Interview: Chris Forsythe of Adium and Growl

I was able to recently sit down with Chris Forsythe, who currently works on Adium, Growl, Perian, and Family.

Joseph: What gave you the idea for Growl?

Chris: It’s really 2 things that gave me the idea for Growl. Within the Adium project there were 2 developers. One, Jorge, wanted notifications that looked like the system bezel. The other, Adam Iser, wanted notifications that looked like Colloquy’s notifications. The problem we had with Jorge’s setup was that the system bezel is very hard to make everyone like.
For those who remember Adium from 3 years ago, there were a ton of options for just the bezel we had in Adium. There were so many that they were all in Advanced. Something had to give!

The other bit is that I was tired of being able to have more information in the system via one system; unified; standard. I needed more metadata about what was going on, and I needed it in a single way.

I got the idea when I had an IM from a coworker for a high priority customer when I was mailing my boss about something with a lower, but serious priority. That was it

Joseph: Beside the apps you work with, what’s your favorite app?

Chris: There’s so many to choose from! I like this one app called MineSwept, which is a pretty good Minesweeper clone. SubEthaEdit is also pretty great, along with Swear and Jisho.

Joseph: How did you get to work with Adium?

Chris: I started off helping on the forums. Before there was Trac (ticket system/wiki), I maintained a rather massive forum post. Basically it contained all the requests on the forums. When people would post to it, I’d have to update the first post so bugs wouldn’t be flooded too the depths of the black hole which is page 2 of the forum. That lasted only 3 months.

Joseph: Other than Adium, what other apps do/did you work on?

Chris: Before Adium I worked on an IRC bot called iTonamaton. It’s the only Cocoa IRC bot that I know of. Though iTonamaton is now defunct.
Besides Adium, I currently work on Growl, Perian, and Family.

Joseph: Can you tell me a little bit about those last two apps?

Chris: Sure, I’ll go with Perian first. Perian is a QuickTime component, basically the rebirth of the FFusion component. It allows you to play things in QuickTime enabled applications which you couldn’t play in them otherwise. For instance, I can play FLV (Flash videos, such as videos from YouTube) in NicePlayer. Full screen and the works! We have a whole slew of codecs that it plays, adding more with each release. Right now we’re at .5, with 1.0 we’ll add Matroska (mkv) and subtitle support in some codecs.

Family is a genealogy (family tree) application. The difference between Family and other genealogy applications is that Family is easier to just get started with. We don’t base Family on the prevalent format for genealogy (GEDCOM), so we can do things that aren’t forced by the format.

Joseph: When did you first start programming?

Chris: I started trying to learn to program in 2000 at a intro to C++ class at the local college. Ever since then I’ve been working on little applications here and there that help me get some stuff done. For the most part on the projects I work on I take more of a support and administrative role, along with input on the direction of each of the projects. The exception of that is with Family.

Joseph: I’m currently hoping to learn to program, starting off with Ruby. Are there any tips you can give to our readers (including me) that want to program?

Chris: Two tips:
When you start learning with whatever study material you have, start working on small mini projects. It doesn’t matter what they do, so long as you actually learn the concepts you are reading. The second is, just stick with it!

Joseph: Finishing up this interview, what do you like to do in your spare time?

Chris: Hrmm… spare time? Well, I have a Wii, Xbox 360, and a DS lite. I play those a lot. I also go to the gym, work a full time job, and spend time with my wife. I’m on the lookout for a decent rock gym in the Houston area, too.

Joseph: Well that wraps things up, thanks for your time Chris!

Chris: Thank you very much as well!

Feel free to check out Chris’ Blog.