platform. We do not believe that Java will disappear from Mac OS X and we will continue to provide a high-quality – fully integrated version of Action(s) for Mac users.

Read More…

Help us to make Action(s) better

Action(s) is free to download and use, but it still costs money to write, support, and distribute.

This is why we are opening today a donation program. Donations are used towards hosting costs for this website, licences and hardware, and also encourage further development! That way, you can donate if you think that Action(s) worth it.

You can do your donation via PayPal. To donate, click the button below and you will be directed to the Paypal site. Donations are taken in US$, but if you have an account in any other currency, PayPal will automatically convert the sum for you.


Thanks for your support and your help,

app.jbbres.com team

Convert to JPEG

Today we are introducing a brain new action: Convert to JPEG.
If you are using Action(s) to work on your pictures you probably know that Action(s) is providing by default an action to change the type of image. It allows you to easily convert any picture, whatever its format is, to another format, including JPEG.
For most of us, this action is just what we need: easy to use and easy to configure. But if you are an advance user, you for sure have noticed that "Change the Type of Image" apply a default quality rate to the JPEG pictures it creates (usually 80%), and you might want to be able to define a quality rate that fit your needs.

Convert to JPEG


The Convert to JPEG action is for you. It converts any picture into a JPEG file with the quality rate indicated. Download it right now from the More Actions webpage or by clicking on "Get more actions..." in the "Help" menu of Action(s).

A new video tutorial from Lifehacker.com

If you are a beginner with Action(s), this is for you!
The excellent LifeHacker.com website has published a very well done tutorial of Action(s) today, with video demonstration and advises.



Read the article at: http://lifehacker.com/5669762/automate-just-about-anything-on-your-windows-pc-no-coding-required

Action(s) 1.0.1 released

Action(s) 1.0.1 is now available for download.

the update will download automatically next time you will start Action(s) from your desktop or by clicking on this the launch button below:



Action(s) 1.0.1 release content:

  • "Copy file" action: Now prevent from coping a folder into itself or one of its sub-folders. Prior to this release, Action(s) was generating an infinite number of sub-folders within the destination folder.
  • "Get URL" action: Selected lines backgrounds were white instead of using the system colors.
  • "Show notification in tray bar" action: Mac OS X - The notification windows is now using the system colors.
  • Variable selection combo box: Selected lines backgrounds were white instead of using the system colors.
  • Some actions were displaying an incorrect version number (1.1 instead of 1.0.1)
  • "Split files" additional actions: An error message was displayed when adding one of the actions in the workflow. Users of the "Split files" additional actions can download the latest version at http://app.jbbres.com/actions/more
  • Action(s) plug-in folder now support jar file as well as actc files
  • New version of the Action(s) API (v1.0.1) available. Users of the API can download the latest version at http://app.jbbres.com/developers/libraries/actions/

FreewareGenuis pick



Action(s) has been selected freewaregenuis pick by the famous freewaregenuis.com blog. As we are reading this website since a long time at app.jbbres.com, and loving what these guys are doing, you can imagine that this has been a great surprise for all of us.

A few selected lines:
« The range of options that Actions supports, I will say, is truly impressive »
« What can this program do for you? Most anything you can think of. »
« Very user friendly and goes a long way towards making this application accessible and easy to learn »
« There’s no syntax to learn and no libraries or functions to deal with; the experience is closer to building a Lego than writing code. »
And my personal favorite Laugh: « I’ve been playing with this software for a couple of days and I just love it. The developers have done an astounding job making this software both powerful and accessible. »

Read the full article at http://www.freewaregenius.com/2010/10/13/actions-automate-all-kinds-of-tasks-via-drag-and-drop-without-writing-a-line-of-code.

Action(s) turns 1

It’s a double one for Action(s) today:
First, Action(s) turns one this month. Even if most of you know Action(s) only since June (when we released the first public beta), we started working on Action(s) in September 2009. Already one year ago.
And the second one is the official release of Action(s) 1.0 today. From now on, no more beta! We are officially live!



If you were already using the beta or release candidate version of Action(s), the update will download automatically next time you will start Action(s) from your desktop or by clicking on this the launch button below:



A Video Introduction to Action(s)

This video requires a more recent version of the Adobe Flash Player to display. Please update your version of the Adobe Flash Player.

Last Stop before the Big 1

It has been almost a month since we haven’t post anything on the blog. Well, it’s always like that in summer, everything is a little bit slow... (note: this is a bad excuse: we are located in Sydney, Australia and it isn’t summer here...).

Anyway, we are publishing today a new version of Action(s). You will spot immediatly what this version brings:


Yep, you can now search the library of actions. That’s a very useful function, so we hope you will like it.

Plus, this version is tagged RC. This means that, except for major issue, this will be the last version before the final 1.0. We are very excited about that!

So, as always, the update will download automatically next time you will start Action(s) from your desktop or by clicking on this the launch button below:

A good action

This year, the app.jbbres.com team is running the 14km Sun-Herald City2Surf presented by Westpac for a cause we care about: Médecins Sans Frontières.

