Quicklook support

Loving Bike, but wish it had quicklook support.
Do you think this will be possible, @jessegrosjean?

Thanks

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It should be possible. In fact I’m a little surprised it doesn’t already work since Bike files are declared to macOS as an HTML subset. In any-case that is the route that I would take, HTML using a web view. I don’t want to do the drawing myself, but I think HTML web view with right styling could work.

Next step is to get the HTML rendering looking better. See this post for some thoughts. If I get a stylesheet that replicates Bike then I’ll look more into getting Quicklook to work. As it is I think icon rendering is probably better, since any HTML rendering right now wouldn’t really look like Bike outline content.

Thank you! Is there anything that I can do to turn the HTML web view working on quicklook?

Thank.

Unfortunately I don’t really know. You could read and tinker, but might get a frustrating end result. Anyway, if you want to look into it this post might be a good place to start.

Might that process by thrown by an expectation of a !DOCTYPE (rather than ?xml version) tag at the start ?

I don’t think so… at least I just did some experiments and that didn’t seem to make a difference. Things should be better now then when this request was first posted. .bike, files still don’t preview in quicklook for me, but you use .html file extension and then it will work… and Bike is now better at working with that file extension, for example you can set html as default exension to use for Bike files.

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I’d like to add another vote for a QuickLook preview for Bike files.

I’m exploring using Bike for making outlines in Scrivener writing projects. Scrivener lets me add Bike files to the project, so I can keep all the project assets together, but without QuickLook it can’t show me previews.

Of course the preview doesn’t show up when the project is viewed on an iOS device anyway, and Bike (or a Bike-equivalent) isn’t available on iOS (yet) so perhaps Bike isn’t the ideal solution. But a working QuickLook would certainly make Bike more useful in a wider range of contexts.

QuickLook seems be working here with Bike 1.7 (.bike) files,
if, for example, I tap the space bar while selecting them in Finder.

Bike is quite happy if you change the file extension of .bike files to .html,
and once you have done that, the icon preview shows correctly too.


(you can specify the default extension in Bike > Preferences > Document)

Odd. I have the latest Bike 1.7, but QuickLook doesn’t seem to work for me; I just get the standard icon preview. I’m on OS X 12.6.2; I don’t know if the QuickLook preview only works with newer versions (which would surprise me) or if something else is required. Is there a QuickLook mappings database or plist that I need to force the OS to rebuild, or something like that?

Changing the extension to .html works, but of course it also breaks the association with Bike; double-clicking the document opens it in a web browser instead.

If Bike is going to be the application with which you most frequently open .html files,
then you can, of course, choose the association you prefer.

( With a Bike .html file selected in Finder, ⌘I then Open With, and Change All)

Hi. I came to ask for Quicklook support too.

Neither of the workarounds discussed here seem at all good. The SO post is a bit low-level if I’m honest :grimacing: and I can’t realistically make Bike the .html file handler.

So :+1: to the feature request please.

Thanks.

FWIW seems to be working out of the box here on macOS 11.7.4 (Bike 1.9 – 112)

if I select a .bike file in Finder, and tap the space bar, I see a Quicklook preview of the Bike outline.

(Bike is not the HTML handler on this system)

Possible that this varies between macOS versions ?


@carltongibson it might be helpful to know which macOS and Bike versions you are using.

QuickLook does not work for me. I’m on Ventura 13.2.1

When I do the spacebar tap thing I get this message:
The extension com.apple.tips.TipsAppQuicklook-macOS does not implement file previews.

I think I will try to address this in next release or two by building a custom QuickLook preview for Bike files. I thought I could get away with not doing this, since Bike files are just HTML, but it appears that never really worked in all cases.

Latest preview has native quicklook + icon thumbnails. Please try it out and let me know how it works for you:

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I like quicklook and icon thumbnails in current state. :heart:

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