Monday, April 30, 2007

4.1.2 will be finalized within a day or two

4.1.2, the release that just will not die, is a hair's breadth from being finalized. Tonight or maybe tomorrow are the targets, so please send me any issues that you are having with the latest beta. The only things that have changed since then are support for NetNewsWire's external editor protocol, another workaround for multipage PDFs (which is the single most annoying issue with the OS that MacJournal currently exposes), and a fix to remove some temporary files created when you open an attachment in another application. They're pretty isolated cases, so I don't think it will impact anything for the final. I'm looking forward to getting this one in the books. I've already started working on the next big version and it can be rough to do concurrent development like this. That doesn't preclude another bug fix release for 4.1, but it will be nice to get this release out the door.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

MacJournal 4.1.2b6

Download here.

This beta adds a real French localization, fixes the "Zoom" button in the main window so it's actually helpful, and extends the expiration date of the past few betas. I got sidetracked from 4.1.2 with work for a future release (for various reasons), so I want to get this release out the door as soon as possible.

Palm Conduit

This release includes the MacJournal Palm Conduit for the Missing Sync application. To use this you need Missing Sync For Palm installed. To install the Conduit, you should be able to double-click on the "MacJournal Palm Conduit.plugin" file included with MacJournal 4.1.2. If this does not work, you can drag this file into "/Library/Application Support/Palm HotSync/Conduits". When you open the MissincSync application, double-click on the MacJournal conduit and select a journal to sync. You will probably want to do a "Replace" sync on either the computer or handheld to start with before switching to "Synchronize."

Changes in 4.1.2b6
⁃ French localization
⁃ Improved handling of the "Zoom" button in the main window.
⁃ Fixed some table handling bugs.
⁃ Fixed a situation where the current data were not written out to disk before starting a .Mac sync.

New Features in 4.1
⁃ Improved Recording:
• Record more audio to append onto existing recordings.
• Panther compatibility.
• New Preferences panel for configuration of recording devices and levels.
• Record audio from an iSight
⁃ Improved Blogging:
• New Blogger+Google support
• Transactions with blogs can be cancelled in the Activity window.
• Improved compatibility with other blog types.
⁃ .Mac Data Syncing (see special note below)
⁃ Growl support
⁃ Improved Services functionality

There are a lot more changes since 4.0.5. You can check out the included Version History for the full details.

Special note about .Mac Syncing: While MacJournal 4.1 provides data syncing over .Mac, the current implementation in OS X for syncing seems more optimized for small data sets, like bookmarks or contacts. Trying to push tens or even hundreds of megabytes of data through syncing may not work as well as you might want due to limitations in Mac OS X at this time.

Features from 4.0

- 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.

Monday, April 23, 2007

New beta soon

There will be a new beta out soon to add the French localization and extend the expiration date. The final will be out soon as well. I've been traveling around some lately and that means I've only had my laptop with me, where I've been working on the Next Big Version of MacJournal. However, I will try to resolve the last few nagging issues in 4.1.2 (mostly issues with blogging) and get 4.1.2 final out as quickly as possible.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

MacJournal 4.1.2b5

Downloadz it now.

I know I said b4 was the last beta, but this one really is. Moments after this release goes out the door, I will build a Release-style build for 4.1.2 and only big fixes will go into that from this point on. I really need to get started on the next release and having this one hang around isn't helping matters.

Palm Conduit

This release includes the MacJournal Palm Conduit for the Missing Sync application. To use this you need Missing Sync For Palm installed. To install the Conduit, you should be able to double-click on the "MacJournal Palm Conduit.plugin" file included with MacJournal 4.1.2. If this does not work, you can drag this file into "/Library/Application Support/Palm HotSync/Conduits". When you open the MissincSync application, double-click on the MacJournal conduit and select a journal to sync. You will probably want to do a "Replace" sync on either the computer or handheld to start with before switching to "Synchronize."

Changes in 4.1.2b5
⁃ Added hidden toolbar item for accessing entry history directly.
⁃ Fixed crash with blockquoting and changing list modes.
⁃ Panther users should get HTML interpretation when downloading from Blogger again.
⁃ Fixed date formatting for Panther users with other date styles than US American.
⁃ Fixed a syncing bug in Palms.

New Features in 4.1
⁃ Improved Recording:
• Record more audio to append onto existing recordings.
• Panther compatibility.
• New Preferences panel for configuration of recording devices and levels.
• Record audio from an iSight
⁃ Improved Blogging:
• New Blogger+Google support
• Transactions with blogs can be cancelled in the Activity window.
• Improved compatibility with other blog types.
⁃ .Mac Data Syncing (see special note below)
⁃ Growl support
⁃ Improved Services functionality

There are a lot more changes since 4.0.5. You can check out the included Version History for the full details.

Special note about .Mac Syncing: While MacJournal 4.1 provides data syncing over .Mac, the current implementation in OS X for syncing seems more optimized for small data sets, like bookmarks or contacts. Trying to push tens or even hundreds of megabytes of data through syncing may not work as well as you might want due to limitations in Mac OS X at this time.

Features from 4.0

- 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.