Light Blue 1.1 released

Posted on Monday 6 April 2009

Thanks to our trusty band of beta testers, we've kicked the tyres and topped up the oil, given everything a final polish and let it out on the world. Light Blue 1.1 is now available.

We worked hard to make version 1.0 comprehensive, but we were never going to rest on our laurels; we've been beavering away to add some new features and remove some gremlins which crept through our net.

If you've already registered your copy, you can upgrade for free; if not, download the full version for a (newly-extended) 30-day trial. If you like what you see, you can buy it for the special introductory price of just £325, including VAT.

We've recorded a couple of new tutorials to show you how to import your data from your existing version. If you're new to Light Blue you'll also be able to find out more about installing it for the first time and getting started.

Below is the full list of new features and bug fixes; do let us know what you think of version 1.1.

New features

Brand-new Windows installer: We have completely rebuilt our Windows installer to make it easier to use and more like other Windows software installers.

Improved Mac OS X installers: In rare cases, conflicts within one of the third-party extensions caused Light Blue to fail to open. We have split the Mac download to Intel and PowerPC versions.

Demo trial period increased to 30 days: The trial period has been increased from 14 to 30 days to give busy photographers more time to explore Light Blue.

Importing contacts: You can now import your contacts and addresses from a spreadsheet or another FileMaker database, to save entering the information again. (For more information on importing contacts, see the User guide.)

Improved Quickfind box: The Quickfind box that in the top right corner of the main sections of Light Blue has been improved to work faster with large numbers of records. A problem that could cause slow screen redraws on Windows has also been resolved.

Added preview quality settings to web gallery templates: You can now specify the quality of JPEG previews created by the web gallery templates on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high). The previous default setting was the equivalent of 5 on the new scale; the new default is 8. Higher-quality settings result in larger file sizes for your preview images.

'Unconfirmed shoots' list on the 'Summary' screen now called 'Enquiries': We have renamed this list to make its purpose clearer.

Added 'New enquiry' button to 'Summary' screen: The 'Enquiries' list on the 'Summary' screen now includes a '+' button to add a new Shoot record.

Confirmed shoots without dates now appear in the 'Current shoots' list on the 'Summary' screen.: If a shoot has been confirmed but hasn't been given a specific date, it now appears in the 'Upcoming shoots' list on the Summary layout and in the 'Quick Queries' menu.

Added printable to-do list: The to-do list that appears on the Summary layout now includes a button that can be used to print the list.

Workflows can now be added to a shoot based on any date: In Light Blue 1.0, workflows could be added to shoots based on the shoot date, enquiry date or confirmed date. Light Blue 1.1 adds a new 'Add workflow' button to the 'To do' portal that allows you to add a workflow based on any date. The command defaults to the current date and allows you to easily add additional workflows at any point (eg an album design workflow could be added to a wedding when a selection of pictures has been specified by the client).

'Outstanding Orders' quick query replaced: The 'Outstanding Orders' command in the 'Quick Queries' menu has been replaced with three new queries: 'Orders Awaiting Invoicing', 'Orders Awaiting Payment' and 'Orders Awaiting Shipping'.

Adding 'Primary contact' for shoots: You can now specify which of a shoot's linked contacts is the primary contact. This is the contact that is used by default when adding linked documents or orders.

Added label printing for shoots: As per the Contacts list view, if you select the Print command from the File menu when you are viewing the Shoots list view you are asked whether you want to print a list or labels. The labels are set up for printing onto Avery 7162 label sheets, and will include contact details for the primary contacts for all of the shoots in the list.

Shoot title enhancements: If you haven't manually specified a title for a shoot, a title is automatically assigned. This is usually the name of the primary contact; for weddings where a Bride and Groom are specified contacts the title becomes '<bride's name> & <groom's name> wedding'. This logic has been extended to civil partnerships in Light Blue 1.1. A shoot of type 'Wedding' with two brides or two grooms will now use both of their names in the automatic title.

Added additional contact types: The 'Contact type' pop-up menu in the 'Linked contacts' portal has had several new options added to it. As before, you can choose to enter your own contact types.

Invoice numbers can now be reset for different invoice prefixes: You can set the invoice number to reset when different invoice prefixes are used. This can be useful if you like to start each financial year's invoice numbers at 1.

Added daily scripts: In Light Blue 1.0, daily backups and the weekly check for updated versions were only carried out when you launched the application. These checks are now made whenever you switch between any of the main sections of Light Blue, which is more suitable for users who leave the application running for days (or weeks!) on end.

Printing an order now offers to fill in the 'Shipped date' field: When printing an order, Light Blue now offers to fill in the 'Shipped date' field with today's date, to save you having to enter this manually.

'Shoot time' populated more helpfully: Shoots that have a start time specified but no end time now have a default end time of 1 hour after the start.

Printing of notes from 'Shoot - detail' and 'Contact - detail' improved: There is now a larger area available for notes on the printed versions of the 'Shoot - detail' and 'Contact - detail' screens.

New mail merge tags: New tags have been added for the shoot end date, start time and end time for use in mail merges with template documents.

Improved accuracy when finding contacts and addresses: We have improved the accuracy of the searches used to link contacts and addresses to other records.:

Bug fixes

'Current shoots' and 'To do' lists on the 'Summary' screen: Some records that should have appeared on the 'Current shoots' and 'To do' lists on the Summary layout could sometimes fail to appear.

'Publish to iCal' command could fail: The 'Publish to iCal' command in the File menu could fail if certain fields in a Shoot record that was being published contained illegal characters.

Removed spurious 'Landline' field from the 'Add contact' dialog: The dialog box used to add a new Contact record to a shoot contained a 'Landline' field that didn't appear anywhere else in Light Blue.

Added times to the 'Date & time' column in the Shoot list layout: Times were not being displayed in the 'Date & time' column.

Return character not recognised on 'Extra Shoot Subfolders' list: The 'Extra Shoot Subfolders' list on the Settings screen wouldn't let you type a return character, so entering more than one folder was tricky.

Day name removed from the 'Event date' display on invoices: The 'Event date' field on invoices included the day name (e.g. 'Saturday 05/09/09'). This has been removed.

Picture renaming prefix ignored capital letters: When importing image files into Light Blue, capital letters in the 'Picture file name prefix' were ignored.

Warnings for missing shoot folders not shown: If a shoot's folder was missing, in some circumstances the appropriate warning wasn't shown.

Dialogs could appear at the wrong size when zoomed: If the zoom option (in the bottom-left corner of every window) was used, dialog boxes could appear at the wrong size.

'Contact - detail' and 'Shoot - detail' could occasionally print the wrong record: When printing a 'Contact - detail' or 'Shoot - detail' record, a different record from the found set could be printed.

Mac OS X: hidden system files could be imported: Invisible files such as the '.DS_Store' file, sometimes created by the operating system, could be imported with image files.

Invoice numbers truncated on 'Payment - detail' screen: Invoice numbers with long prefixes could be truncated on the 'Payment - detail' screen.

Order lines, Schedule items and Requests could not be deleted: Under some circumstances, Order lines, Schedule items and Requests could not be deleted.

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