Beta drags on…
The beta has started, but the app is still not quite in a condition to release publicly (IMHO), so those of you waiting should continue to be patient for just a little longer.
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Beta starts
Woo hoo! The alpha (development) stage of V2 is over. The beta (testing) phase begins. Once I have eliminated some of the nastier bugs, I will make the beta publicly available. This will probably happen in a week or two.
Plan Creation Wizard
The Plan Creation Wizard feature in V1.x wasn’t particularly “wizardy”. It had a confusing single pane dialog, forced you to choose constellations, and was abysmally slow. It also wasn’t overly clever at picking objects for your plan, and would often present you with an empty plan with no objects found (apparently).
This feature has been totally revised for V2.
Advanced visibility modelling
One of the enhancement requests I receive often is to do a better job of modelling visibility of stars, etc. In AstroPlanner V1.x, there was little or no modelling of visibility. For V2, some more advance algorithms have been added (namely those developed by Bradley E. Schaefer). Continue Reading »
V2.0a31 and counting
Development continues afoot. The beta stage is fast approaching. My list of enhancements is now a lot shorter, and many of the items on the list are either going to be moved into the next version, or will be taken care of during the beta stage. Here are some of the more notable features and changes added recently. Continue Reading »
Backup and Restore
Two of the more frequently asked questions, by users of AstroPlanner V1.x, are:
- How do I backup my AstroPlanner files, in case I have a crash and need to restore them?
- How do I synchronise my AstroPlanner files and settings on my desktop computer with my observatory laptop?
Here’s a new feature in V2 that should target both of those concerns. Continue Reading »
V2.0a22 and counting
It’s been a while since V2.0a1 was released. Lots of bugs have been fixed, features improved and added, etc. However, we’re still a fair way away from V2.0b1, so I thought I’d just show some of the more extensive changes that will be coming your way.
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V2.0a1 released
The first alpha of V2 was released to a select group of beta testers this week…
Scripting, Part 3
As the release of V2.0a1 approaches, some serendipity has greatly improved the scripting interface, and has bypassed the need I had to do some nasty Windows debugging (which I referred to in an earlier post). Non-geeks need read no further.
Softer landing for crashes
In V1.x, when there was an internal uncaught exception, you were informed that AstroPlanner was about to nose-dive into the ground, an error log file was written, and the app exited, taking all your changes with it.
In V2, this process is little less likely to cause hair loss. Sure, there will still be uncaught exceptions (i.e. bugs that need fixing), but now you have some options…