TuneConnect

File Release Notes and Changelog

Release Name: tuneconnect-2.1

Notes:
Happy Fathers' Day. :)

Changes:
Changelog for TuneConnect for Mac

Changes from version 2.0 to 2.1:
* Fixed command double-send bug
* Fixed (?) cut-off UI glitches
* Fixed bezel UI glitches
* Fixed "window closed" undefined behavior
* Modified "zoom button" behavior to better mirror iTunes
* Streamlined server install process
* Added support for externally-located iTunes libraries
* Added ability to add multiple songs to Party Shuffle simultaneously
* Modified "no artwork available" display
* Bundled Last.fm plug-in with client
* Made Music Browser window resizable
* Added server support for iPhone/iPod Touch client (Tunage v1.2)

- Fixed command double-send bug
-- This was the trickiest bug I've probably ever had to work on, and I'm
-- so glad that it's finally resolved. Basically, here's what would happpen:
-- if two commands were sent in quick succession, the second command would be
-- doubled up, for whatever reason. So, for instance, if the user tried to
-- skip to the next track immediately after the client loaded artwork, two
-- tracks would be skipped. I couldn't find any problems with my own code,
-- and as it turns out, there *were* none. :P A combination of Twisted.Web
-- and CFNetwork/NSURLConnection are misbehaving in tandem in the way that
-- they handle certain requests. In any event, since the problem was not in
-- my own code, I felt no qualms about implementing a patchy workaround.
-- Behavior is now much better, and track scrubbing even behaves more
-- appropriately now. :)

- Fixed (?) cut-off UI glitches
-- A few users reported seeing half cut-off LCD windows, which is behavior
-- that I had never witnessed. However, all of these users were using non-
-- English languages as their system defaults. I recalled that I had split
-- my UI file into English and French in preparation for a localization that
-- never made it into the release, but had forgotten to repair a few crucial
-- pieces of the French UI. I'm *guessing* that this was the source of the
-- problems. I've merged them back into a single file, and I *hope* that will
-- fix the UI glitches people observed.

- Fixed bezel UI glitches
-- In 2.0, TuneConnect listened to the window:didBecomeKey: and
-- window:didResignKey: delegate messages to detect when it needed to replace
-- its customized bezel images with the correct active/inactive state ones.
-- A curious use case occurred, however: when viewing the About box, the
-- images swapped out, but the window itself did not become inactive as far
-- as the OS was concerned, so it looked horrible. I switched the app to
-- listen to the didBecome*Main*/didResignMain messages instead, and it now
-- all works as intended.

- Fixed "window closed" undefined behavior
-- TuneConnect user Ryan Dunn reported a large list of bugs/observed
-- abnormalities, for which I'm very thankful, one of which was that I had
-- neglected to define a behavior for when the main TC window was closed:
-- the application neither quit, nor was it possible to reopen the window. I
-- thought the matter over, and decided it was most appropriate for the app
-- to quit when the last window was closed. So thus, that is the new
-- behavior.

- Modified "zoom button" behavior to better mirror iTunes
-- Another thing that Ryan pointed out was that the zoom button (the little
-- green one, aka maximize button) did not quite mirror the behavior of
-- iTunes when it came to switching in and out of the mini-player. I
-- discussed and debated the matter with Andy Matuschak and the voices inside
-- my head, and eventually opted to modify the behavior in some ways. It is
-- far too strenuous for me to describe the exact conditional behavior the
-- zoom button now follows, but trust me: it *feels* natural.

- Streamlined server install process
-- In the 2.0 release, I wrote a PyObjC app to facilitate the installation of
-- of the TuneConnect Server preference pane. Unfortunately, it was bloated,
-- slow, and did not take user choice into consideration with regards to
-- where the preference pane was stored (~/Library/PreferencePanes vs.
-- /Library/PreferencePanes), and also failed if the PreferencePanes
-- directory didn't already exist. It was a small disaster. Anyway, I rewrote
-- the app in pure Objective-C using LaunchServices to install the pane,
-- which obeys whatever choices the user has previously selected, or allows
-- them to choose at runtime where they'd like the pane installed. It's much
-- faster, and much more stable. Incidentally, the whole reason I need the
-- installer app in the first place is because the old server *must* be
-- stopped before the new server is installed. I *could* just tell my users
-- to make sure they stop the old server before installing the new one... but
-- that's not a chance I'm willing to take. ;)

- Added support for externally-located iTunes libraries
-- This was a fun bug to fix. A user reported on our bug tracking website
-- that playlists were not showing up in their copy of TuneConnect. Before
-- I even had a chance to start investigating, other users also posted on the
-- bug, and started identifying common factors between them for me
-- (identifying points of commonality, as any logical person knows, is the
-- foundation of debugging). In a very short amount of time, the TC users had
-- determined that the problem was occurring for people with externally-
-- located iTunes libraries (on an external HD, for example). I wrote a patch
-- for the server, and now even users with the strangest file configurations
-- should be well-accommodated.

- Added ability to add multiple songs to Party Shuffle simultaneously
-- This one was a simple request to fulfill. You can now select multiple
-- tracks in the browser, and right-click them while highlighted to add or
-- queue them to the Party Shuffle playlist. Order occasionally gets messed
-- up a bit, but they all get added to the Shuffle list, what more do you
-- want from me? :P

- Modified "no artwork available" display
-- The whole grey "No Art Available" text on a white background was getting
-- annoying-- I just wasn't feeling it. So I took a hi-res version of the TC
-- icon, colored it blue, and set *it* against a white background. Voila:
-- instant sexy "no artwork available" indicator.

- Bundled Last.fm plug-in with client
-- Last.fm is a great service, I absolutely love it. Up until TuneConnect,
-- however, there was no good Objective-C framework to communicate with it.
-- What is a developer to do but make one? I created the LFScrobbler
-- framework for use with TuneConnect, but by the time I released 2.0, I had
-- still not heard back from the people at Last.fm with my client ID-- the
-- response came about two days after I released it. At that point, I entered
-- the ID into the plug-in and posted it online for after-market
-- installation. Now of course this is no longer an issue, so the plug-in has
-- henceforth been bundled with the distribution. :)

- Made Music Browser window resizable
-- This was the single biggest request out of all the requested features for
-- TuneConnect. Now you have it. :)

- Added server support for iPhone/iPod Touch client (Tunage v1.2)
-- *whistles* What? iPhone client? What are you talking about? Who told you
-- that?

-------------------------------------------

Changes from version 1.1 to 2.0:
* Completely rewritten from the ground up
* Incredible speed increases
* Global hotkeys
* More responsive user interface
* And many more new features!

TuneConnect 2.0 is a complete rewrite of TuneConnect from the ground up on an
entirely new architecture. Comparing TuneConnect 2.0 to TuneConnect 1.1 is
like comparing apples to oranges. Suffice it to say that TuneConnect 2.0 is
unlike any iTunes remote controller you've ever used. We promise.