Blogger Testing and UI Ruminations

The Blogger thing is elusive and hard to reproduce when I need it to. I might release 3.0.2 regardless tomorrow or Wednesday just so it's not delayed any more. I'll try more tonight. After a lot of testing, I may be prepared to blame the OS on this one. It seems to happen a lot more often if you have an ampersand in your text, which is supposedly an illegal character for the protocol that it uses to transmit (XML-RPC). I think I might have a fix though: the ampersands were getting encoded twice, leading to badness. In fact, if you see this message then it means that things are working better because there are a bunch of ampersands near the end. ☺

On the UI front, I spent some time Sunday working on some prototype UI for a future version. The interface of the main part of the window has not really changed in a long time. I'm referring to the area excluding any drawers and toolbars. Just the text view, topic field, and elements around there. Someone a while ago suggested integrating the topic field into the text view as that's more like how it is in a real journal. So I was able accomplish a prototype of that during the Oscars. I was considering posting a test application with it, but you can get a good idea of what it's like by just looking at a Mail message window. I don't know if I like it though for a few reasons:

1. Mail only uses that kind of view when the data it is representing is not editable; when you can edit those fields (sender, subject, etc.) they are shown in real text fields, like MacJournal does. So the user might not know that these fields are editable.
2. In the prototyped appearance it is a decent amount smaller, which is both good and bad.
3. What is good for Mail isn't necessary good for the rest of the world; this is probably not the appropriate design for this kind of data (see #1).

What I'd really like to do in the future is provide a more realistic journal view. So the topic and date might be integrated into the text view, but not in the way Mail does it. In addition to the current appearance settings you could also set a "Journal" view that would look like a hard-bound journal with the topic and date at the top of the "page." I had also prototyped a "lined paper" view that looked pretty good at the time. I don't know what I'll do about this yet but it looks like something will happen like this. The Mail-like view wasn't all for naught; I can easily rearrange things to look like the "Journal" I was talking about and will probably do that. I might revisit the lined paper view, but that's a little farther out for various technical reasons. In addition, the whole lined paper thing doesn't really add anything to the UI; it's just eye candy. And while eye candy is not inherently evil (if you can turn it off somehow), it does get a much lower priority when compared to "real" features. But the "Journal" view might be useful because it would be a lot simpler visually and might end up more usable because it is laid out in a more logical fashion for the app. What is there now would continue to be available of course.

Just thoughts for the future.



Epilogue

Just because Blogger loves them, here are a bunch of ampersands: &&&&&&.

Sweet.

MacJournal 2.6.1

As promised, MacJournal 2.6.1 is out today. It has a few small fixes for the known issues in 2.6.1. Chief among them is a fix for "Multiple Spaces to Space" and row selection issues in the drawers. There are also a few small fixes here and there from "top of tree" (MacJournal 3.0.1). Download it from here and let me know of any problems.

Look for 3.0.2 early next week. I want to try and debug some issues the Blogger panel locking up under certain network situations when I can get under those situations so I can try and squeeze that fix in there (if any comes about). That's the reason for any delay; the rest of it is all done and waiting.

MacJournal 3.1a2

Download it here

This is the second alpha of MacJournal 3.1. This is an alpha release, which means that most if not all the planned features are present, but there is more work to be done before beta. The user interface is not final and will definitely change before the final release.

Here is what has been changed since the last alpha release:

- Some improvements to the Stats sheet include type-selection, stats exporting, and performance boosts

- Improved appearance of auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode under "normal" appearance

- Fixed crash associated with combining search terms with quotes

- Fixed sizing of the calendar view in the journals drawer

- The .Mac sheet will now send over included attachments as well (such as pictures) unless you tell it not to.

Reporting Bugs

Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.

If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!

Releases for everyone!

Just a quick post to announce some upcoming releases. MacJournal 3.1a2 will be out tomorrow with some improvements over alpha 1. 3.0.2 will be out Monday or Tuesday with a fix for the undo problem and a few other very small fixes. MacJournal 2.6.1 should also be out tomorrow with some small fixes over 2.6. As always, software release schedules are subject to change so check back tomorrow for more information.

Whither Highlight?

The Highlight toolbar item was actually the first thing I worked on for 3.1. I had actually tinkered with it during the 3.0.1 development stage but had disabled it for the 3.0.1 release build. Before the 3.1 alpha release I added the code back in but forgot to put it in the big list of toolbar items. So it's there, but you just can't pick it. So that's useful. :-) I'll fix it for the next alpha but you can make it work right now if you want.

