[Newsletter] Announcements from Alchemy Mindworks
alchemyreply1753 at mindworkshop.com
alchemyreply1753 at mindworkshop.com
Sat Dec 21 10:34:30 EST 2019
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Contents:
1. * Announcing Calendar Wizard 10
*
2. * Announcing The Ultimate Screen Clock 10***(second notification)**
3. * GIF Construction Set 10 Revision 2 *(additional notification)*
*
4. * Graphic Workshop Professional 10 Revision 3***(additional
notification)
5. *New Web Server*
6. ***Replying to this Message, List Removal and Details
*
*We'd like to take this opportunity to wish all the users of our
software the very best of the festive season, whatever it's called in
your house.
We'd also like to wish you substantially less snowfall than is
illustrated here.
May the season bring you joy, the comfort of family, the serenity of the
closing of the year, and no socks.* **
Announcing Calendar Wizard 10
We've enhanced functionality of Calendar Wizard, added some radical new
clock styles, improved its performance and generally refined it to
better get along with Windows 10. (We hasten to add that it still
performs admirably under earlier builds of Windows, all the way back to
Windows XP, if you're feeling retro.)
Among the new features and enhancements to Calendar Wizard, you'll find
that it:
* Adds a palette of*frame styles* to the Month editor tabs. In
addition to traditional square frames, Calendar Wizard can now
create gradient frames and cornered frames, as are illustrated to
your right.
This represents a mere fraction of the calendar styles you can
create with the new frame styles.
To access the new frames, open a Month edit window and click on the
Heading tab.
The Heading tab in Calendar Wizard 10 also includes a Line Size
field, to allow you to specify the line weight from frames.
* Updates the user interface of the *Year and Month editors*. In
previous editions of Calendar Wizard, it was possible to enter
out-of-range values in the numeric fields of the editors under some
builds of Windows... which could result in some pretty weird calendars.
* Updates the *Print Dodecahedral* calendar logic, that will render
your calendars as twelve-sized desk toys that can be printed, cut
out and folded into three-dimensional objects.
There were a few printer inconsistencies in the previous edition
that turned up on some output devices.
Should the dodecahedral calendar option have thus far eluded notice,
there's an example shown here prior to the application of scissors
and tape. It takes about five minutes to cut one out and assemble
it... and then most of the following year to stop playing with it.
We hasten to add that you can choose the design elements in
dodecahedral calendars — this includes adding pictures or textures
to their faces, in place of the solid color illustrated in this posting.
* Updates the *JPEG library* used by Calendar Wizard to the latest
release. This addresses several potential security and image quality
issues, and a few... albeit very obscure... bugs. We'd like to take
this opportunity to stress the importance of keeping whatever reads
JPG files on your computer up to date — there are unquestionably
maliciously-crafted graphics in the wild that can crash older JPEG
software and execute arbitrary, and potentially nasty, code on your
computer.
* Updates the *WebP* libraries to the latest software from Google.
* Further enhances the sneakiness of the *validation logic* to reduce
the likelihood of Calendar Wizard un-registering itself and
thereafter deciding that its key is already in use because Windows
10 has silently updated something. Hopefully this one nails the
problem until the end of time. Yes, we said that last year too, but
Windows 10 proved to be sneakier than we'd anticipated.
* Addresses a number of GDI and performance issues that software
developers never really stop meddling with.
* Updates the documentation.
As in years past, when you run Calendar Wizard10 for the first time, it
will look for a previous installation of Calendar Wizard 9 and
optionally *copy your existing configuration*, so you won't have to set
everything up by hand.
Click on the blue button to download Calendar Wizard 10.
Note that in addition to installing Calendar Wizard, you'll probably
also want to install Calendar Wizard *Extra Styles library*, which will
augment it with wealth of additional clock styles, including some of the
ones mentioned herein. The Extra Styles library is also accessible
through this big blue button.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/calwiz.html>
Upgrades
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Calendar Wizard 9
on or after June 1, 2019, you're welcome to a *no-cost upgrade* to
Calendar Wizard10.
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Calendar Wizard9
prior to June 1, 2019, we invite you to upgrade to Calendar Wizard 10
for *half the current new-user price*.
The first time you run Calendar Wizard 10, it will determine which
upgrade option applies to your license.
Click on the blue button below to visit the upgrade page.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html>
You can access the no-cost upgrade page
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/clkkey.html> directly by clicking on the
foregoing link.
Announcing The Ultimate Screen Clock 10
(second notification)
We've enhanced functionality of The Ultimate Screen Clock, added some
radical new clock styles, improved its performance and generally refined
it to better get along with Windows 10. (We hasten to add that it still
performs admirably under earlier builds of Windows, all the way back to
Windows XP, if you're feeling retro.)
Among the new features and enhancements to The Ultimate Screen Clock,
you'll find that it:
* Adds the *Stratosphere clock style*, available in two sizes and in
light and dark manifestations — the dark version is shown here.
Channeling the high-end watches of an earlier epoch that required an
advanced degree in quantum physics to understand all their dials and
functions, Stratosphere will make your desktop look like it drives a
Lambo and knows intuitively how to choose really expensive wine.
