Latest News

Hello!

It's been quite a while since our last post so we wanted to inform you of what's been going on.

• We switched our site's host to Host Monster. The switch happened efficiently and correctly (we thought we'd be fighting for weeks trying to wrestle our domain from the previous host.) The technical support at Host Monster is also terrific.
• We, at bitpatterns, have been revamping iPhotoWebShare. We're getting close to releasing the new version (v2.0) to beta testers. If anyone would like to help test out the new version, let us know!
• The current version of iPhotoWebShare works with iLife '08, so go ahead and upgrade.

With respect to v2.0, the biggest change is support for themes! Most of the last year we spent fighting with the various browsers trying to get the themes work in all of them. It appears we'll have three themes available for the release, although I think only one is fully usable by Internet Explorer. All work great in Safari, Firefox, and Opera.

Stay tuned for the beta! (and thanks for your patience!)

bitpatterns Home Page is Moving

Our web site is temporarily down. We're moving to a different web host provider and are in the process of moving the domain. Sorry for the disruption.

iPhotoWebShare v1.4 beta 2 available

We've released another beta version which corrects a few problems we found in the first beta. One of the bugs prevents you from stopping iPhotoWebShare from running. Once you download and install this version, you need to do the following before you can start the new version:

• Run the "Activity Monitor" Application. It is found in Applications -> Utilities.


• The "Activity Monitor" will show all the processes running on your system. In the "Filter" box (near the upper left corner of the window) type iphotod. If you have iPhotoWebShare running, there should be one entry that matches.


• Click the "Quit" button and press the "Quit" button in the confirmation dialog.

You should now be ready to run the new version.

We also want to thank all the beta testers out there for their helpful feedback! Thanks!

UPDATE: We have been informed that the image we placed on the web site wasn't a Universal Binary. Sorry about that! I'll update this entry when the new one is ready.

UPDATE 2: The Universal Binary version is available. (It's the same link as above.)

iPhotoWebShare v1.4 beta available

After an embarrassingly long delay, we are pleased to announce a beta of the next iPhotoWebShare release. Thank you for being so patient with us!

If you want to evaluate the beta (and help us find any bugs), you can get it here. Please don't announce this to any of the software sites (VersionTracker, MacUpdates, etc.) We'll make the official announcement once we release v1.4.

Most of the changes to this version are under the hood, so it doesn't look too different from previous ones. The changes are:

• Universal binary support. We don't have access to an Intel-based Mac, so we can't test this out. We appreciate any feedback our users can provide.


• Support for international characters. We believe our mishandling of international character sets is why some of the file selection dialogs didn't work and why some pictures weren't getting served. International users can help us determine whether we fixed these issues.


• Movie playback should work better.


• BMPs are now supported.


• Some libraries' thumbnail view would display a horizontal scrollbar. We reproduced the problem on one of our libraries and fixed it. The way we determine the number of thumbnails that can fit in a row is kinda kludgey. We've been designing a new layout which uses sytle sheets to determine the layout, so even if our current kludges aren't perfect, the problem will go away when we switch to CSS.

Thanks again for your patience!

Extensive code changes...

We've been working on v1.4 of iPhotoWebShare. Right now we're in the middle of an extensive set of changes. It all started in trying to support International characters correctly. In earlier versions, we were doing all the processing and passing of charatcers around instead of letting OSX do the work.

Hopefully we'll finish this set of changes in the next day or so. There are a few other loose ends we need to finish before the next release.

On another note, one long-standing bug appears to have gone away with the most recent version of Tiger. It used to be hit-or-miss whether iPhotoWebShare started after a reboot. Under OSX 10.4.6, we see iPhotoWebShare correctly restarting everytime. We'd like to hear other people's experiences. Has this problem gone away?

Works with iPhoto6!

We received our copy of iLife'06 and tested iPhotoWebShare against it. iPhoto6 is still generating the AlbumData.xml file that we monitor, so we can add iPhoto6 to our compatibility list!

In addition, we like to say that iPhoto6 is a terrific update to the iPhoto series; it's quicker than previous versions, it uses a fraction of the memory that prior versions used, and it has a full screen edit mode that is a pleasure to use.

iPhotoWebShare Tip #1

The web page generated by iPhotoWebShare has a drop down menu to select an iPhoto library. Every iPhotoWebShare site I've visited only has one entry in this list. Most people assume (understandably) that the pull down menu is for users that have more than one iPhoto library. What most people haven't realized is that you can increase the number of entries in the list with only one iPhoto library!

You can add the same iPhoto library multiple times (from the System Preferences.) Each time you add your library, give it a different name. For instance, I've added my iPhoto library three times. The first time I added it, I called it "Vacations" and I only selected albums that have vacation pictures. I then added the same library again, but called it "Holidays". This one only has albums relating to holidays enabled in it. Finally, I have a miscellaneous entry that I enable albums that aren't in the other albums.

By adding the same iPhoto library more than once, you have one more level of organization to your libraries.

v1.3 has been released

We felt it was time to release v1.3. The beta testers didn't find any problems, although they did have more requests for features. So we listened to one of the requests and added it to this release.

We had the beta testers check out the "Download full-size" link in the slideshow. One tester wanted to be able to specify which photos, albums, or library allow the images to be downloaded. We placed this configurable option at the library level.

When you open the preference pane and go to the library tab, you'll see a checkbox which determines if the images in the currently selected library can be downloaded in their full-size.

The "download full-size" feature works great in Safari, Firefox and Camino. We didn't test it under Opera. Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well under Internet Explorer. Since IE7 is coming out soon and we've converted our friends and family to Firefox, fixing IE6 support is low on the list.

v1.3 beta is out

We've sent out v1.3 to our beta testers! Hopefully, in the next few days, we'll get some feedback about the latest version. We're planning on releasing this version next week (provided the beta testing goes well.)

Progress?

It's been a while since the last entry, so I thought I'd give a status report for those of you waiting for the next version.

We installed Tiger and tested to see whether iPhotoWebShare broke. It didn't (for us -- however, we've had a small number of reported problems from others.) We also installed the latest development environment from Apple. We're trying to keep up with Apple's latest technology, but at the same time, we don't want to alienate the Panther users (I'm pretty sure we don't run on Jaguar.) So we have the latest, optimizing compilers and we try not to use Frameworks only present on Tiger. It can be a real balancing act trying to meet these goals...

At the same time, we're working on some much needed features (sorry, not selectable themes -- yet!)

We appreciate your messages of encouragement (and your donations are great motivators, too!) Please be patient -- there's a lot of life left in this project.