I have a DVD collection numbering in the hundreds, and managing them requires proper software. MeD’s Movie Manager (XMM) is the best free option I’ve found - a cross-platform Java application that fetches movie information from IMDb, extracts technical metadata from video files (AVI, OGM, MPEG, DVD), and exports your collection to various formats.

There was just one problem: the Mac support was practically non-existent. The Java JAR file technically ran on OS X, but it looked and felt completely foreign - no proper Application Bundle, no native file dialogs, and UI elements clearly designed for Windows.

The standard Java Swing look - functional but clearly not native

The standard Java Swing look - functional but clearly not native

So I decided to fix it myself. This became my first open source contribution.

After my contributions: proper Mac OS X integration with Aqua widgets and Application Bundle

After my contributions: proper Mac OS X integration with Aqua widgets and Application Bundle

What I contributed

After submitting initial fixes and patches in January, the project maintainer Bendik invited me to join as a developer. Over the following months, I worked on making XMM a proper Mac citizen:

Native UI integration - I integrated Quaqua, a look-and-feel library by fellow Swiss developer Werner Randelshofer, which provides native Aqua widgets for Java Swing applications. This means proper Mac file choosers, buttons that look right, and UI elements that don’t stand out as obviously non-native.

Platform-specific fixes - Numerous small but important adjustments: fixing combo box rendering issues (the Windows “stepped combo box” looks ugly on Mac), making panels properly transparent for the Aqua appearance, and ensuring the application menu works correctly.

The Application Bundle - Perhaps most importantly, I created the build-mac.xml Ant script that packages XMM as a proper Mac Application Bundle. Instead of double-clicking a JAR file, Mac users can now drag a proper .app to their Applications folder, complete with an icon in the Dock.

DMG distribution - The Application Bundle is distributed as a DMG disk image, the standard Mac distribution format that users expect.

Timeline

  • January 24, 2007 - Added as a project developer on SourceForge
  • March-April 2007 - Various Mac-specific bug fixes, GUI tweaks, and OS X/Aqua fixes
  • April 18, 2007 - Version 2.5 released - first version mentioning my contributions in the release notes: “Bugfixes for the Mac GUI (Thanks to kreegee)” and a fix for info being zeroed out when changing seen/unseen status
  • April 18, 2007 - Version 2.5.1 released - first version to include a Mac Application Bundle (DMG)
  • July 24, 2007 - Version 2.5.4.1 released - last release I contributed to