If you can, please support us by donating what you can on our fundraising page.
Click here for more information.

Action(s) hits the top 5% rated on developer.com

Great new! Action(s) has been reviewed and rated 950 / 1000 by JARS, the Java division of developer.com. With this great rating, Action(s) has entered the prestigious top 5% best rated softwares by the website.

Action(s) has beed rated 950 over a possible 1 000 points. The rating is divided in tree parts:
  • Presentation: 350 over 400 possible points
  • Function: 300 over 300 possible points
  • Originality: 300 over 300 possible points

Find more information at http://jars.developer.com/utilities/other/resource.php/41601.

News collections of actions

This week have been very busy for us at app.jbbres.com, but we are proud to release today two new great free collections of actions:
  • The first collection gives you control over the mouse and keyboard of the computer: the 9 actions included into this pack allows you to move the mouse over the screen, click a mouse button, press a combination of keys etc.
  • The second one is a little action that might be a great help for HTML developers: it converts the received text into the ISO 8859-1 charset for HTML: with this action, no more problem of accents and special characters in your web pages!

Those great collections of actions are available in the More Actions webpage or by clicking on "Get more actions..." in the "Help" menu within Action(s).

A Little Update

Today we are releasing a little update of Action(s) (beta 15). It contains some bugs corrections and user interface updates. But stay tune: new stuffs are coming tomorrow...

Get More Actions

Some of you may have notice a strange little option in the Help menu named "Get more actions...".



Action(s) provides a lot of built-in actions to work with files, images, Internet... but depending on what you want to do, this might not be enough. Fortunatly, Action(s) is also made to support additional actions, which means that anybody with some knowledge in computer programing can create new actions and add them into Action(s).
In order to help you find new actions, we have create a dedicated webpage where all extentions for Action(s) are available. You can access it by clicking on the "Get more actions..." menu in Action(s) or simply by following this link.
One on the webpage, simply download the new actions you are interrested in, open the actc file and and the new actions will be instantly available within Action(s). Et voila.

But wait, that’s not all: today we are providing the very first extention for Action(s). We named it Split Files because it’s a set of actions to split big files in smaller files. It is very usefull if you want to sent files via the Internet but have a size limitation. We’re sure you gonna love it! It is available in the Get more actions webpage.

If you are a developper and you want to know how to create your own actions, remember that everything you need - API, documentation, tutorial and much more - are available in the Resources for developpers webpage.

The Community Forums are open

Today we are opening the community forums for app.jbbres.com.

It's a great place for community interaction, discussion and learning about any and all things Action(s). Our team read the forums frequently, as well as post responses. We hope to learn a lot about what you think of Action(s) and used many ideas posted here on the forums to make it better.

The forums are still a little bit « under construction », but we hope we will make them look better. Your comments to make them better are also very welcome.

The app.jbbres.com team

New Action(s) beta

Two weeks that Action(s) has been released now and we are still surprised every day by the incredible success it has been. You have been thousands to come give it a try and we got a lot of great reviews and feedbacks from all around the world.

During this time, we have been busy at app.jbbres.com to continue improve Action(s). We have listen to your feedbacks and have designed some new great functionalities to make workflow creation easier and safer. They are available right now in the new beta version we are releasing today. This update will download automatically next time you will launch Action(s).


Among all the new functionalities and bug corrections of this new beta version, there is one that we are very proud and that we would like to present you: in Action(s), you might have noticed that a lot of the actions need to receive input to work properly. For example, if you add an “Add Border to Image” action into your workflow, it requires to receive image files to work on, otherwise the action will have no effect.
Well now, if you add such an action at the beginning of your workflow, Action(s) knows that it will have no effect and suggests you to add a matching action in front of it.



Creating your workflow and automation has never been easier.
And more than ever, continue to send us your comments and feedbacks!

Introducing Action(s)

Today is a great day for us at app.jbbres.com. We are releasing the first public beta of our new software, Action(s).

Action(s) lets you build workflows that accomplish manual chores quickly, efficiently, and effortlessly. You don’t have to know any scripting languages or write any code. Instead, you create and execute automation “workflows” simply by dragging and dropping each individual step of a process. It’s like creating a kitchen recipe.

We are very proud of our baby. Here are some of the great features that Action(s) offers:
  • Easy-to-use interface: Action(s) comes with a library of dozens of actions that users can browse or search to find exactly what they need. Actions are dragged and dropped from the library to create workflows.
  • Complete control: the pre-installed actions allow manipulation of files and folders, image cropping, scaling, conversion, and adjustment, command line execution, variable storage and access and much more.
  • Extendable architecture: Developers can easily create and share their own actions.
  • Re-usable: Display controls allow action parameters to be customized each time a workflow is executed; encapsulated flow design enables workflows to be used within other workflows.
  • Portable: Java and XML format used by Action(s) ensure that workflows can be shared with others, whatever their operating system is.

Action(s) is available in English and French and is free.

Simply click on the launch button. Action(s) will download and start.



Read More…