MacJournal 4.1d6

Get it from here.

Welcome to the sixth test release of MacJournal 4.1. This release fixes several bugs from the past few releases in preparation for an ever-approaching final release. While not exactly feature complete yet, this release should be very solid. The final release of 4.1 will regrettably not have any localizations other than English as the release date crept up on me fast, but updated localizations will be included in 4.1.1.

Fixes and Enhancements
⁃ Fixes for downloading entries from Blogger, for the text from the old Blogger and the dates from the new one.
⁃ Fixed a problem printing the first time after you launch.
⁃ Fixed "Check for Updates" on all Intel machines.
⁃ Non-image attachments are written out to disk for an HTML export and a link to that file is included in the HTML.
⁃ Fixed some areas of Panther support, including the Edit Link sheet, exporting, and the window title of the main window.
⁃ Fixed a problem updating entries on MetaWeblog/Movable Type servers.

There are some more changes included in this release. You should check out the Version History for the full details.

About the last public release:

MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.

MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration

This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.

MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).


Reporting Bugs

If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me an email.

MacSanta and 4.1d6

MacJournal is currently featured on http://MacSanta.com/ at 20% off until the 25th!

4.1d6 is almost ready and should hopefully be out later this evening. It’s mostly all bug fixes to improve over the already pretty solid 4.1d5 release heading into the New Year.

MacJournal 4.1d5

Get it from here (look in the Dev page).

This release adds compatibility for the new Blogger Beta section. To use it, auto-configure your blog server based on the front page of your blog's web page and then use your GMail address as the username.

Enhancements
⁃ All blog operations are now cancelable in the Activity panel.
⁃ Removed the Blogger protocol from the Blog Configuration panel.
⁃ Added an "Open in Tab" menu item to the contextual menu when right-clicking on a link to an entry.
⁃ Appending text through Services will add the same header as it does when creating a new entry.
⁃ Added support for authenticating into a web page when automatically configuring it.
⁃ Command-Return will "OK" the Quick Note window.

Other Fixes
⁃ Fixed a crash creating a journal with the "+" button in the drawers.
⁃ Fixed sizing problems with images in entries (most easily visible with multiple images next to each other).
⁃ Fixed titling of some pages when exporting multiple pages to HTML.

There are some more changes included in this release. You should check out the Version History for the full details.

4.1 Status

After fighting with it off and on for several weeks, MacJournal 4.1 can now post to the new Blogger Beta using your Google login. With that in hand, expect a new release soon, probably sometime this weekend. With Blogger moving further and further away from the ancient protocol that bears its own name, I’ve decided to remove it from the protocol list in the blog configuration window. It was rarely the correct choice (if ever) and only server to confuse people trying to post to Blogger. Existing blogs configured with the Blogger protocol will continue to work though.

MacJournal 4.1d4

Check it out here.

This release should fix the crash present in 4.1d2 and d3 once and for all, and add a bunch of new enhancements.

Enhancements
⁃ Appending to existing audio recordings works now
⁃ Added time display to the Recording bar.
⁃ Added new Text Cleanup commands for controlling attachments: "Relocate" to move attachments to a folder on disk, "Consolidate" to move everything into the data file itself. I don't know if I like these names; they may change.
⁃ Switch Atom posting to use the new Atom 1.0 protocol. This should fix posting to Blogger. Unfortunately, Blogger changed the URL for posting entries. For the beta, existing blog servers will be transiently upgraded to the new URL scheme, but the change won't be saved in the database for now. New blogs you configure in the beta will use the new scheme and will therefore not work on 4.0 unless you reconfigure it.
⁃ You can access the menu bar during Full Screen by hitting the top of the screen with the mouse (on the screen, not in real life).

Other Fixes
⁃ Fixed another cause of the crash creating new journals or clicking on existing journals in the drawer.
⁃ Fixed sizing problems with images in entries (most easily visible with multiple images next to each other).

There are some more changes included in this release. You should check out the Version History for the full details.

About the last public release:

MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.

MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration

This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.

MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).


Reporting Bugs

If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me an email.

Happy Halloween

If you are running a 4.1 pre-release and generally keep it open for days at a time, it might be worth it to quit and relaunch today. For ... reasons.

MacJournal 4.1d3

This release is meant to clean up the issues in 4.1d2 and flesh out some of the existing features. The biggest addition is an addition to the Recording preference pane to let you specify the format of the recorded audio.

Other Fixes
- Fixed a crash creating new journals.
- Fixed some different crashes associated with .Mac syncing.

There are some more changes included in this release. You should check out the Version History for the full details.

