HippoRemote Blog

It’s weird. It’s gory. And it’s ridiculously fun. Download the profile directly to your iPhone or grab it here.

More on Super Meat Boy here.

Vimeo Couch Mode is simply awesome and a HippoRemote Pro profile makes it even more so. Read Vimeo’s blog post and then grab the profile! It’s easiest to download it directly inside the app, but you can also grab it from our website here.

HippoRemote Pro 3.0 breaks compatibility with some profiles from earlier versions. The simplest way to get up to date is to go into the in-app settings and tap on Restore Default Profiles. This wipes out all the profiles on your iPhone and replaces them with updated versions.

If this is a bit too severe for you, you can update profiles individually from our online repository. The repository is accessible from inside the app by tapping the “+” button on the profiles screen and choosing the Browse Online option.

HippoRemote Pro 3.0 is approved and available in the App Store for purchase. It requires iOS 4.0 or greater and is a free update for existing users. A full list of changes is below, but I wanted to spend a little time on the development process for this update.

The theme of version 3.0 is refinement. Since the initial 1.0 release almost a year and a half ago, I’ve updated Pro over a dozen times, adding a bevy of new features. Some of these worked out great. Others not so much. But the focus was always to expand what the app could do.

For 3.0, it was time to stop focusing on features and return to focusing on usability. I wanted to get back to the basics and apply all that I’d learned since the app’s initial release – from my own usage and from your feedback. I wanted to make using the app as fluid and effortless as possible.

That doesn’t mean that there are no new features in 3.0. It just means that they did’t feel like new features. Focusing on usability highlighted areas where missing functionality made the app more difficult or more awkward. Adding the functionality was just filling in something that was missing, rather than adding something new.

One other thing I learned during the development of 3.0 is that usability and aesthetics go hand in hand. Up until now, I’ve tried to use standard iPhone interface elements whenever possible to make Pro feel more consistent with other apps. But sometimes, the standard interface elements are just not a good fit and rolling your own UI is the way to go. In these scenarios, it’s important for the custom UI to have great aesthetics. Ugly UI, even with identical functionality, detracts from usability for the simple reason that if it looks bad, you don’t want to use it! With the help of Adam Betts, I think the new UI in 3.0 achieves great aesthetics. I also think it’s a big step forward in usability. I hope you feel that way too!

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WHAT’S CHANGED IN 3.0?

LOOK & FEEL:
* Total visual overhaul designed by Adam Betts.
* Every profile updated. Download the updates from our online repository.

SPLIT SCREEN MODE:
* By popular request! Simultaneous keyboard + trackpad access.
* Long press keyboard button to toggle.

PROFILE EDITOR:
* Swipe across row on Profile screen to access.
* Tweak existing profiles.
* Create new profiles using templates or other profiles.

DROPBOX SUPPORT:
* Backup your profiles and macros.
* Sync to other devices.
* Edits auto-sync to Dropbox.com.
* Use Twitter-style pull-to-refresh to initiate a manual sync.

TRACKPAD ENHANCEMENTS:
* Swipe left/right to switch controlpads.
* Swipe up/down to hide controlpad.
* Swipe up on bottom bar to access volume controls.
* Long press on bottom bar for quick access to global macros.
* Drag left/right on bottom bar to start thumb scrolling.
* Drag on trackpad button to click-and-hold, just like on a physical mouse.

MISCELLANEOUS:
* Improved gesturepad support for Boxee, Plex, and XBMC.
* Better gamepad support for Macs. Requires newest HippoVNC.
* New setting to disable shake access to global macros.
* Long press to activate macro and return to trackpad.
* Improved sizing of custom wallpapers.
* Retina Display support for custom wallpapers.
* Improved reliability of fast reconnect.
* Bug fixes.

ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION:
* Removed in-app Twitter client.

Wanted to let you all know that I’ve uploaded a new version of HippoVNC for Mac to the website. I highly recommend that everyone download and install this update.

http://hipporemote.com/mac_setup

The big news is that I’ve finally found and fixed a long standing bug that would cause HippoRemote to become completely unresponsive. Special thanks to those users who submitted detailed bug reports. I wouldn’t have figured things out without your help!

I also made some changes under the hood to improve mouse tracking. The trackpad should now work better with fullscreen apps and games. And I got rid of the shakiness in the mouse tracking when zoomed in on the screen.

If you’re running HippoVNC in the background as a system server, be sure to stop the server first (via HippoVNC’s preferences) before installing the update. And as always, send any questions, feedback, bug reports to hipporemote at robohippo dot com.