We hasten to add that the clock to your right is an animation, not
actual software. There's a one in 3600 chance that it's actually
displaying the correct time as you read this.
* Adds the *Iridium clock style*, illustrated below. While it appears
somewhat conventional in this posting, it's an animated style when
it turns up in The Ultimate Screen Clock. Its digits morph, and it's
somewhat hypnotic to observe.
It comes in a substantial number of permutations of colors and
sizes, with and without a bezel.
Unlike the analog clocks included in this posting, Iridium doesn't
lend itself to an animation, as its digits change more rapidly than
can be managed by a GIF file. We also hasten to add that it requires
somewhat more processor resources than most of the clock styles
included with The Ultimate Screen Clock, and it may prove unsuitable
for systems with slower processors, limited resources or a lot of
other stuff happening.
As someone will certainly inquire, Iridium refers to the chemical
element having the atomic number 77, a silvery-white transition
metal of the platinum group, not the eponymous satellite telephone
network.
* Adds the *Sextant clock style*, an example of which appears to your
right. Reminiscent of the clocks of another epoch, when ships sailed
at the pleasure of the winds and navigators guided them through dark
incantations — assisted by the ability to perform complex
trigonometry in their heads — the Sextant style would lend your
desktop an air of timelessness, were that not something of a
contradiction in terms for a clock.
Sextant comes in two sizes.
Once again, the Sextant clock shown here is an animation, rather
than software, and as such is cosmically unlikely to be displaying
the correct time. The Ultimate Screen Clock invariably will.
* Adds a *Timeline window*, a browsable history of the past few
hundred years. Right-click in The Ultimate Screen Clock and select
Calendar → Timeline to experience it.
We hasten to add that the contents of the Timeline window are
editable, should you discover that you prefer your perception of
history to ours. Timeline also lends itself to being re-purposed —
you can replace its somewhat global history with your family's
history, the history of your newly-restored classic Jag or the
history of your sock collection.
* Adds logic to the *screen saver background* manager to allow
full-screen background graphics to be optionally resized rather than
tiled, so they appear without seams on displays with unusual
dimensions — laptops being the most likely suspects.
* Updates the *clock rendering engine* to improve the appearance of
several of the analog hand styles.
* Updates the discussion of *Net Time* in the Reference document of
The Ultimate Screen Clock's manual to include a permanent, elegant
and largely bulletproof solution to the issue of Windows 10 blocking
The Ultimate Screen Clock from setting the system time. See the Net
Time section of the Reference Document, and the digression
concerning Windows' security therein, for the complete epic.
* Updates the *JPEG library* used by The Ultimate Screen Clock to the
latest release. This addresses several potential security and image
quality issues, and a few... albeit very obscure... bugs. We'd like
to take this opportunity to stress the importance of keeping
whatever reads JPG files on your computer up to date — there are
unquestionably maliciously-crafted graphics in the wild that can
crash older JPEG software and execute arbitrary, and potentially
nasty, code on your computer.
* Updates the *WebP* libraries to the latest software from Google.
* Further enhances the sneakiness of the *validation logic* to reduce
the likelihood of The Ultimate Screen Clock un-registering itself
and thereafter deciding that its key is already in use because
Windows 10 has silently updated something. Hopefully this one nails
the problem until the end of time. Yes, we said that last year too,
but Windows 10 proved to be sneakier than we'd anticipated.
* Addresses a number of GDI and performance issues that software
developers never really stop meddling with.
* Updates the documentation.
As in years past, when you run The Ultimate Screen Clock10 for the first
time, it will look for a previous installation of The Ultimate Screen
Clock 9 and optionally *copy your existing configuration*, so you won't
have to set everything up by hand.
Click on the blue button to download The Ultimate Screen Clock 10.
Note that in addition to installing The Ultimate Screen Clock, you'll
probably also want to install The Ultimate Screen Clock *Extra Styles
library*, which will augment it with wealth of additional clock styles,
including some of the ones mentioned herein. The Extra Styles library is
also accessible through this big blue button.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/clock.html>
Upgrades
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for The Ultimate
Screen Clock 9 on or after June 1, 2019, you're welcome to a *no-cost
upgrade* to The Ultimate Screen Clock10.
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for The Ultimate
Screen Clock9 prior to June 1, 2019, we invite you to upgrade to The
Ultimate Screen Clock 10 for *half the current new-user price*.
The first time you run The Ultimate Screen Clock 10, it will determine
which upgrade option applies to your license.
Click on the blue button below to visit the upgrade page.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html>
You can access the no-cost upgrade page
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/clkkey.html> directly by clicking on the
foregoing link.
GIF Construction Set Professional 10 Revision 2 (additional
notification)
GIF Construction Set Professional 10 has been updated. This release:
* Updates the *color selection windows* that appear in a number of GIF
Construction Set's animation generators to include an editable
hexadecimal color value field. This allows colors to be directly
copied and pasted into web page HTML documents, and between
applications that support this notation.
* Addresses a number of issues from the initial release.
* Fixes a bug in the*Favorites* window that prevented it from opening
its galleries of favorite documents under some builds of Windows —
which largely defeated the purpose of the Favorites window.