MacJournal 4.1d2

Get it here.

It's been a long time coming, but welcome to the second test release of MacJournal 4.1! This is another large release with more new features and even more enhanced functionality. It is still labeled "developmental" though, because there is still one or two things that I have in mind.

This version includes support for syncing data over .mac. However, if you chose to turn this on, please back up your data before syncing!

Big Items
- The aforementioned .mac syncing. Make sure you read the note about it above.
- MacJournal now uses Growl to notify you of uploads, downloads, and data saves if you have it installed.
- Preference pane for configuring recording
- Labels toolbar item
- MacJournal launches in Panther again (hopefully).

Little Enhancements
- Tab behavior has been tweaked a little bit to be a bit more consistent with other tabbed apps (mainly web browsers). Attempting to open a second tab for an entry already in the tab bar will always select the previous tab now.
- Keyword searching is now case insensitive like the other text searches.
- Downloading entries will always ask for how many entries you want to download.
- Improved HTML export to include text justification.
- Added submenu to "Send entry to other blog" that shows all the configured blog servers.
- Change the journal summary that shows in the middle of the window to include entries in sub-journals.

There are loads more changes that are too numerous to mention, including some bug fixes from the last release. You should check out the Version History for the full details.

Not Included
- Yet more features!

About the last public release:

MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.

MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration

This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.

MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).


Reporting Bugs

If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me an email.

Moved Permanently

Running in parallel to the syncing efforts are Blogger/Google’s ongoing problems with third-party applications like MacJournal. There were a lot of problems when the new Google/Blogger (Glogger?) beta came out that extended beyond the beta area of the site and well into the “regular” portion that we all know and love. They fixed most of the problems within a week, but a lot of people are still having trouble posting to the Bloogle. It seems to happen all the time for some people, and not at all for others (like me, unfortunately). The error manifests itself as a cryptic message returned from the server: “Moved Permanently.” I don’t think there is nothing I can do on my end to avoid this as it seems it is entirely on the server side. Other third-party application developers are seeing this, according to their own developer mailing list. So I guess the best thing to do right now if you are seeing this problem is to email the folks at Bloogger and let them know your username and the problem you are seeing. Hopefully this will get resolved soon.

It works! Sort of.

This weekend saw the first successful test of MacJournal's .mac syncing support. I pushed the data up to .mac, blew away the local data, and reconstituted it from the server. There are a few issues left to be dealt with however: ordering of entries, and locking of unencrypted journals. The former can probably be solved with some extra knowledge of SyncServices, but the latter might be different. It's not good to just toss the password up to the server in cleartext, so the password itself can't be synchronized automatically. That means that the locked state cannot be synchronized either. This is different than encrypted journals, however. Since that is just a big blob of anonymous data, it's safe to push around. It's only the unencrypted locked journals that will get "out of sync."

Then there's the matter of Palms. There's always been the hope that pushing the data up to .mac would allow Palms to pull it down. However, the more I learn about SyncServices, the less I think that can happen. For Palms to make some sense of the data, it has to be in a format that it can understand. An existing format can be extended to provide new data types. Apple provides three such formats for developers to use and extend. These three formats are Bookmarks, Calendars, and Contacts. Therein lies the problem: there is no basic "Notes" data format for MacJournal to use and extend. Therefore I had to devise my own data format, which is all well and good for the uses of MacJournal, but it means that the data are fundamentally incomprehensible to anyone else by default. Of course, once I publish the data format, any other application can read and extend the data to its own desires, but nothing can happen by default. This is just my theory so far; I've got more questions to ask of SyncServices.

Syncing is coming along

Thankfully, it seems Blogger fixed the problem they introduced when they rolled out their new beta services recently and MacJournal can now safely post to Blogger via Atom again. That crisis averted, I spent most of the weekend working on .mac syncing. I don’t have any prior experience with SyncServices against which to judge this, but I think things are almost there. I have it doing a round trip with data on the same computer. The next step is actually syncing between two computers and working out whatever problems pop up there. After that, another beta can be released with this functionality turned on (finally). I’m looking forward to having it working soon!

Problems with Blogger

Blogger (aka Google) rolled out some new services a few days ago and it seems to have changed the way existing applications can send data, which is charming. I suspect it's the authentication, but I will look into it some more. I wasn't planning a 4.0.5 before 4.1, but this might require a change of plans. Of course, it could turn out to just be server problems on their end relating to the new functionality that will be worked out soon. We can hope, at least.

MacJournal 4.1d1

Get it here.

