Today I'm releasing PGnJ 0.8. I've been sitting on these updates since October but haven't released them because I've been really busy with work. In addition, Leopard came out and I wanted to revisit some of PGnJ's user interface.
With this release I really wanted to concentrate on further refining the application rather than adding a lot of new SQL related features. Some of the things I've done with this release include:
- Adding an automatic software update system.
- Adding a preference system with a hand full of useful preferences.
- Completely re-implementing the source tree selection logic.
To see the full list of over 20 new features, changes and bug fixes, check out the changelog.
I wrote about what was coming in 0.8 a few months back so I thought I'd quote some of my previous thoughts below.
First, I added an about box and a preference system.
After that, I decided to tackle automatic software updates. Unfortunately, since PGnJ is written in Java, I didn't get to use that slick Sparkle Framework that all of the Cocoa developers use. I had to do my own thing.
So, being that I try and make PGnJ look and feel like a real OS X application, I decided to model my software update system after the Sparkle Framework. In addition to just looking good and working well, I figured that people are used to the software update process that Sparkle provides so I went ahead and developed a pretty neat software update framework for PGnJ. Take a look at the third thumbnail to see it in action.
Another thing I thought I could do to really spruce things up was something that I hope most people don't even notice. I really wanted to add some row selection intelligence to the database object tree on the left side of the application.
To read more, check out the full post.
