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Kevin Walzer, software developer.

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QuickWho 3.0: When to rewrite an app

I've just released version 3.0 of QuickWho, my application for obtaining registration information for Internet domains. This new version is the most thorough rewrite of an application that I've ever done, so I wanted to discuss a bit about the new version and its changes.

Earlier versions of QuickWho were basically GUI wrappers, or front-ends, for the command line "whois" tool that ships with Mac OS X. A user would type in a domain name in the search field, QuickWho would send the query to whois, and then display the text output in the main window. I tried, with the user interface, to add some features that were not directly present in the command-line tool, such as the ability to select a specific whois server to query; the ability to call QuickWho via AppleScript; and the ability to save and print the textual output for later review.

However, despite these additional features, at its foundation QuickWho remained a simple wrapper for the whois program that offered little functionality not found in the command-line tool or in other GUI applications (such as Apple's own Network Utility, which ships for free with OS X). It simply didn't offer much value for the money I was charging for it, even after I lowered the price to $12.95. Reviews of the program, and its sales, reflected this lack of value.

As a result, I decided to make the new version of QuickWho substantially different from the older ones. It would offer more information than a simple dump of whois output. It would be easier to use and better integrated into OS X so it could be incorporated into different workflows. After looking at a number of possible features and technologies to support these features, here is the core mix of the new QuickWho:

• Distills basic whois data to an at-a-glance list, with both domain information and geographic information about the domain. This is done through a mix of approaches: the Python pywhois library, for basic information about the domain; the "dig" command-line program, to get the main IP address for the domain; and the pwhois domain information server, which retrieves geographic information about the domain (city/state/country, latitude, longitute) based on the IP address. The raw whois data can also be displayed; this can be configured in the preferences. The result is that more precise, accurate whois data is delivered.

• Displays the text data as rich text with clickable URL's for domain names and e-mail addresses, to facilitate e-mailing or displaying domain information in a browser.

• Displays map information from the domain, based on Yahoo! web services and the PyYahooMaps library. This can be useful for gathering more information about the domain.

• More robust AppleScript support and complete integration with the OS X Services menu, so QuickWho can both return whois data to other applications and access the functionality of other applications from the Services menu.

I've come to re-evaluate my long-standing belief that you should never rewrite an application from scratch, which Joel Spolsky eloquently articulated. If a program is at a dead end and cannot do what you want it to, you may have no choice but to rewrite large portions of it, even the entire thing. With QuickWho, I rewrote major portions of the user interface (removing the tree view, developing and customizing the rich text view, adding the image display) and completely re-implemented the whois query, as well as the alogorithms to print the data (since it now included an image as well as text).

With these changes, I'm restoring the price of QuickWho to its previous level of $24.95. I believe the program now does far more than the simple command-line whois tool, and previous versions of QuickWho: it offers a richer array of information about specific domains, in an easier-to-read format.

If you need to do frequent searches of domain information via "whois," then QuickWho 3.0 is a useful tool that can increase your productivity. It's definitely worth a look.

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