Welcome to the very first test release of MacJournal 4.1! This is quite a large release with some new features and a lot of enhanced functionality. Before we proceed with what is new, a quick word about version schemes. This release is labeled, 4.1d1, where the 'd' stands for "development" or "delta" (no one is really sure, but "diggity" is my favorite guess). That is a stage that comes before "alpha." Alpha is when all the features of a release are more or less included. After that comes "beta," where most of the bugs have been fixed and the user interface changes have all been made and locked down. After that comes the final release to the public. But 4.1d1 is before all that because it is still missing some key functionality that I want it to have. Keeping that in mind, let us continue on to what is actually in this release:

Big Items
- Recording has been completely rewritten to use QuickTime. This should provide a more stable platform going forward and allow for a lot more configurability. It also means iSights are usable.
- You can now send multiple entries to a blog at once. They must all go to the same place though.
- Exporting has been much improved. You can specify a text encoding for plain text files. More of your metadata is saved along with the file so if you export an entry and the re-import it, things like labels and edit-ability will be preserved. You can also specify what metadata you want included in the text of the file (instead of date+time or nothing).
- I gave up waiting for Apple to fix their bug in tables and worked around it. Tables should now be useful, even after you relaunch the app.

Little Enhancements
- Creating a new journal may insert the journal into another journal, depending on where you are in the app.
- New "Highlight" toolbar icon (it looks better)
- "Lock journals after idle" will now use the time that MacJournal itself has been idle, instead of the whole system.
- Attachments in the text will display their filename, Mail-style.
- You can now specify whether or not you want to enable comments on a Movable Type post.
- You can now specify the key equivalent for Full Screen mode right in the (real) prefs.

There are loads more changes that are too numerous to mention, including some bug fixes. You should check out the Version History for the full details.

Not Included
- .mac syncing. More work needs to go into this. Probably quite a bit. I wanted to get all the other changes into people's hands before I devoted my time to that though.


About the last public release:

MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.

MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration

This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.

MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).


Reporting Bugs

If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me email.

What's going on lately?

Here's what I'm working on nowadays:

1. First development release of 4.1 should happen next week sometime. I think I've got everything worked out for the things that are in there so far, and there will be more to come. No, .mac syncing does not make its debut in this release, but that is coming.
2. Universal build of TimeCard, which I forgot to do earlier this year. It should be out in the same timeframe as 4.1d1.

More about 4.1d1 when it comes out next week.

Status update

4.0.4 was posted a little while ago; everyone should see it in their Update panel. There were a few releases in a row to fix a few small problems and get everything squared away before 4.1. There will be a little while before 4.1 comes out, but I plan to start offering test releases in the middle or end of this month. I'll post more about the release and what is done already when we get there. .mac syncing is indeed back on the schedule for this release, although it may not make the first test release.

MacJournal 4.0.1

Download it from Mariner.

This is a small release to fix a few issues in 4.0. Blogging support has been enhanced and a few crashers have been fixed.

- Fixed sending line breaks and tabs to Atom blogs
- Fixed sending dates to MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed sending images to MetaWeblog servers.
- Improved downloading entries from MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed problem saving entered text in blog configuration window.
- Fixed a crash clicking "macjournal" links in other applications.
- Updated Danish, Japanese, and French localizations.
- Improved click accuracy of Full Screen cursor.
- Fixed rare crash when searching.

MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.

MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
        • background color
        • label
        • sorting
        • entry template
        • editable
        • blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration

This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.

MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).


Reporting Bugs

If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me email.

MacJournal 4.0.1b1

4.0.1b1 is a beta release to fix a few bugs in 4.0 before the final release of 4.0.1 (which will be very soon). Please try it out if you are having trouble with the release and let me know if it fixes what you were seeing and if it causes any new problems. Here's what is going on:

- Fixed sending line breaks and tabs to Atom blogs
- Fixed sending dates to MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed problem saving entered text in blog configuration window.
- Fixed a crash clicking "macjournal" links in other applications.
- Updated Danish and Japanese localizations.
- Improved click accuracy of Full Screen cursor.
- Fixed rare crash when searching.
- Added some basic error reporting for FTP uploads.

Download it here.

MacJournal 4.0

Holy cow, MacJournal 4.0 is out! After development of just over a year, it is finally out and available for download. Go to Mariner to get the final release. The betas will continue to work until they expire in a few weeks. There are already plans to get back to .Mac syncing very soon and hopefully get that working for reals this time. I don’t have a real timeframe for that yet, but I expect there will be betas for that as well.

Pricing details are on Mariner's website, but for the curious there is a $15 upgrade option for 3.0 users.

