About an hour ago we posted build 76 as a beta release. This is an exciting release
for us as it includes many man-months of development with useability being our primary
focus. Of course, we couldn't resist throwing in a few great features along the
way. I'd like to say thanks to all those on the "Bleeding Edge" (aka daily) build
reporting bugs. As is to be expected, during our testing we encountered a couple
major outstanding issues. I'll address those first.
If you are running our last beta (Build
3.1.0.30) with the default auto-update settings, your auto update to the
latest and greatest has a good chance of failing. The error message will be something
like: "The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation."
The reason for this is a bit embarrasing. :) In the first beta we introduced an
auto-update bug. Basically the same update can be downloaded multiple times simultaneously.
The update competes for the same file, overwrites the other, and then you end up
with a corrupted installation package that almost works. Luckily the work around
is quite easy. Just download our
new beta from the download
site and install it. The installation package will upgrade things for you.
The other issue is quite perplexing. Apparently a very small percentage of laptop
users may have issues running SoapBox Communicator while plugged into a secondary
monitor. We're working on this but it seems to be related to certain video drivers.
Ok, now that I've got that off my chest, on to the fun stuff. There are no screen
shots for now. Real soon we'll have a nice web site up for all of this. Here's a
brief list of, IMHO, the coolest additions to this release:
- It's pretty, real pretty.
- Office 2007 style ribbons! These things give you easy access to more features, more
easily. Oh, if you dont like the ribbons, you can collapse them. Also, if you resize
the contact list below a certain threshold you also get a more traditional menu/toolbar.
- Great new skins. Black, Silver, Blue. They're sexy. I think my wife is jealous of
my lust.
- YouTube sharing/viewing. Paste in a YouTube link and send it to your friends. Watch
the magic!
- Google Desktop search integration. If you have Google Desktop installed, your communicator
text chat logs will be indexed.
- We removed the old login screen and integrated it into the contact list.
- Message window tab position/size choices.
- Font styles.
- Easy access to chat rooms. Select some people from your list, right click, create
a room and invite them in one easy step!
- Change your presence from the message window. I think we should patent this. Hah!
- Contact list groups, or no groups. Now it's your choice!
- Hot keys improved. Window key + I (Message Window). Window Key + C (Contact List)
-- configurability coming soon.
Well, that's it for now! Hopefully soon we'll get the new communicator web site
up. :)