One feature that is constantly requested is (what we call) “selective syncing”. This feature will allow you to selectivly sync your data classes. You might want to keep your contacts and calendars in sync between your Mac at work and your Mac at home, but eventually you’d like to have individual bookmarks on both machines. Currently (v0.9.4) it’s not possible to select the data classes that get synced – it’s “all or nothing”.

Selective syncing is actively in development and will (hopefully soon) give you a much more individual syncing setup. Additionally it allows us to implement new “niche features” (like preferences and keychain syncing) on top of selective syncing.

(Preference syncing is not necessarily included in our next release, the screenshot is from our internal development version)

We are a bit late, with our promised client update.
Hopefully the following screenshots help bridging the gap until the actual release (it’s imminent! No, not that Duke Nukem Forever kind of imminent!).

This is our new main screen:

The following image shows the new account sheet. The next version wont require any email-begging in order to join our beta. Just download the fruux client, create your account, click the email verification link and you are ready to go sync.

If you are interested in speeding up development, feel free to donate (via paypal or by shopping at amazon) and please suggest your top priority feature! Our supporters page has still some free slots!

While we are readying the system for a broader betatest our pixelguru Martin spent some time on the icon of our client application. The journey started of course with our logo.

Adding some gloss and depth… adding some details and glow… adding more depth and a typical system preferences icon shadow… well yes – it’s not ready yet, but sufficent for our upcoming beta.

The following screenshots show the current look and feel of our application.

Our icon still needs some optimization for different resolutions and sizes.

fruux is meant to simplify your digital life. When syncing different devices and services you might run into troubles called sync conflicts.

Just think about the following scenario:

1. you modified one of your contacts phonenumbers on the go via the (not yet demoed) fruux webapplication
2. then you modified the very same contacts phonenumber on your laptop (lets assume you had no internet access while doing this)

The outcome of this example is a sync conflict. The fruuxServer and your local system now contain different phonenumbers for the same contact. As the system has no idea which phonenumber is the correct one, it just asks you.

Reviewing the sync conflict gives you a nice dialogue (left side shows your local addressbook, right side shows the data from the fruuxServer). Now it’s really easy to choose the correct contact, by just clicking on the correct card.

After choosing the correct card you just restart the sync via the “Sync Now” button and immediately both your local system and the fruuxServer are in sync again.

[youtube PfBw2PXjqyE]

It’s been a while since our last post, but it was worth the wait. This screencast shows the first demo of our sync client including a graphical user interface. The video shows the following steps:

• empty database on the fruuxServer
• the content of the local addressbook
• installing and running the client
• fruuxServer database in sync with local addressbook
• changing a name in the local addressbook
• syncing again
• fruuxServer database in sync again

Just some comments:

• yes the gui isn’t very pretty yet and we have to add our logo
• the screencast shows just first- and lastname in the database of the fruuxServer, but of course all other entities have been synced as well. the system is able to handle all the custom entities!
• there is no public betatesting yet, but hopefully soon

Looking forward for your comments.