In the meantime, there are a certain number of things that are best done after a project is over, like switching version control systems. I’m thinking of switching to Subversion, so now is an opportune time to do that. Not that it matters at all to the user, but I just thought I’d mention it. ☺

Onwards and upwards!

MacJournal 4.0b4

Get it here.

This is the fourth (and probably final) beta release. This release fixes a few small bugs here and there in the application. A few crashes were fixed and a few small behavioral and appearance bugs were squashed. The biggest area of change was in the blogging: FTP-ing images works again, and sending categories to Movable Type blogs should work now.

Remember, last release I enabled some new licensing code in this release. If you haven’t used 4.0b3, You will be prompted for your serial number but the 3.0 serials will still work. I want to shake out any bugs in this new code before the final release.

Changes in this release:
- Fixed categories with Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed an occasional range exception in the journals drawer (usually seen when searching).
- Downloaded entries will be checked more thoroughly for duplicates before adding them to the journal.
- Improved the custom I-Beam cursor during Full Screen mode.
- Improved auto-recognition of Movable Type blogs.
- Lots of other little improvements; check out the Version History for the full details.

Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching

But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.

MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.


Reporting Bugs

This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released.

MacJournal 4.0b3

Get it here.

This release adds a few more localizations and fixes a few bugs from the previous betas. I’m also enabling some new licensing code in this release. You will be prompted for your serial number but the 3.0 serials will still work. I want to shake out any bugs in this new code before the final release.

Changes in this release:
- Added Italian and Korean localizations.
- Fixed a crash sending entries to Atom servers (like Blogger.com)
- Added new toolbar icons and recording bar appearance.
- Made it harder to accidentally type next to a link and extend the link.
- Hopefully made the Template window a little more accepting of font and color changes, even if the topic field is selected.
- A few other small bugs were fixed with an eye toward finally releasing the version.

Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching

But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.

MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.


Reporting Bugs

This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released.

MacJournal 4.0b2

Get it here.

This is the second beta release. This release adds a few localizations and fixes a few bugs from the first beta.

Changes in this release:
- Added Danish, German, and Taiwanese localizations.
- Fixed a problem saving and restoring blog server information.
- Fixed a problem retrieving entry text in AppleScript.
- Added ability to edit and delete license information in the about box.
- Fixed a problem posting links with ampersands to Atom blogs
- Fixed crash reporting.
- Fixed a crash changing entries when an empty search is active.
- Fixed a problem in the Entry Template window that would not use the default text attributes of a journal if there was no text.
- Downloading entries from Atom blogs will use the default styling of that journal.
- The keywords field in the Inspector will now auto-complete as you type.

Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching

But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.

MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.


Reporting Bugs

This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later.

MacJournal 4.0b1

Here comes the first beta release. MacJournal 4 is feature complete for this release. .mac syncing is still being worked out and won't be ready for the final 4.0. Too much is at stake if something goes wrong and I want 4.0 to be as solid as possible. Syncing will hopefully follow 4.0 by not too long.

Changes in this release:
- You can remove keywords in the sheet again.
- Fixed the search type menu in the Search toolbar item.
- Fixed custom background colors around checkboxes.
- Command-W will now close the current tab if there is more than one tab open.
- Added the modification date above the topic field if you click on it.
- Fixed the "Escape Non-ASCII characters" setting for blog servers and applied it to the topics as well.
- Fixed printing of white text.
- Restored Panther compatibility

Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching

But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.

The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.

MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.


Reporting Bugs

This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.

MacJournal 4.0a2

Welcome to MacJournal 4! This is the second alpha release. MacJournal 4 is for the most part feature complete. There is a chance that .mac syncing will make an appearance soon. I am working on it right now. Progress is being made, but there is a lot of danger inherent this sort of thing. There is still the possibility of only including it on a provisional standing in 4.0 and fully supporting it in 4.1. The goal is to get MacJournal 4 out in March and we need to get to localization soon. Between now and beta there will be a lot of small tweaks to get things ready to be locked down for the release.

