Synergy Advance - 0.5.1b

• [Feature] User-customizable Dock menu.
• [Feature] Five additional optional hot key slots for for assigning half-star ratings.
• [Feature] Ability to set half-star ratings by holding down the option key while navigating the "Rating" menu; this applies both to the Global Menu and the Dock menu (feature request #240, "Menu items for half-star ratings").
• [Enhancement] Eliminate some redundant code only used on Panther for better performance.
• [Bugfix] For the purposes of updating the Global Menu, the "Fast forwarding" and "Rewinding" states are now considered to be functionally equivalent of the "Playing" state; previously they were left to fallback to the default (unknown) state.
• [Bugfix] To avoid confusion, suppressed echoing of harmless warning messages to console at default log level (bug #568, AEGetParamPtr error message written to Console every two seconds").

This includes the changes in the previously seeded 0.5 beta:

• [Feature] It is now possible to provide overrides in the Instant Messaging preferences panel to be used depending on whether iTunes is playing, paused, stopped or not running (feature request #471, "Separate control over iChat status when playing, paused, stopped etc").
• [Feature] Warning icon now shown when an invalid format string is entered; clicking on the icon takes the user to the appropriate help page on the website (feature request #475, "Show warning icon in UI for invalid format strings").
• [Feature] Three new checkboxes added to the Growl preference pane, allowing users to determine exactly which state changes ("Playing", "Paused" or "Stopped") should trigger notifications (feature request #527, "Option to turn off 'pause' notifications for Growl").
• [Feature] Many new Dock icon options for controlling opacity, colors, badging, progress meter; almost every aspect of the Dock icon can be customized.
• [Enhancement] Plug-ins can now add their own custom preference panes to the Synergy Advance preferences window. As an example, the iChat support is now bundled entirely within the iChat plug-in (previously it consisted of two separate components: a plug-in and a preference pane). This will enable the future deployment of fully-featured plug-ins that are well-integrated into the existing interface.
• [Enhancement] All Dock-related code has been moved into a separate plug-in which provides a dedicated preference pane for Dock-related preferences. Users not wishing to use Synergy Advance's Dock icon features can now deactivate the plug-in entirely for a performance and memory benefit.
• [Enhancement] Optimizations made to reduce the number of times Synergy Advance queries iTunes for cover art. Previously Synergy Advance queried for cover art every time a notification was received; now it only queries when there is a track change. As querying for cover art is a relatively resource-intensive operation this should lead to a more responsive user experience.
• [Enhancement] Application launch time is improved as a result of dismantling the large support framework, WOBase, and incorporating the code directly in the application itself. Likewise, absorbed the shared code used by all preference panes and plug-ins (previously in the "SynergyAdvance.framework") directly into the main application for further gains.
• [Enhancement] For ease of use the outline view in the Hot Keys preferences pane is automatically "expanded" when first displayed.
• [Enhancement] Massive code-audit and refactoring effort; almost every method in in every file has been improved and reworked under the rewrite (better logging of error conditions, more extensive exception handling, code more logically grouped for better maintainability and development speed, removal of redundant code for smaller memory footprint, enhancements to thread-safety and general robustness of code).
• [Enhancement] Rewrote hot key implementation to allow hot keys to work even when a full-screen game or other application has taken control of the display (feature request #524, "Make hot keys work when a fullscreen app/game is running"). This requires access for assistive devices to be enabled in the Universal Access pane of the System Preferences; if it is not enabled then Synergy Advance will fall back to the old hot key implementation.
• [Enhancement] In the Hot Keys preference pane filter out the "Fn-" prefix when applied by Cocoa to certain keys that always behave as though the "Fn" key (present on some laptop keyboards) were pressed even if it is not; affected keys include the arrow keys, page up, page down and so forth.
• [Enhancement] Optimizations and clean-up of the preferences back-end which should lead to slightly faster performance and lower resource utilization.
• [Enhancement] If Synergy Advance fails to find iTunes on the first attempt (as may occur when the user resets the Launch Services database), try again using a hard-coded path as a last resort.
• [Enhancement] The Dock icon code now uses Core Image for compositing, leading to higher image quality without increased resource consumption.
• [Enhancement] Icons in the preferences window toolbar now drawn with the assistance of Core Image during clicking and dragging.
• [Enhancement] Hitting the Return or Enter key after entering your email address and license code is now equivalent to hitting the "Verify" button (no need to use the mouse).
• [Enhancement] More informative message if a manual version check fails due to a network error (previously just said "No new version available at this time".
• [Enhancement] More appropriate usage of modal session APIs resulting in better CPU usage when some modal dialogs are displayed (for example, during activation).
• [Enhancement] Upgraded embedded Growl framework to the latest release (version 0.7.6) plus some minor fixes that have been committed to the Growl repository since then (Subversion revision 4072).
• [Enhancement] Users no longer need to hold down the Option key in order to insert a carriage return while specifying custom format in the Growl preference pane.
• [Bugfix] Fixed potential crash in iChat plug-in (bug #402, "Crash in iChat plug-in startScrolling method").
• [Bugfix] Fixed a known regression introduced with version 0.4b where the "Genres" and "Artists" menus provided album-level access but did not provide submenus for accessing individual tracks directly (bug #421).
• [Bugfix] Addressed remaining issue with the automatic version checking system wherein the user had to touch the automatic version checking preferences after launch in order to start the automatic version checking timer (bug #326).
• [Bugfix] Plugged a tiny memory leak in the method used to get the path to the "Application Support" folder.
• [Note] Changed the possible range of settings for the "Logging level" advanced preferences; possible values now lie in the range of 0 to 7 (the previous range was 0 to 10) and the default level has been changed from 0 to 5. This change was made to bring Synergy Advance in line with the logging levels specified for the BSD syslog facility in RFC 3164 and mirrored in Apple's ASL ("Apple system log facility"). See the documentation for the "Logging level" setting for more information.
• [Note] Bumped the minimum required Mac OS X version from 10.3.9 to 10.4. For users still running Panther the previous Synergy Advance release continues to be available from the download page.
• [Note] Removed the code for hiding and showing the Dock-icon for compatibility with Mac OS X Leopard's code-signing feature. The redundant sections of code have been removed in order to give Synergy Advance a smaller memory footprint.
• [Note] Although there are no plans to include non-English localizations with Synergy Advance prior to version 1.0 it is being developed with future localization in mind; with that end in mind added a small number of Spanish localized resources in order to test that the existing localization mechanisms are working correctly.
• [Note] Better compression on disk image.
• [Note] Dropped price of single-user licenses from 10€ to 9.95€.