Safe from the Losing Fight

• May 09 2012
• No responses

• Fortunate Bear
• Illuminate
• Macintosh

Illuminate 1.2 is out with major changes to how the cycle windows feature works. Since cycle windows is the main feature in Illuminate, I made an effort to streamline it and make it usable in fewer keystrokes. The most noticeable change is that Cycle (All) Windows and Cycle (All) Tabs have been consolidated into one feature: Cycle Windows. Cycle Windows cycles through all the windows and tabs using just one keyboard shortcut (Option-Tab), plus they’re now grouped by application, making application switching more obvious.

In order to speed up switching between windows, sticky mode has be turned off by default so the window selection happens as soon as you let up on the modifier keys. Also, there is now a configurable delay between when the keyboard shortcut is pressed and the UI shows up. This means you can quickly switch between windows or tabs without the UI flashing up or otherwise having to wait on it.

The 1.2 includes some other features and bug fixes:

• Support for Google Chrome tabs

• Ability to exclude certain applications from the window switching list.

• You can now change the order windows appear in when switching windows: last time accessed or alphabetical.

• Improved layout in the cycle windows UI so more space is used by the window thumbnails.

• Fix for a crashing bug.

The update is free for existing customers, $9.99 for new customers, and is available from Fortunate Bear’s online store or Apple’s Mac App Store.

You can read the full press release here.

• Mar 19 2012
• No responses

• Fortunate Bear
• Illuminate
• Macintosh

Illuminate 1.1 is out now. It’s a small feature update including:

• Support for cycling through tabs, although its currently limited to Safari tabs. As you’re cycling through windows, the tabs will appear beneath the windows.

• A complete, in application help file explaining all the features Illuminate provides.

• A new front end application to manage the preferences. This prevents the preferences window from getting lost behind all the other windows. It also now shows up in Illuminate itself.

It’s a free update for existing customers, US$9.99 for new customers. Version 1.1 is also the first version you can find in Apple’s Mac App Store. You can read the entire press release if you’d like.

• Jul 19 2011
• No responses

• Fortunate Bear
• Illuminate

Illuminate 1.0.2 is now available as a free update to existing customers. New customers can buy it from Fortunate Bear’s store.

There have actually been two releases since Illuminate 1.0: 1.0.1 and 1.0.2. I didn’t announce 1.0.1 before because it only contains compatibility fixes for Lion, and until Lion is released the fixes don’t help anyone.

The 1.0.2 release includes several bug fixes and minor enhancements. Originally they were going to go into the first 1.x minor feature update, but that’s taking longer than I originally expected. Here’s the changes in the 1.0.2 update:

• Fixed problem where grouped windows were not grouped together in Cycle Windows. Includes Adobe document windows, Xcode 4 windows, and Safari’s Top Sites windows.

• Changed Cycle All Windows feature to be always visible in the menu, so users can find the functionality.

• Fixed a crasher where accessibility callbacks where calling dead objects.

• Fixed incompatibility with St. Clair Software’s AppTamer that results in bad performance in Illuminate.

• Changed the close and minimize shortcuts (W and M, respectively) to work regardless of the modifier used to invoke Cycle Windows.

• Added an option to include minimized windows in Cycle Windows.

• Changed license information storage from the preference file to the keychain. This will allow the preferences to be thrown away without losing license information.

• Changed the newsletter signup dialog to no longer automatically select an email address in order to prevent accidental signups.

• Fixed incompatibility with Rainmaker’s SpellCatcher that caused Illuminate to fail on launch.

Enjoy your software.