Changes in this release:
- Added the ability to specify a journal in which to create a new entry and fixed a crash there.
- Added a warning when replacing the previous audio recording.
- Added toolbar items for Recording, Insert Table, and Text Color
- Text completion in the Font Name toolbar item is now case insensitive and added a hidden pref for only showing Roman fonts.
- Changed the default filename of the .Mac sheet to be based off the content.
- Upgraded date formatting to behave better with different locales.
- Reworked Drawer preferences.
- Added a PDF export option.
- Added a warning when using Text Cleanup menu items on multiple selections in the drawers.
- Fixed Typepad blogging support and fixed a crash with Friendster blogs.
- Added automatic crash log checking: if the crash log changes in between launches, MacJournal will offer to email the log to me.
- URL discovery is now a little more lenient about things like periods, commas, or a close parenthesis after a URL.
- Restore the pref for disabling automatic list discovery that accidentally got left out of a reorganization.
- Redid the Keywords sheet to show all keywords in the app with checkboxes next to the active ones.
- The Quick Note window should be movable and saved across launches.
- Added Insert->Safari Address menu item.
- Fixed a problem with Text Zoom not saving across launches.

Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode

But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.

The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.

MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.


Reporting Bugs

This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.

MacJournal 4.0a1

Download here

Welcome to MacJournal 4! This is the first alpha release. MacJournal 4 is now feature complete. All the features that are planned for release are now included in some fashion (although they may be changed a bit before beta). The goal is to get MacJournal 4 out in March and we need to get to localization started in February. Between now and beta there will be a lot of small tweaks to get things ready to be locked down for the release. I doubt I'll be able to resist a few small additions but nothing is for sure.

This release brings a full implementation for audio recording. It seems to only work on Tiger right now but I'm hoping to get it working on Panther before the final release. There is also a new "Quick Note" feature: set a key equivalent in the preferences and then use it in any application to make a quick note in any existing entry or create a new one.

Changes in this release:
- Added Movable Type as a real protocol type. If you have a MT blog, you'll want to reconfigure your blog settings.
- Added a special appearance for checkboxes in Full Screen mode
- Fixed a problem copying an entry URL to someplace only plain text is accepted.
- Added new recording UI, including meters.
- Added exporting of recordings in a journal to a podcast.
- Added importing of existing podcasts into a journal.
- Hold the Option key when clicking a checkbox to entry a "mixed" state.
- Tabbing with the insertion point next to a list item will take that list item with the tab.
- Fixed a bug with time zones when sending an entry to an Atom blog.
- iPod Notes export (essentially just text exporting but with internal links handled in the iPod Notes format)

Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode

But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.

The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.

MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.


Reporting Bugs

This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.



(By the way, the change-made-at-the-last-minute prize this time goes to "drag and drop in the recording bar." Congrats!)

MWSF

MacWorld San Francisco begins tomorrow. I'll be up in the exhibition hall in Mariner's booth on Friday if you'd like to stop by and say hi. We'll be demoing the latest builds of 4.0 and taking feedback. So come by if you can because I'd love to hear what you have to say and talk about it with you!

MacJournal 4.0d5

Welcome to the fifth developmental release of MacJournal 4! There are a few new features and a fair amount of cleanup in a lot of areas. The last release's new blogging architecture will probably trump anything new this time around, but it's a good release nonetheless. Probably the biggest addition is the support for audio recording. It's not pretty, it's not configurable, and it's not even entirely functional, but it works well enough to try for now. Just in case, audio recordings won't stick around between launches. This is to ensure the final solution won't conflict with the current one.

There is also a change to searching so the results are presented in a flat list instead of a hierarchical one in the Journals drawer. This one might be controversial, so please let me know what you think.

In the realm of smaller changes, there are more drag and drop improvements, tied in with Services improvements as well. This releases also marks the departure of the venerable Blogger and LiveJournal sheets. Farewell, old friends! We knew you well.

Changes in this release:
- Audio Recording is partially implemented. Get there from the View menu. Recordings will not be saved across launches until things mature a bit.
- Search for entries will now show a flat list of results in the Journals drawer instead of the normal hierarchical result.
- You can drag entries onto other entries to append the text.
- You can drag text/entries onto the dock icon to append it to an entry or create a new entry with it.
- You can now selectively strip styles out of incoming text from Services
- Exporting journals to HTML as one-file-per-entry will now convert the internal MacJournal links to relative links to the other entry's exported file (if that entry is being exported).
- In addition to FTP, an iDisk (yours or someone else's) is now a possible location for attachments when sending to a blog.
- The character count is shown alongside the word count now.
- Improved handling of slow data locations, like putting your data file on an iDisk. The app should not hang while it is saving to disk anymore.
- I also added a way to show the font previews in the font toolbar item (which is hidden and disabled by default).
- Added "Copy URL to Entry" to Edit menu
- Hitting return on an empty list line will end the list (like Word)
- Added a search category for Labels in the Search toolbar item.
- Fixed a variety of crashes, quirks, and behavioral oddities in a number of places.

Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:

- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode

But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.

The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.

MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.


Reporting Bugs

This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.