News archive
TagCanvas 1.19
There are quite a few new features in this version of TagCanvas - more than I had intended, in fact. There are two new functions, two new shapes, several new options and a whole new control method. And some bugs fixed too.
The cloud above is an example of the new dragControl option in use.
I've attempted to make it iPad/iPhone compatible, but not having an iPad or
iPhone to play with means that I've had to do my testing with XCode's IOS
simulator. I've tested drag control with the Android emulator and the Windows
Phone emulator too, but the results are not encouraging. For some more details,
I've added a page about the new drag controls.
The new functions I mentioned are for pausing and resuming the cloud animation. Since there are now a grand total of three functions, I've added a function reference page explaining how to use the functions in both the stand-alone and jQuery plugin versions of TagCanvas.
SVGGraph 2.9
Since the release of version 2.8 of SVGGraph I've had quite a few emails about bugs and suggestions for new features. Version 2.9 fixes some things that were broken, improves some things that were not very good and adds some things that were not there before.
The biggest problem fixed by this version is the sizing and spacing of the axis text labels. In previous versions the longest label was guessed from the largest number (or the longest key for associative data). This worked some of the time, but failed when the axis subdivisions produced longer strings - the largest value could be “1”, but the longest label could be “0.125”. This version finds all the labels in advance to determine the longest.
JPEG Saver 4.6.1
Very little has changed in this version of JPEG Saver, which is why the version
number has only gone up by 0.0.1. On the other hand, the changes I
have made should make working with multiple config files a lot easier.
The first change is that JPEG Saver's config files are now saved with the
extension “.jscfg” instead of just
“.cfg” - this is because it was much too generic
before and used for all sorts of different config files. I've chosen
“.jscfg” because it is still fairly short and I could
not find any other software using it.
This change of extension (and the command-line options added in version 4.6) means we can now associate JPEG Saver config files with the screen saver executable - this is an option that is turned on by default in the updated installer, though you can turn it off if you don't want it.
SVGGraph 2.8
The words "radar graph" have been on the SVGGraph to-do list for a very long time, and every time I've seen those words I've had the song "Radar Love" by Golden Earring stuck in my head for hours afterwards. With version 2.8 of SVGGraph I can finally remove those words from the list. I'll probably end up with a song by the Shadows stuck in my head instead.
The radar graphs are generated by the new RadarGraph and
MultiRadarGraph classes, which behave quite similarly to the
LineGraph and MultiLineGraph classes. I've added a
new page to explain how they work.
TrayBlank 1.3
Whilst debugging the weird problem that I had with the JPEG Saver installer,
I realised that TrayBlank could do more to help
me out. In earlier versions, double-clicking the icon (or using the menu or
hotkey) would just send the SC_SCREENSAVE message to Windows
to start the screen saver and assume it was going to work. After all, why
would you want to start the screen saver if you didn't have one?
Version 1.3 adds some checking before attempting to start the screen saver. It will check that you have a screen saver selected, and that it is actually pointing to something that exists. If TrayBlank is not happy with either of these then it will show a balloon tip by its tray icon, suggesting that you fix it in the Control Panel.
Apart from that, I've also made this version cope with Windows Explorer being restarted. It doesn't happen often, but when your taskbar goes away and comes back again you really want your tray icons to come back with it. The new version is available from the downloads page.