InFocus

Brackets extension to help you focus while coding

Inspired by Noisli and Relax

Current version: v0.9.8

About the project

First of all, I love Noisli because it works brilliantly for me. Although I never used all of its features, such as the text editor or even some of its sounds. I'd always leave it on playing in the background while doing some work. When it comes to portability, it has limitations, though, and I also don't like to rely on the browser nor the internet connection in this matter.

Then there is Relax, a great alternative to Noisli, which I discovered not long before I started to implement InFocus, that offers the option of being portable, but again, I don't do actual work inside it.

So here's my minimalistic distillation of a similar tool in the form of an extension for my favourite editor. It lives where the work happens, therefore, can be controlled conveniently. That also means you can use it on the go, or basically anywhere.

I've included ten different sounds in it, which I call channels. Namely: dawn, garden, summer night, frog pond, wind, fire, water/river, snow + light rain, cityscape and cafe.

Certainly, for the best experience, I would suggest using headphones, especially for those delicate sounds such as the snowfall (which is one of my favourites by the way).

Screenshot

Install (please read through)

Currently, the installation requires two steps. The first is the regular procedure, same with most of the extensions. The second step requires a small manual action. Below, I explain what and why.

1. Go to the Extension Manager. Find InFocus and click Install.

2. Then download the soundpack from here, unzip it and copy the actual OGG files into the extension's sounds folder (and please leave the filenames as they are).

To view this location you can use Brackets's Help >> Show Extensions Folder menu item, or manually navigate to it, and find abakos.infocus:

• Windows: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Brackets\extensions\user

• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Brackets/extensions/user

• Linux: ~/.config/brackets/extensions/user

(Reload Brackets.)

Why?

Because of the extension registry's upload limit.

When uploading an extension to the registry, they only allow that to be 5MB. Since InFocus operates with sounds, this extension is significantly larger in size than most of the extensions. We are talking approximately 42MB altogether here.

The sounds could have been loaded over the internet, but the key here is to have InFocus completely independent from the internet.

Therefore I needed to find an alternative solution for distributing the sounds. So, when you download the extension you will find that only one, the first (dawn) sound is available.

Also, I could have made the installation fully manual, so there would be need for just one copy step, but then the extension wouldn't have been visible in the registry.

I found the present solution to be a viable middle path.

If you know of a better solution for this scenario, please let me know.

Usage

Use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + ALT + . (period) to toggle the panel. Or go to: Navigate >> InFocus.

Click on the icon of the desired sound, and it will start playing. You can play any number of sounds at once.

Use the slider or the mute button to control the overall volume.

Resources

Used sounds:

All the sounds come from freesound.org, see the sources and the licences linked below. Also, all of the sounds have been slightly edited by me, e.g. they have been cut, made loopable, compressed and re-titled for the extension.

As for the quality, I find the following compression just enough for the purpose: 44.1kHz 24bit STEREO VBR OGG.

The following sounds are the amazing field recordings of Tim Kahn aka Corsica_S:

(License: CC-BY)

Botanical garden, Fire, Cityscape, Dawn, Wind, Snow, River, Frog pond

Summer night (this sound is a mix I made of two recordings):

• [1] CC-BY by Corsica_S
• [2] CC0 by johnaudiotech

Cafe CC0 by FlorenceArt

Icons:

The used and modified icons originally come from Flaticons.net.

License: MIT

Happy coding!

abakos | 2017 Plymouth UK