### **CHANGELOG**
* **0.3.4**
* [FIXED] Keyboard input hangs connection after adding/removing a screen.
* [CHANGED] Revised mouse handling to improve support for games and other fullscreen apps.
* [CHANGED] Reduced mouse jitter when zoomed in.

The name is a bit of a mouthful, but YouTube Leanback is a fantastic way to browse YouTube from your couch. And now it’s super easy to control with HippoRemote Pro. Grab the profile here.

Hey Linux fans! HippoRemote Pro user Andrew Maxwell has created a profile for the Totem Movie Player.

You can grab it from his blog:

http://www.andrewcmaxwell.com/2010/06/hippo-remote-profile-totem-movie-player/

Thanks Andrew!

HippoRemote Pro 2.3 has been approved by Apple and should be available on the App Store shortly (if it’s not already there)! There are a ton of significant changes, particularly under-the-hood speed and performance improvements. But there are a number of noteworthy new features as well. Let’s go over them!

FAST APP SWITCHING & FAST RECONNECT:

The biggest new feature is support for iOS 4 multitasking. How multitasking works on the iPhone has been covered extensively by other sites, but the key point is that it’s a bit different than what you and I are used to on Macs and PCs.

You still can’t quite run multiple apps simultaneously on an iPhone. But with a feature called Fast App Switching, Apple has provided a means to greatly reduce the delay when switching between apps. Prior to iOS 4, switching apps meant quitting the current app, launching a new app, and waiting for it to load. Switching frequently meant you spent an inordinate amount of time waiting for apps to finish launching. In iOS 4, Apple has eliminated the wait. Instead of quitting and relaunching, apps are frozen when you leave them and “reheated” when you return. Since you don’t have to relaunch the app, you can pick up exactly where you left off with minimal delay.

Fast App Switching is relatively straightforward to implement for basic apps, but it’s a bit trickier for HippoRemote since it has to maintain a connection to your computer. Keeping the connection open while frozen is disallowed by Apple and unnecessarily drains your battery. But having to choose a connection every time you return to HippoRemote is annoying. To solve this, we created a feature called Fast Reconnect. HippoRemote detects that you’re switching back and forth between apps and saves off connection information so that it can automatically reconnect you super quickly.

Fast Reconnect is extremely fast and extremely convenient. So convenient, in fact, that we brought it to non-iOS 4 devices. Even if you’re using an older iPhone or iPod touch that doesn’t have multitasking, you’ll still be able to switch in & out of HippoRemote quickly.

DISCONNECT BUTTON:

Fast App Switching and Fast Reconnect is great, but they do introduce one piece of complexity for people who control multiple computers. Previously, to connect to a different computer, you simply restarted HippoRemote and picked another connection. But with Fast Reconnect, you won’t always get that option. So we’ve added a disconnect button. Two, in fact. One in the settings screen, and one on the Shake Menu.

REVAMPED KEYBOARD:

The HippoRemote keyboard has been overhauled under-the-hood. We’ve both simplified and improved the keyboard. Previously, there were two modes – live and buffered – and auto-correction and certain international keyboards would only work in one mode and not the other.

Now, we’ve eliminated modes. You just type. If you turn on auto-correction and international keyboard support, they just work. You can cut & paste. You can edit the beginning, middle or end of the text and HippoRemote automatically mirrors the changes to your computer.

TEXTEXPANDER SUPPORT:

An additional bonus of our improved keyboard is TextExpander support. If you haven’t heard of TextExpander, it’s a wonderful utility that lets you save and quickly retype snippets of text. It’s a must have for heavy typists on the Mac. TextExpander touch for iPhone brings your snippets to the phone, letting you quickly enter your text in a variety of apps. And now with TextExpander support built into HippoRemote, you can take your snippets with you to ANY computer. Including Windows and Linux PCs.

The promise of software keyboards is to be smarter and more efficient than their physical counterparts. With built-in keyboard history and now TextExpander support, the HippoRemote keyboard is the most productive and efficient keyboard available.

WRAPUP:

Thanks for making it all the way to the end! It’s a long post for a 0.1 update, but we packed a bunch of stuff into it. We hope you find them useful! And as always, we’d love to hear your feedback, so email us at hipporemote@robohippo.com with your comments, suggestions, and ideas!

A user wrote in to tell us that the volume up button was no longer working in the Pandora profile. We’ve updated the profile to address this issue. Grab it here.

