J-Bird / News: Recent posts

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

In version 0.5.2 keyboard navigation has been improved. Shortcuts and Mnemonics have been added, and keys can be used to cancel or commit most dialogs. The Windows installer can install Java on non-Vista versions of Windows. Both common and scientific names can be displayed when ticking species, editing checklists and on trip reports. Also, a few bugs have been fixed.... read more

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

In version 0.5.1 a native Mac OS X application is provided in a package that is familiar to Mac users. Also, a few bugs have been fixed.

Existing features: basic ticking; trip reports; ability to count species ticks; ability to generate composite lists of species such as life-lists and region lists; ability to query sightings and display results as tables, web pages, or CSV. The master species list may be the Sibley-Monroe World list, the CINFO World list, the AOU Checklist of North American Birds or imported from a table. The master list, local checklists, and sightings can be imported from CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, tables in HTML documents, dBase .dbf files and from relational databases. Local checklists can be used to tick species that have been observed on trips, and they can be included in trip reports.

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

In version 0.5.0 sightings can be imported from files of comma-separated values, Excel spread sheets, tables in web pages, dBase .dbf files, and from relational databases. Bugs have been fixed in the tree of trips and in the tree of checklists.

Existing features: basic ticking; trip reports; ability to count species ticks; ability to generate composite lists of species such as life-lists and region lists; ability to query sightings and display results as tables, web pages, or CSV. The master species list may be the Sibley-Monroe World list, the CINFO World list, the AOU Checklist of North American Birds or imported from a table. The master list and local checklists can be imported from CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, tables in HTML documents, dBase .dbf files and from relational databases. Local checklists can be used to tick species that have been observed on trips, and they can be included in trip reports.

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

Version 0.4.6 primarily fixes bugs. 1) The MS Windows installer should no longer fail. 2) Text boxes that are used to enter information about checklists should not be impossibly small on MS Windows systems that run Java VM 1.4.2. 3) J-Bird should no longer fail to launch a web browser on Linux KDE 2.0 systems that use the BROWSER environment variable to launch kfmclient. Also, headings of table columns that are used to import the master species list and local checklists are now clearly marked as clickable for the purpose of identifying the contents of columns.... read more

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

New to this release: The master checklist builder has been converted from an AWT application to Swing. New data sources for the master checklist include dBase .dbf files, Excel spreadsheets, tables in web pages, and any relational database for which the user provides Java drivers and an SQL query. The CINFO list of World birds and the AOU list of North American birds can be imported as the master species list without modification. In J-Bird itself, a new hierarchy is available for displaying the tree of trips: year - region - trip.... read more

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java. New to this release: The interface has been converted from a hybrid AWT/Swing interface to purely Swing. Desktop shortcuts have been improved on MS Windows and Linux by upgrading the installer to the latest version.

Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, ability to count species ticks, ability to generate composite lists of species such as life-lists or region lists, ability to query sightings and display results as tables, web pages or CSV. Local checklists can be created or imported from CSV files or relational databases. They can be used to tick species that have been observed on trips and included in trip reports.... read more

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

New to this release: regions and observers can be edited from tables; tables used for selecting species are more revealing - counts of selected species are displayed for collapsed families; on Linux support added for newer browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, and Dillo).

Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, ability to count species ticks, and to generate composite lists of species such as life-lists or region lists, ability to query sightings and display results as tables, web pages, or CSV. Local checklists can be created or imported from CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, tables in HTML documents, dBase .dbf files and from relational databases. They can be used to tick species that have been observed on trips, and included in trip reports.

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

This release fixes a serious bug in J-Bird 0.4.1 that was released just 2 days ago. If you installed J-Bird 0.4.1 and built a master species list, you should be able to upgrade to J-Bird 0.4.2 without difficulty.

New in J-Bird 0.4.1: 1) import of checklists from CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, tables in HTML documents, dBase .dbf files, and relational databases; 2) preferred checklists can be assigned to trips and to regions for use when ticking species that have been observed; 3) a search dialog for text in displayed tables; 4) a search dialog for species names in collapsable tables; 5) instructions for accessing the underlying database remotely or from Perl.... read more

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java. New to this release: import of checklists from CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, tables in HTML documents, dBase .dbf files, and relational databases; preferred checklists can be assigned to trips and to regions for use when ticking species that have been observed; a search dialog for text in displayed tables; a search dialog for species names in collapsable tables; instructions for accessing the underlying database remotely or from Perl.... read more

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

New to this release: ticking from checklists and a hierarchical tree of trips that can be used to browse and manipulate trips.

Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, ability to count species ticks, and to generate composite lists of species such as life-lists or region lists, ability to query sightings and display results as tables, web pages, or CSV. Checklists can be created.

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

New to this release: checklists. Checklists can
be created and edited. They can also be included in trip reports and lists of observed species. (Ticking from checklists will be available in the next release.)

Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, ability to count species ticks, and to generate composite lists of species such as life-lists or region lists, ability to query sightings and display results as tables, web pages, or CSV.

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java.

New to this release: query/export feature. Sightings can be queried, displayed as tables, displayed in a web browser, and saved as either CSV files or HTML files.

Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, ability to count species ticks, and to generate composite lists of species such as life-lists or region lists.

J-Bird: Listing software for birders, written in Java. This release consists entirely of bug fixes and minor improvements. Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, lists of species such as life-lists, and the ability to count species ticks.

J-Bird: listing software for birders, written in Java. New to this release: ability to generate lists of observed species such as life lists and some bug fixes, including fixes to the installer that should allow it to work under Windows XP. Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, ability to count species ticks.

J-Bird is listing software for birders, written in Java. New to this release: ability to count species ticks, ability to play sounds when species are ticked, improvements in usability, support for Mac OS X application menus, and a few bug fixes. Existing features: basic ticking, trip reports, persistence of state between runs.

This release of J-Birds adds the capacity to produce trip reports. Reports are produced in html and can be saved to files or sent to the default browser. Also, memory has been added between runs. When started, J-Bird will remember what you were doing when you quit and start up pretty much where you left off. Some bugs have been fixed and others introduced.

J-Bird is a system for recording observations of birds. Information recorded includes region, locality, keywords, date, notes about the birding trip and notes about individual species. J-Bird is written in Java and is platform independent.

THIS IS THE FIRST ALPHA RELEASE. Be prepared for
bugs, and please report them!