Arachnid is COPYRIGHTED by the University of Iowa.
Welcome to the Beta 1.8 release of Arachnid. This is a maintenance release to correct a couple of problems.
New or changed in beta 1.8
The Tools palette is now Closeable. There is a new menu next to the Format menu. This the Tools menu. A greatly simplified, HyperCard like, version of the Tools palette is available as a pull down menu from the Tools menu. Unfortunately, unlike the HyperCard Tools menu, Arachnid's is not "Tear-offable". I hope to have this ready for the next version. This smaller Tools palette is also available with the View menu. Both Tools palettes have commends within the View menu. Arachnid only allows one of the two to be open at a time. So if one is open, opening the other will close the palette that was previously open. Command 1 and 2 keys will opens the big and small Tools palettes, respectively.
Entire library of Links, including all URLs and possible project pages links, are now available as a pull down menu. A Links menu is next to the Tools menu. The Links menu is split into 6 logical types: URLs, page Links, Movie Links, Image Links, Audio Links, and other Links. A sorted list of each type of link is available as a submenu of the Links menu. The exception to this are the Page link menu, which is an ordered list of the pages within your project, and the URLs menu. The URLs menu contains 6 submenus, one for each of five different types of URLs and another for all remaining types. Based on the Name associated with each URL, there are sorted lists for: HTTPs, FTPs, MailTos, News, and Gopher addresses.
The Library palette now generates a message when you try to cut URL, page or text links. You cannot perform these operations with the Library palette.
Arachnid's True Spacing is no longer a Preference. When you Export there are options for the spacing method. The Default setting is Normal spacing.
The method for menubar maintenance has been changed. There is a slight delay before most menus pull down. This insures that the only enabled commands within the menu are those which are defined based on the current Mode and current selection(text or objects). Before this change, the Tools palette attempted to do this, very ineffectively. Each time a mode or tool was changed this would happen. With this no longer happening, switching between modes and tools should be noticeably snappier.
