9/25/24: More than a handful of updates

Write is the big winner in this update. It finally has the SVG fix mentioned in the 7/19/24 update. There are several improvements to saving to HTML and EPUB. Plus a bunch of bug fixes.

Several other apps also have bug fixes and minor enhancements.

  • Calculator's sort feature will ignore articles in text cells.
  • Groceries.
  • Hearts.
  • Journal.
  • Notes inherits Write's improvements to HTML saving.
  • Photo can search for marked photos.
  • Spite and Malice.

By the end of October, I expect all my novels to be available for free. They will also be on Amazon for a small fee, because if I don't put them there myself, someone will pirate them from the free sites and try to sell them on Amazon. How do I know? Because it happened twice.



7/19/24: Summer updates are best

Five updates are available today. These are modest but very useful enhancements, and some bug fixes, especially in Notes.

SVG is a picture format introduced several years ago, intended especially for use on the web. It's been a second-class citizen on the Mac: Growly Draw could open many of them, but most apps other than Safari couldn't. Starting in Mac OS 14 Sonoma, any app that can open image files can also open SVG, but there's a problem. If you put an SVG image into a document, then open that document on an earlier version of Mac OS, the OS will not draw it.

Draw, Calculator, and Notes have a fix for this: when they import SVG images they convert the image to a format that will be displayed on any version of Mac OS. This fix will be coming to Write later this year, along with other enhancements.

  • Calculator had some vexatious bugs during row and column dragging and copy/paste to other apps.
  • Checkbook has a new option to highlight an item to make it easier to spot. You can also search for highlighted items.
  • Notes had a few bugs that crept in when the new toolbars were introduced in May. Also, it now does a better job of importing tables.
  • Photo has a new tool in the preview window: it closes preview and selects the current photo. I can't believe it took me so long to add this.

Also, if you're aware that I have two non-paying careers (GrowlyBird and writing novels), or even if you weren't, check out my novels page. There's a link on the About Us page. I've put a lot more of my novels up as free ebooks. Some are still just on Amazon, but I expect that to change sometime this summer.



5/7/24: No, I'm not dead

Yes, it's been 5 months since I updated any GrowlyBird apps, but that doesn't mean I'm dead. I've just been busy with other projects, and a big update that took a lot longer than I expected.

Every GrowlyBird app is being updated today. Calendar, Draw, and Notes have some minor but tasty enhancements. Most apps have bug fixes. But the two big changes are:

The toolbar


Starting in Mac OS 11, Apple folded the toolbar into the title bar. Look at Notes or Write, for example, or the Finder for that matter: the tools used to be below the window title, but now they're crammed up there wth the document name and the stoplight buttons. I'm sure Apple had its reasons (probably just allowing more space for the document content), but that change had several drawbacks.

  • The more complex GrowlyBird apps have a large assortment of tools available, and with less space to put them, you can't have as many tools on the toolbar as you could in Mac OS 10.
  • In some apps the default toolbar layout has a logic to it. In Calendar, for example, the detail options were above the detail pane, and the month display options were above the calendar itself. In the smushed-up toolbar that Apple supports now, that kind of arrangement is impossible.
  • Because of the limited room available, the flexible space has been turned into a simple divider like this: |. Thanks, boys, that's not very flexible. I like to put the search field (when there is one) over on the right and separate from the other tools. The flexible space made that possible, but the new design took that away.

I think this should have been an option, but since they didn't do that, I made a command decision of my own: GrowlyBird apps will not use the crunched-up toolbars any more. Starting in this update, all GrowlyBird apps that have toolbars now put the tools below the title bar where they used to be. That means Calculator, Calendar, Checkbook, Groceries, Journal, Notes, and Write. This also includes every Help window.

The toolbars can be customized as before. The procedure is exactly the same, though the appearance of the customization window is a little different.

For those of you still using Mac OS 10 (we support systems all the way back to 10.10), this toolbar update doesn't bring you any benefit. The only reason for you to update is if you're interested in bug fixes in an app that you use a lot. Contact me and I'll let you know what they are.

Please let me know if you encounter any difficulties with the new old toolbars. It took a surprising amount of work to do this. If you're not interested in going back to the old way, then don't update.


Help


You may not be aware of this, but every GrowlyBird app has a comprehensive help file. Almost every app had the same bug in help, namely that searching didn't work any more. That has been fixed. The help windows use the new toolbars as mentioned above.

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