BAREFEET  Froq is coming along very nicely. Contrary to the previous review, I think the green motif and icons adds to its charm while still being professional.

The lack of support for editing in views is a show stopper for me, but the SQL syntax coloring and quickfind features are up with the best I've seen.

I've published a detailed comparison of features in Froq and other SQLite editors for Mac at:

http://www.tandb.com.au/sqlite/compare/

Tom

BareFeet  (Version 2.0rc4)

SEMIOTICMONKEY  two things merely about usability and user experience design:

a) the site is totally a mess. navigate in search of info about you and your software is a guess game. The stupid menu (dock like) is the worse offender but the page menu is even worse (with that Helvetica 12 clashing with the rest). Please, consider clean up your 'personal home page' and give it a more professional looking, usable and customer centric layout If you want to charge 79$ for your application. Don't understimate your 'client'.

b) the same for the application.

b1 - The stupid widgetesque splash is irritable. The user begin to work with the splash still waving around. Shut the splash down. It doesn't give me useful info making only noise.

b2 - The icons (both the App Icon and the toolbar icons) are toonish and perception disturbing. Stick with the OS X color palette and integrate your app with the rest of OS X world.

The Ugly

Why on heart it is mandatory to give the database name on a new connection?

The Bad

The Sql editor doesn't follow the selected table. You have to manually clean up each and every time the editor to start writing.

Always the SQL editor doesn't autocomplete fields in a given table.

Always the SQL editor doesn't have collapsed region (ala Database Spy)

When an error in the statement occurred, we have a disturbing popup window. give contextual information in context without using popups (as everywhere in OS X - check mail, TextMate and the likes)

After a statement error, the table selection reset itself. (!?)

The infuriating behavior

The SQL editor insists on operate on the database selected in the connection panel ignoring the user choice. If you switch to another database (the application permits it and there is a Select menu), the SQL editor doesn't follow you. But the commit button yes. This inconsistency is the worse thing in this application. Choose a behavior and stick with it. Or no operation at all on databases other than the choosen one, OR all operations permitted. And, please, make the stupid SQL editor follow the user and not the application.

suggestions:

smart folders to store e retrieve sql staments on a given table.

All in all i like your application. It is a good starting point. But if you compare to the professional competitors, as Altova Database Spy or Navicat, priced in the same price range or above, it gives no distinct feature set to justify the price. Lower it and i'll consider buy it and use it instead of terminal.

If you use MySQL, continue to use the Terminal or CocoaMySQL.

If you need Oracle support, give it a try.  (Version 2.0rc4)

BAREFEET  Here are a few more points:

7. I notice that if I "Add" a row, enter the value for one column, I have to click on another row to make it save the changes to the first row. Perhaps a "Save" button or similar would make this more direct and obvious. Also, I notice that Froq seems to insert a value for every column, perhaps nulls or "" (hopefully not) for those columns where I didn't enter data. I suggest that Froq should only specify the fields in the insert that were actually edited.

8. Froq's syntax coloring looks pretty good. Could you please make it optional to capitalize keywords (or provide the option to make them lowercase) since we don't all like them capitalized. Comments default color would be better as something more subtle (eg grey instead of green).

9. At present Froq colors identifiers (table/view names, column names) such as "First Name" as if it were a literal. Froq should show identifiers in a different color. Coloring those that are unquoted and those that are double quoted the same color would be great, but at least color the double quoted identities different to the single quoted literals)  (Version 2.0b2)

BAREFEET  It's great to see SQLite support added in Froq in version 2.0b2. I've had a quick look and hit some obstacles/bugs:

1. Views aren't showing, just tables.

2. Froq won't allow editing of data where the table name or column name contains a space. I suggest that you include the "" double quotes in all references to identifiers in your behind the scenes update, delete, select, insert etc statements to avoid this problem.

3. Furthermore, when Froq shows a "couldn't update database" error, it won't allow me to select any other table or cancel the update. I can only quit.

4. Somewhere Froq mentions that it won't allow editing of data in views. It should allow this since SQLite supports it via "instead of" triggers, which allow editing of views.

5. Froq fails to open a SQLite database on an AppleShare volume. The SQLite built into Mac OS X does not have this problem. You need to disable a locking option in the compiling of SQLite in Froq to allow opening on remote volumes.

6. I can't see how to show/edit triggers.

Tom

BareFeet  (Version 2.0b2)