Thank you for helping me with my beta testing. Here are some new things that I've added to the 2.0 version. Please keep in mind that this is a time limited beta and will expire on March 1st. It's still freeware, just want to make sure that everybody gets the final versions and that there are no old buggy betas left out in circulation. Though most people have been having pretty good luck with the betas, keep in mind that this is beta software, your success may vary.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN: You may want to make a backup of your Sigerson Preferences file from the Preferences Folder. The preferences file should be readable with the previous version if you want to go back, but I have not tested this. So if you have spent a lot of time creating search sets, make a backup of this before running the beta.
NEW FEATURES
in beta2
The Sigy Hot Key extension. Place this in your extensions forlder and restart your mac. Now there will be a new menu item under 'edit' called HotKey that will let you configure the hot key. You can use FKeys, or any other key on the keyboard with any combination of modifier keys. I may be able to get the memory usage down for the final release, right now it takes about 600-800k, which is a lot! So if you're short on memory you dont have to use this. Please give it a try though and tell me what you think. In the HotKey dialog in Sigerson it also gives you the option of unloading the extension which will recover the memory for you if you need it.
The other problem with the hotkey extension is that currently the keystroke falls through to the application. So you must pick a key combination that doesn't mean anything to the apps you're using.
Combination of Search Sets: If you select multiple sets from the popup while holding down the Shift key the plugins will be added to the current set, instead of replacing the current set. So if you wanted to search with both your books and movies sets. Select Movies, then hold the shift key down and select books.
Various bug fixes
I'm planning for this to be the last beta before the final release.
In Beta 1
Sort by Categories:
There is a new column in the listbox for category. Under the edit menu there is a Category menuitem that will let you create categories to choose from. If you click in the category column of the listbox you will get a popup of all your categories to pick from for that plugin. You can sort the list by category name now as well. The category column is resizable, just move your mouse over the border between the columns and the cursor will change. You can then drag to resize.
Drag install of new plugins:
You can drag a plugin, a folder of plugins, or a folder with folders of plugins (like the big file from apple-donuts) onto the Sigerson window and they will all be installed into your Sherlock Plugins folder. No more opening all the folders and draging stuff around.
If you dragInstall the master file from apple-donuts, or elseware, Sigerson will pick up the name of the folder and set that to the category of the plugin.
Better management of corrupted plugins:
at load time, istead of just giving you a list of corrupted plugins now gives you the option of moving them to the desktop or the trash.
Hide unchecked sets from Sherlock:
With the hundreds of plugins now available, leaving them all in the sherlock window can cause memory problems, not to mention making Sherlock, and Sigerson, very slow to startup. This option, in the preferences dialog, hides the unchecked plug-ins from Sherlock. If you have only checked a few sites it can make Sherlocks startup and search run much faster.
If you are doing multiple searches with sherlock, it will be necessary to quit and restart him to pick up the new sets you have checked. If you do a search with Sherlock already running, Sigerson will ask you if you want to restart Sherlock or not before performing the next search and can do this automatically for you.
Sigerson QuickLoad Screen:
There is a small triangle to the right of the sets popup. Clicking on this switches between the regular Sigerson screen and the Quickload screen. The quickload screen only has a popup to choose your set and a field to enter your search. If you dont need to work with the list of all sites, this window will load instantly. You can switch back to the normal screen at any time by clicking the arrow again. If you normally want to work with the full screen, but want the Quickload for a single search, hold down the Command key while starting Sigerson.
This screen in combination with the "hide unchecked search sites from Sherlock" option can greatly speed up your work flow.
Editing the Search Site Plug-ins:
You can now edit a plugin from within Sigerson. Simply highlight the plugin in the list and select "Open" from the file menu. Please be carefull though, if you change something it can render the plugin useless unless you know what you're doing. Changing it's name or something like that is safe though. Note that any changes you make will not show up in Sigerson till the next time you run it.
Moving plugins around:
If you want to pull a plug-in out of the Plug-ins folder you can now do this from Sigerson and you dont have to go digging around in your system folder for it. Control-click on the site in the list and it will give you the option of moving the selected plugin to the trash or to the desktop.
Locking a search set:
Previously if you had a search set selected, any changes you made to the selected sites would be saved in that set. Now you can lock your search sets so that no changes can be made inadvertantly to them. If you make a change to a locked set, Sigerson will create a new untitled set based on the locked one for you to edit. You can lock and unlock your sets by clicking the padlock icon button to the right of the Sets Popup menu.
International Support:
International users will now be presented with a dialog box asking them to find the folder containing the Internet Search Sites when they first run Sigerson. (unlike in 1.5 where they are presented with an empty listbox) After selecting this once Sigerson will remember it. If you want to choose a different folder use the "forget" button in the preferences dialog. Restart Sigerson and you will be asked again. This is usefull if you selected the wrong folder.
Better Themes Support:
In the preferences dialog you can select whether the windows in Sigerson will have a white background, which I thinks looks better with the Platinum theme. If you are using an alternate theme that sets a default background you can set this to "none" and Sigerson will use the default set by the Theme.
Hotlinks on "About" page:
There are now hotlinks on the About Sigerson page for the Sigerson home page and my email address. Can you find the easteregg?
Old problems I think I have fixed:
International support is working!
The problem with duplicate site listings in the listbox may be fixed. I've not been able to duplicate the problem! There is a new item in the FIle menu, "Remove Duplicate File LIstings" this will reload the listbox and get rid of any duplicates. (this can also be used to rebuild the list after you have made changes to a plug-in via the new editing feature) If you have to use this, please send me a bug report so that I can continue to track this issue down. Out of nearly1600 registered users, I've had about 12 reports of the problem, so it's not widespread, but I still want to get it fixed!
Things that aren't working yet that I know about:
Please dont send a bug report for any of these things:
Listbox sorting is a little screwy: Sorting by category doesn't do a subsort by name yet. If you press the category header multiple times will make the sets within a category re-arrange themselves. This is only cosmetic, it will not effect your search sets, but I am working on it.
REPORTING BUGS/REQUESTING FEATURES:
As a beta tester it is your job to help me make this a great program! Please let me know about any problems that you have. Send an email to sentman@wwa.com and put "Sigerson 2.0 beta" in the subject line. Also please let me know if something doesn't work the way you think it should, or if you have ideas for making it better. Most of the new features of 2.0 were suggested by you guys. Thanks for the feedback.
