LaunchBar 2 - Release Notes

LaunchBar 2.0 for Mac OS X Server 1.2

While LaunchBar 1.x was especially designed to serve the needs of power users and software developers who have to deal with lots of applications and documentation files simultaneously, the 2.0 version grew up to a powerful tool for everyone. It offers an improved setup management to provide a maximum of productivity with a minimum of configuration effort.

• LaunchBar 2.0 has been totally rewritten from scratch
• Brand new user interface
• Managing web-bookmarks. LaunchBar reads OmniWeb style bookmark files. Thus hundreds of web resources become accessible via LaunchBar without any additional configuration
• Much simplified configuration management - zero administration effort for new users
• Up to date setup: The entire setup is updated automatically at each startup. No need to add or remove any modified resources manually
• Alias names: Each item can be renamed to be more descriptive
• The Running Apps Menu provides several display modes
• Remote Launching: Applications can be configured to be launched on a specific remote host via NSHosting. Even drag & drop can be used for opening files with those remotely launched apps. At startup LaunchBar includes already NSHost'ed apps in the list of running apps (except those launched via telnet instead of rsh).
• Managing Project Folders (folders containing top level PB.project files): All your projects can now be scanned at once using a single setup entry.
• Setup entries can be disabled, the deep (recursive) setup scan can be turned off
• The results of the setup scan are cached to speed up the startup procedure. The setup scan can be configured to be performed either manually, automatically or each time LaunchBar starts up. The automatic update tracks the file modification date to determine whether an update is necessary or not.
• The new "Hide All" command allows to hide all running apps at once
• "Load Default Configuration" to restore factory settings
• License management

Known Problems in LaunchBar 2.0 for Mac OS X Server 1.2

• Selecting NFS mounted locations in File Viewer using [NSWorkspace selectFile:inFileViewerRootedAtPath:] can cause a short deadlock when the corresponding NFS mountpoint wasn't touched before (e.g. immediately after login). This is a reproducible NSWorkspace / Viewer.app bug.
• The NSWorkspace API (getInfoForFile:application:type:) can't be used to distinguish between directories and file-wrappers due to NFS related deadlocks (especially during startup). To work around this problem, the type of a file is now determined by simply reading the path-extension. This however causes directories with a path-extension (e.g. /tmp/dirname.abc) to be treated like plain files and as a consequence the setup-scan doesn't search inside such directories.
• When using the "Floating above other windows" preferences option LaunchBar will always become the active application when some other app is hidden. This is the normal Window Server behavior (activating the application with the topmost visible window).
• The Command-Space hotkey doesn't work within LaunchBar (e.g. while running the Configuration window)