* Nails a problem with the internal *default document path* for GIF
Construction Set Professional, which confused a number of features
which looked for things that weren't there.
* Addresses a number of theoretical security issues in the *WebP
animation* interface.
* Improves the performance of the *Shadow* window.
* Further enhances the sneakiness of the *validation logic* to reduce
the likelihood of GIF Construction Set un-registering itself and
thereafter deciding that its key is already in use because Windows
10 has silently updated something. Hopefully this one nails the
problem until the end of time. Yes, we said that last year too, but
Windows 10 proved to be sneakier than we'd anticipated.
* Addresses a number of issues in the *Photo Stack* animation window.
Should you have missed Photo Stack when it appeared a few weeks ago,
an example can be seen to your right. Photo stacks will let you add
your pictures, graphics, banners or other elements to your web page
or social media as an animation that suggests a collection of paper
photographs being dropped onto a table. If it were any cooler, it
would be attracting polar bears... and you'd have bears in your
house, which isn't wholly desirable.
* Addresses a number of GDI and performance issues that software
developers never really stop meddling with.
* Updates the documentation.
Click on the blue button to download GIF Construction Set Professional 10.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/gifcon.html>
Upgrades
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for GIF Construction
Set Professional 9 on or after April 1, 2019, you're welcome to a
*no-cost upgrade* to GIF Construction Set Professional 10.
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for GIF Construction
Set Professional 9 prior to April 1, 2019, we invite you to upgrade to
GIF Construction Set Professional 10 for *half the current new-user price*.
The first time you run GIF Construction Set Professional 10, it will
determine which upgrade option applies to your license.
Click on the blue button below to visit the upgrade page.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html>
You can access the no-cost upgrade page
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/gcskey.html> directly by clicking on the
foregoing link.
Graphic Workshop Professional 10 Revision 3
(second notification)
Graphic Workshop Professional 10 has been updated. This release:
* Redesigns the batch *Identify Mystery Files* window to allow its
contents to be sorted by name, type, size and date. This makes it a
lot easier to locate the files you'd like to identify. Should you
have missed the batch Identify Mystery Files window thus far, hold
down the Shift key on your keyboard and select Identify Mystery
Files from the Graphic Workshop Professional 10 File menu.
* Updates the *color selection windows* that appear in Graphic
Workshop and all its ancillary applications to include an editable
hexadecimal color value field. This allows colors to be directly
copied and pasted into web page HTML documents, and between
applications that support this notation.
* Improves the performance of the *Identify Mystery Files* window when
it's confronted with a WebP document... of which there appear to be
more with each passing second.
* Adds a *Windows File Explorer emulation* mode to Graphic Workshop's
drag and drop functionality — it can be enabled in the Setup →
Browser → Drop Options field. With Windows Emulation selected,
dragging files between folders on the same drive will move them,
dragging files between drives will copy them and holding down the
Ctrl key when you drag and drop files will copy them no matter where
they're going.
* Updates *Archive Manager* so a Wait window appears when files are
dropped into a ZIP archive. It also fine-tunes the user interface of
its various File Open and File Save windows.
* Further improves the new *validation logic *to reduce the likelihood
of Graphic Workshop unregistering itself due to silent Windows
upgrades. We hasten to add that since the release of Graphic
Workshop Professional 10, this has occurred precisely zero times.
* Fixes a bug in the *Ultralight Screen Clock* that could cause some
of the animated styles to display a white rectangle in place of the
leading digit for one second at the top of each hour under some
builds and configurations of Windows.
* Addresses a number of GDI and performance issues that software
developers never really stop meddling with.
* Updates the documentation.
If you haven't installed Graphic Workshop Professional 10 yet, you might
want to review a more extensive list of its new functionality and
enhancements <http://doc.mindworkshop.com/918.html>.
Click on the blue button to download Graphic Workshop Professional 10.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwspro.html>
Upgrades
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Graphic Workshop
Professional 9 on or after April 1, 2019, you're welcome to a *no-cost
upgrade* to Graphic Workshop Professional 10.
If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Graphic Workshop
Professional 9 prior to April 1, 2018, we invite you to upgrade to
Graphic Workshop Professional 10 for *half the current new-user price*.
The first time you run Graphic Workshop Professional 10, it will
determine which upgrade option applies to your license.
Click on the blue button below to visit the upgrade page.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html>
You can access the no-cost upgrade page
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwskey.html> directly by clicking on the
foregoing link.
New Web Server
The hardware that runs a web server is typically reliable for about four
years. Our previous server has been nearing its end of life of late, and
last week we migrated our stuff to a new server.
It's likely you'd never have noticed the change if we hadn't mentioned
it — one server is pretty much like another. Actually, the new one's
somewhat quicker than its predecessor.
This said, in the event that you encounter any issues, problems,
inconsistencies or weird behavior when you access our web site, we ask
that you click on the big blue button below and share your experiences.
<http://www.mindworkshop.com/email-alchemy.html>
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You can also contact us by telephone at (705) 789-5238, and by
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P1H 2J3, CANADA.
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