1. Open your preferences file in a text editor (like TextEdit or BBEdit) or even better a dedicated property list editor (like Property List Editor, including with Xcode).
2. Find the line that says "NSToolbar Configuration." If you've never customized your toolbar, this won't be there so you should make some change first, however insignificant.
3. Under the Configuration key is another key called "TB Item Identifiers." There is a list of strings under that.
4. Make a new line in between one of the strings and add this line: "<string>HighlightIdentifier</string>" and save the file.
5. Launch MacJournal and you should have the Highlight toolbar item.

You can Command-Drag it around wherever you want, but if you drag it out you'll have to edit the property list to get it back again.

MacJournal 3.1a1

Get it here

Welcome to the first alpha of MacJournal 3.1! This is an alpha release, which means that most if not all the planned features are present, but there is more work to be done before beta. The user interface is not final and will definitely change before the final release. Some of the planned changes will be mentioned later in these release notes.

Here are the larger features in MacJournal 3.1:

- New Calendar view in the Journals Drawer. Dates with entries in the current journal will be highlighted. Clicking on those days will bring you to the first entry from that day. Select multiple dates to only show entries from those days (a new kind of search).
- Better automatic lists: the list style will automatically changed based on what line you are on.
- .Mac export: a new sheet to export entries and journals to a .Mac account.
- Auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode: previously available via a hidden key combination, auto-scrolling in Full Screen mode can not be activated via a new button.
- New toolbar item for highlighting text a certain color.

On the next tier down from those are these fixes:

- The Stats window has some additional capabilities: double-click a work to go to the first instance of that word. Hit the delete key to remove that word from the frequency analysis.
- A new message in the Blogger window will tell you if there is no response from the server.
- Added a new option to back up your data daily (which doesn't have any UI yet; look in the Hidden Preferences)

Some fixed bugs:

- Fixed the undo state after creating a journal (every action after that would get lumped in with the journal creation)
- Fixed some appearance problems with fonts in HTML
- Fixed a problem where the selection in an entry wouldn't get restored if the insertion point was left at the very end of the entry

This being an alpha release, some things are not done. Here are some things that will be changed (please do not report any bugs about them):

- The appearance of the Auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode when "Use Custom Appearance" is disabled is less than perfect and will be improved.
- The statistics window will get type-selection support soon
- The .Mac panel will get added to the Share menus in the menu bar and the contextual menus
- Preferences might get added for customizing the Highlight toolbar item
- Some other prefs will get added, such as the new nightly backups
- The height of the calendar (and whether it is shown or not at all) may not get saved and restored correctly right now

Reporting Bugs

Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.

If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!

3.1 Alphas start very soon

The first alpha of 3.1 will be released this week when I get around to tying up the loose ends for it. Breaking with some tradition I think I'm going to include all the previous localizations in this alpha. The nature of the changes so far don't really invalidate them yet, just add some things which will be in English only for now. Everything is coming along well and I hope to get it out tonight or Friday. After that look for the first beta in March or very early April with final release in late April or May sometime. Keep in mind though that this is just a projection at this point. It could very well be June for the final release. We will have to see. ☺ I'll post more about what is included in the alpha when I post the notes for the alpha release.

3.1 Alphas start very soon

The first alpha of 3.1 will be released this week when I get around to tying up the loose ends for it. Breaking with some tradition I think I'm going to include all the localizations in this alpha. The nature of the changes so far don't really invalidate them yet, just add some things which will be in English only for now. Everything is coming along well and I hope to get it out tomorrow or Friday. After that look for the first beta in March or very early April with final release in late April or May sometime. Keep in mind though that this is just a projection at this point. It could very well be June for the final release. We will have to see. ☺ I'll post more about what is included in the alpha when I post the notes for the alpha release.

Released Versions Do Not Expire

Just to be clear: pre-release versions have an expiration date to ensure people upgrade to a newer beta build or final build. Final releases like 2.6, 3.0, or now 3.0.1 will never expire. Sometimes in the battle between planning and reality reality wins out and a release comes later than was expected a month ago when the expiration date was set and that is certainly regrettable. But there is always a release version you can use that will never expire. I will try to make sure that the expiration date doesn't run out too soon again.

MacJournal 3.0.1

Just slightly after the expiration of 3.0.1b2 comes the final release of 3.0.1, available from Mariner's site. Many localizations are included in this release:

- Danish
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Korean
- Serbian
- Spanish
- Taiwanese

There are also some bug fixes included. Problems with Services should be resolved, as well as problems switching List Styles. There are also a few more bugs fixed in this release. Check out the included Version History for the full report.