There are times when using open source software is a Good Thing™. I happily use Notational Velocity because it syncs my notes nicely with my iPhone, but there was always a little usability niggle in the back of my mind. Yesterday it hit me: I hate working with a one column layout, especially with the limited vertical space on my 13” MacBook Pro screen. The horizontal split also made Steven Frank’s Markdown preview pane fork, which I find incredibly useful, a bit awkward for me. So I downloaded the source to see how difficult it would be to change the horizontal split to a vertical one. After a few minutes reading the documentation for RBSplitView, it turned out to be as simple as clicking the “Vertical” check box in Interface Builder, setting the Active SDK in Xcode to 10.5, and recompiling. And while I was in there, I changed the dock icon to something that better fit my aesthetic. Total time: about 20 minutes.

There are times when using open source software is a Good Thing™. I happily use Notational Velocity because it syncs my notes nicely with my iPhone, but there was always a little usability niggle in the back of my mind. Yesterday it hit me: I hate working with a one column layout, especially with the limited vertical space on my 13” MacBook Pro screen. The horizontal split also made Steven Frank’s Markdown preview pane fork, which I find incredibly useful, a bit awkward for me.

So I downloaded the source to see how difficult it would be to change the horizontal split to a vertical one. After a few minutes reading the documentation for RBSplitView, it turned out to be as simple as clicking the “Vertical” check box in Interface Builder, setting the Active SDK in Xcode to 10.5, and recompiling. And while I was in there, I changed the dock icon to something that better fit my aesthetic.

Total time: about 20 minutes.