Version 10 Beta Released!!

[Programmer]

Version 10 Beta Released!!

The long awaited version 10 of the program is finally available to download as a beta release. The final version of the program will be released at the end of this month. The beta contains a host of new features which are detailed below, but actually the changes in the program go much deeper than that.

To Install the beta:

a) If you already have version 8.0 or higher installed you can install it directly by clicking on this link:
http://www.orphalese.net/downloads/orph ... etaten.exe.

b) Otherwise you need to install the latest version of the program from the Downloads page and then use the link above. You can also find a link to the same file near the bottom of the Downloads page.

Long term users of the program will know that I tend to bring out a new version every summer, and the fact is that the organization of the program (such as the arrangements of tabs and checkable boxes on the Options form or the main menu itself) has become more and more messy with each incremental version. I have added things wherever it seemed to like a good idea at the time and that been at the expense of the overall coherency of the program. So version 10 includes a complete overhaul of how the program is organized which I am convinced people will find easier and more intuitive.

The main new features are as follows:

* Subsets - e.g. you can define a set of cards to use from a particular deck and load it up just like any other deck in your collection, so you can have say a Majors only deck and a full deck using the same cards without duplicating any files on your hard drive.

* Spreads and Readings with Multiple Decks, and also proper ordering of the cards so for example when two cards overlap the program will remember correctly which one was on top of which.

* Two kinds of collections. As well as the previous kind of collection which let you navigate your way through a set of decks, there is a new kind where a single click launches all the decks in the collection at the same time.

* Better emails, using default client. It was a big problem with the email feature in previous versions that when you sent an email you had no record of it your outbox. The program now creates a new email in your default mail client and adds the appropriate text and attachments, allowing the user to edit the message as much as they like before hitting send.

* Deck parking for multiple decks.

* Card Names - useful anywhere you need to select cards from the deck.

* Enhanced zoom function.

* Title bar data for current deck.

* New sort options in Deck Exchange that sort the whole set of results, not just the current page. Faster results.

* Maximized background image. This is a new option along with Tile, Stretch and Center. The program will make your image as big as it can while not stretching it out of shape.

* Enhanced caption bar graphics (optional).

Special thanks to Linda (Purple Scorp) for her part in this new version. At the end of last year she emailed me and offered to assist me with updating the Help file. One thing led to another and that grew into the dedicated Orphalese Help website which we can all now benefit from. During this process she also came up with a whole load of great suggestions, and many of the new features listed above were her ideas, the details of which were worked out with a great toing and froing of emails that didn't seem to suffer too much from us being on different sides of the planet. Also thanks to the other users such as Greg who have been asking for some of these features for at least a couple of years now. Thanks for the suggestions and also for your patience in waiting for them!

[Starbase3]

Love the 'perfect 10' version ... nice job! Thank you

[WebWeaver]

Woot! Looking forward to checking it out~

[Programmer]

There is a new version of the Beta out now, as of July 15th. The link to download it is the same as before. The full version number is 10.0.0.11.

The new features in this are:

- Brought back the screen capture form.
- Added a tool to swap around the Strength and Justice cards for the current deck, and an option to choose which should be the default convention for the card name lists.
- New option in the Deck Exchange to sort by date of last comment added.
- Sundry minor bug fixes.

[Programmer]

This week's update, numbered 10.0.0.12, fixes various minor bugs and a rather major one. The major one is that the order of cards in a spread was getting scrambled between successively opening it and saving it in the Spread Wizard.

The program used to just keep track of one ordering for the cards in a spread, which is the order they are laid for each deck in the spread. With version 10 it also keeps track of the order in which cards have been selected in the Spread Wizard. This is because when two cards overlap the more recently selected one will be on top of the other one. When you deal the spread this ordering is applied after dealing out the spread, so you can control which cards are on top of which other cards. In previous versions this used to be random.

What was going wrong in this version of the beta is that the program was using the wrong ordering to lay the cards out in the spread wizard, resulting in an apparent scrambling of the positions. In fact the reordering was not random, it followed the order the cards were last clicked on when the spread was open in the wizard. It should of course have followed the order they were laid instead. This has now been corrected in the new beta.