The last of the troubling little issues when running in Mac OS X 10.6 have been addressed and passed muster, so it's time for this release to go final.
Please do go see all about it at the historical release notes page, and the beta page is closed for the meantime, the download page is the place to be.
We let things bake for a little while during the release of OmniGraffle 5.2.1 beta 2, we just wanted to make sure that there wasn't another shoe left to drop when running under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and things are looking pretty good, so here's a release candidate for you all.
Peruse the historical release notes page, and find the release candidate at the not-so-properly-named beta page.
We found a handful of bugs since the release of version 5.2.1 beta 1 a couple of weeks ago, and felt that they should be addressed post-haste, as it were. A couple of crash fixes have been made, an error thrown when pasting in data from OmniOutliner got looked at, and some needed tweaking of the multi-touch trackpad code have all been implemented for this beta release.
We encourage you to download and give beta 2 a try (if it's your proclivity to participate in the beta releases), and as always the beta download page and historical release notes await.
It was inevitable. Try as hard as one might, there will always be those one or three bugs that escape notice, and as a result a small maintenance or point release is required.
OmniGraffle is no different in this case, and since the release of version 5.2 last month, we've been alerted to a small number of issues having mostly to do with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), so here's a beta release to resolve said issues.
Read all about it at the historical release notes page, find the beta to download here.
Lots of news today, people, so I'm going to try and keep this short so you can skip straight ahead to the part where you sit back and bask in that new-software smell.
Updated: OmniFocus! OmniFocus 1.7 is now available for your downloading pleasure, and includes a bevy of interface improvements designed to make everything just a little more smooth and simple. We also re-worked Perspectives, hopefully making the process of working with them much easier. Overall sync performance has been improved (yay!), and you can now view a list of the attachments in your OmniFocus document, and delete them as necessary to speed up document syncing even more.
Also updated: OmniGraffle! OmniGraffle 5.2 includes support for support for portables with Multi-Touch trackpads, so you can now pinch to zoom in or out, resize a selection, or rotate a selection. We also added fixes to tables, shared layers, and dealt with some stability issues.
Also also updated: EVERYTHING ELSE. OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniWeb, OmniPlan—hold on, typing cramp . . . okay—OmniGraphSketcher, OmniDiskSweeper and OmniDazzle have all been updated with support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
You do not EVEN want to know what time the engineers went to bed last night, is what I'm saying.
Everything can be downloaded from our handy-dandy Snow Leopard status page. Enjoy!
An intrepid user noticed that the CFBundleDisplayName was incorrectly dubbed as OmniGraffle Pro for the standard version of OmniGraffle in the first release candidate, so here's a second candidate before going final.
Find it at the beta page, and read up on release notes here.
The other day I heard one of my coworkers mention OmniPlan's gibberish-izer, and while it gave me pause I figured they were referring to some code-related whatchamadingie and calling attention to the fact that I was out of the vernacular loop would only serve to underscore the misperception that marketing weasels are kind of mouth-breathy when it comes to technical stuff.
(I mean, clearly this isn't true—just look how masterfully I threw out the term “whatchamadingie” just now! Surely that makes up for my ongoing failure to make any sense of words such as “grep”, “sudo”, and that embarrassing misunderstanding regarding “zombies”.)
As it turns out, though, there is in fact an actual gibberish-izer built into both OmniPlan and OmniGraffle. It probably has a real feature name and everything, but since no one bothered to ask ME what to name it (hello, MUMBO-JUMBOTRON! Could there be a better name? Don't step too close, now, or you'll get my sheer unrelenting genius all over you, and that stuff will stain), I'll just tell you that it's a clever bit of functionality that garbles the data in the documents you send us.
If you choose “Send Feedback” from the Help menu in OmniPlan, you'll get an option to include a copy of your document with your email. If you'd like to gibberish-ize it, OmniPlan will replace all your tasks, resources, and notes with random boring names like “Task 17” and “Resource 5”. This way, we can take a look at the structure of your document and help you figure out any problems you might be having, but all your confidential information is protected.
CONFIDENTIAL HIGH-RISK INFO! OMG!
UNEXCITING SANITIZED INFO. WHEW.
With OmniGraffle, we give you the option to convert all text to gibberish (text is actually replaced with little x's, like dead fish eyeballs!). So, whatever your nefarious plans and diagrams may be, you can always email them to us . . . without, you know, sharing everything with us.
The More You Know™!
A release candidate, and pretty much in the nick of time if some rumors about the impending release of a certain operating system are to be believed.
Speaking of which, there are a number of smallish fixes in place to provide better compatibility with the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”, along with some other fun bug fixes and localization fixes for our international users.
Read all about it at the beta download page, and peruse the historical release notes if you so choose.
We talk a lot about all the awesome things you can represent with OmniGraffle, like wireframes, functional flow charts, heck, even your breakfast. You can use OmniGraffle to fill out forms, communicate ideas, or design a strategy game. Or put together a crochet pattern! Or plan your pool room!
It's our most versatile piece of software, and the one that's often hardest to describe. At least for someone like me, who might hear “diagramming” and think, hurrrrrrgh, org charts. Blech. Thanks but no. Process diagrams? Yeah, well, if I need someone to document the nightly 3 AM wakeup calls in our house, I'll . . . oh wait, I already did.
(PS: good lord, I made that document in 2006. And we then had a SECOND CHILD. Who is STILL WAKING US UP.)
(PPS: This is why all my blog posts suck. I haven't slept in three freaking years.)
Anyway, for all the fancypants diagramming and information communication-fu OmniGraffle is capable of, it also happens to be a perfect program for page layout. I've used it to create holiday cards, brochure mockups, missing-pet posters (more than one, even, because either our pets are dumb or we are terrible owners), and most recently, a basic flyer for software resellers.
It's easy to get text and graphics exactly how you want them to look, the smart guides make lining everything up a breeze, and you don't have to wrestle with a desktop publishing app to get professional-looking results. Yeah, you could do something like this in a word processor, but why not repeatedly stab your eyes with a grapefruit spoon while you're at it?
Do you ever use OmniGraffle as a page layout program? What sorts of documents are you making with it?
A few regressions and bugs addressed, a number of crashes fixed (including a pesky Quick Look related crash), and a little bit of a new feature added in this release:
Canvas names are retained on export to PDF, for various bookmarking and navigational purposes in whatever PDF viewer happens to be your favorite.
Please do take a look at the beta download page and historical release notes.
