Developing version 3.0 was an interesting experience! In the midst of the development cycle I was involved in a low speed car accident in early December which totaled my car and fractured my right wrist. So that slowed Station development down a bit, but everything is good now.

Here is the list of what is new in version 3.0.

New Features:

- The contents of Finder folders stored within Station can now be browsed through a live list menu.
- A favorites window was added that is sourced from a designated Station folder.
- Weblinks can now be renamed in the same manner as folder items.
- Added a Station Keyboard Summary file that shows the key combinations that are used in Station.
- Added a utility to identify panels containing broken links.

New Preferences:

- A preference was added to choose the default action for Finder folders ("Open Finder Folder" or "Show List View").
- A preference was added to set the volume level for sounds within Station.
- A preference was add to customize spacing between items.
- A global key preference was added to show the Favorites window.
- A global key preference was added to collapse all open panels.
- A global key preference was added to open the Favorites window.

Enhancements:

- User interface refinements.
- Some speed optimizations.
- Other enhancements.

With version 3.0 I had several goals.

Speed Enhancements:

Station was pretty fast in version 2.8, but I wanted to kick it up a notch in version 3.0. I have a test set up where I load up a Station folder with hundreds of files. My goal was to get Station folders to open as nearly instantaneously as possible when the user clicks on the Station folder. This was achieved which means Station will feel more responsive with larger item sets.

Another area for speed optimization was popup menu creation and I figured out a way to dramatically speed up the menu display. There is a threshold of human perception where any speed increases don't appear to make a difference to the human eye, but this speed increase helps with scalability as I add more menu items in the future.

Another area of focus was switching between panel sets. This speed optimization was dramatic for moving between the panel sets. Station now caches the necessary data for installing the next panel set for display. Once you get through the list of panel sets, all the data is cached and any switches after that will be instant.

UI Changes:

I made many UI changes to unify behaviors, refine usage, and generally be more esthetically pleasing. For example, the "Add Custom Folder Icon..." menu item now brings up a popover window instead of a regular window. The preferences window also got a big makeover to make it easier to visually locate a specific preference. Another big thing I strived for was to remove modal windows where possible.

Improvements to the Demo:

I added enhancements to the demo version of Station to make it easier for first time users to get going with Station. One enhancement from the demo that made it into the full version is if Station detects a first run on a machine. In this case, Station will ask you what edge of the display you want to place Station. This is easier to do than telling the user to go to the preferences and select the position.

Summary:

I hope you enjoy all the refinements in Station 3.0. A lot of work went into creating and perfecting this version. There is more to come with the 3.x point releases!

What's new with Station 2.8.

• Added two global hot keys to step to the previous and next panel sets.

A customer wanted to use panel sets in a certain way and thus needed hot keys to speed up switching between panel sets. If you use panel sets, I think you will find this a very handy feature. This feature also show that it pays to let me know what you want, because you might get it!

• Enhanced the "Refresh All" utility to handle more cases and perform data diagnostics.

The "Refresh All" utility is used to update icons in Station that become out of date for various reasons. For example, you add a custom icon to a file in the Finder. The Refresh All command forces Station to read in the icon resources again and thus picking up any changes. In this version the Refresh All utility now makes sure any icon changes from the Finder are now also manifested within folder and alias icons in Station.

A customer reported to me that he had somehow deleted the Station icon from the root panel and this should never happen because Station has been carefully designed to prevent such an occurrence, but yet it did. So I built into this feature the ability to restore the Station icon if for some reason it disappears from the root panel. Yet you might be thinking that if the Station icon is missing, how will the user invoke this command? The solution is to automatically call the Refresh All command every sixty seconds and this will restore a missing Station icon. So in a sense, the user never has to call the Refresh All command unless they want more immediate results. I also added some existing auditing capabilities that checks Station's internal data structures for integrity which adds self healing capabilities to Station.

• Moved Snapshots out of the preferences window into its own window.

Snapshots were moved into its own separate window out of the preferences window because they are not actually preferences. This is part of the process for the last several releases to refine the interface. For example, the "Properties…" menu item was added to hold a collection of user interface elements that don't kneed a separate menu item.