Unfortunately, it’s not a 100% fix. Seems like the folks at Pandora made some changes to their audio player that make it less responsive to the up arrow key (which increases audio volume). Even on a physical keyboard, tapping the up arrow key does nothing. I have to hold down the key for a while before the volume increases. The same is true for the profile.

If you’re a fan of old school side-scrolling platformers, you’ll love Rocket Knight. It’s a sequel to the Sega Genesis classic Rocket Knight Adventures, and combines the classic gameplay with a gorgeous graphics upgrade.

The keyboard controls are rather frustrating — the game was clearly designed to be played with a gamepad. And with this new profile, HippoRemote Pro fits the bill perfectly.

Rocket Knight for PC is currently available on Steam.

Grab the profile here.

In case you missed it, Clicker announced a TV-optimized version of their web site — Clicker.tv — at last week’s Google I/O conference.

With interface and keyboard controls implemented using HTML5, I can browse Clicker’s database of online videos Flash-free. No incessant CPU and GPU fan noise. Actually watching videos, however, inevitably kicks the fans into high gear.

Grab the profile here.

Thanks go to Krunoslav Labazan for creating a profile for GOM Player.

Grab it from our profile repository.

HippoRemote Pro 2.2 has been approved by Apple! This means that all the Game Controller goodness we talked about in our previous post is ready to go!

We’ve got four game profiles available, and a few more still in the works. The current profiles are Braid, Trine, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, and Portal. Three outstanding (and inexpensive) indie games, and one of the greatest games of all time.

Get Portal For Free!

With the release of Steam for Mac last week, Portal is FREE until May 24th! So click on the link below and grab it now!

http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/

Then grab our Portal profile and start unlocking those achievements! And keep in touch by adding HippoRemote to your Steam friends. =)

Mac HippoVNC Update

On the topic of Mac gaming, our testing with Steam uncovered some mouse control issues. We’ve fixed them, but Mac users will need to update HippoVNC. If you’re not using HippoVNC, then games like Portal will not be playable. Screen Sharing simply doesn’t support the necessary functionality.

Creating Game Profiles

Of the four available profiles, two are keyboard only games and the other two require simultaneous keyboard and mouse control. Hopefully they will serve as good starting points for your own game profiles. We’ll also be adding more instructions and documentation but we’re currently away on a semi-vacation. We’ll get right on it when we’re back in town, but until then, please be patient. Thanks!

We are answering emails, though with a little bit of a delay. So if you need help getting your game profile up and running, drop us a line.

Limitations

There are some limitations to the game controller. First, it’s not compatible with every game. In particular, really old games and emulators are not supported.

Second, as mentioned above, HippoVNC is required. Standard VNC servers don’t support the necessary control methods to make gaming possible.

Third, on the Mac, certain games that change the screen resolution when going into full screen mode may not work correctly. It’s something we’re looking into.

So let me get right to it: We’re adding a game controller in our next HippoRemote Pro update! Soon, you’ll be able to play your favorite PC games from the comfort of your couch. No more keyboard and mouse to tether you to your desk.

There are a number of gamepad apps available in the App Store. Virtually all of them have a directional pad on the left, a button pad on the right, and some miscellaneous buttons in between. And our controller has them as well.

HOWEVER, our gamepad has an additional mode that combines a d-pad with a multi-touch trackpad. So you’ll be able to play all those games that rely on simultaneous keyboard and mouse access, including first person shooters like Portal and Team Fortress 2.

And because our gamepad leverages App Profiles, it’s customized for each game, giving you the exact controls you need.

Now, we’re just a small indie developer and we simply don’t have the resources to make profiles for all the PC games out there today, so we’re asking for your help. We’ll be posting instructions on how to create gamepad-enabled profiles on our website and answering any questions via email.

One final thing…

You may have noticed that we mentioned Portal and Team Fortress 2 earlier — games that are available as part of Steam for Mac. Steam for Mac is a big moment for Mac gaming and we desperately want to support it. In fact, our gamepad update was already under review with Apple. But with Steam for Mac releasing today, we’ve pulled our update to do additional Mac testing with the initial set of games. With any luck, the process will be smooth and painless and we’ll ready to resubmit shortly. Regardless, know that we’re working hard so that Mac and PC gamers can play!

Typing logins and passwords with the iPhone can be a real pain. So let HippoRemote do the work for you! Store your logins in the Login Manager and enter them with a single tap.

It’s just one of the many thoughtful features we’ve put into HippoRemote Pro. See our previous web ads featuring Pause On Call and the Proximity Sensor. Or visit our videos page for in-depth demonstrations.