LaunchBar 3 - Release Notes

Known Issues in LaunchBar 3

• There is a known incompatibility between LaunchBar and Panther's Exposé / Show Desktop feature. When you invoke Show Desktop while LaunchBar is active, then switch to another application (e.g. via Dock or Command-Tab), the LaunchBar window will appear offset downwards. To correct this offset you have to invoke Show Desktop once again while LaunchBar is active. Unfortunately there seems to be no way for us to work around this issue, so we have to wait for a fixed version of Exposé.
• In Mac OS X 10.3 the LaunchBar menu bar icon can no longer be displayed at the right edge of the menu bar, it now appears left from the Mac OS X status icons (Clock, Volume, Displays, etc.). Strictly speaking, the icon doesn't serve much of a purpose anyway - once you've got used to the Command-Space hotkey you won't need the icon anymore, therefore - starting with LaunchBar 3.3 - the icon is turned off by default (you can still turn it on in the General pane of LaunchBar preferences).

What's new in LaunchBar 3.3

Improved Address Book Support

• Phone Numbers: Address books can now be scanned for "Phone Numbers" or "Email Addresses & Phone Numbers". Opening a phone number in LaunchBar displays the number in large type.
• "Show in Address Book" opens the Address Book entry associated with a given email addresses or phone number simply by pressing Command-Return.
• Email addresses are now displayed with their Address Book labels.
• Improved Address Book Scanner, considers the "This is a Company" setting and detects email addresses in custom address book files more fault tolerant.
• Entries with empty First Name / Last Name fields are now handled properly. The "Company", "Job Title" or "Email" fields will be used instead to establish a proper name. Further, the "Nickname" field is now considered, allowing to search search for a person by its nickname.

Configuration

• The configuration menu now provides several shortcuts for updating the index, e.g. Command-1 scans for Applications, Command-2 scans your Address Books, etc.
• Cleaned up configuration interface.
• The "Filetypes" pane in the configuration window has been renamed to "Filetype Collections".
• The "Open Configuration" menu shortcut has been changed from Command-O to Command-Y. Command-O now opens the selected item. The "Reveal in Configuration" shortcut has been changed to Command-Option-Y respectively.
• The default configuration has been extended by a couple of 10.3 developer documentation entries. You can update an existing configuration by clicking the "Add" button in the configuration window and selecting "Programming Topics" from the list of "Factory Defaults".
• Added compatibility with the latest "nightly builds" of Camino. These builds introduced a new, incompatible bookmarks file format and a different location for storing the bookmarks file. In order to make LaunchBar aware of these changes it's necessary to update the LaunchBar configuration by removing and re-adding the Camino Bookmarks entry.

Preferences

• Changing the Hotkey preferences no longer requires LaunchBar to be restarted.
• Command-\ has been added to the list of activation hotkeys. Please note that on non-English keyboards this key may be labeled differently (e.g. Command-# on a German keyboard).
• The menu bar icon is now turned off by default (see the "Known Issues" section above for details).
• New preferences option "Quit LaunchBar with Command-Option-Q" to prevent accidental quitting of LaunchBar.

Other Changes

• Moving the LaunchBar window no longer requires the Command key to be pressed.
• The bar can now be kept horizontally centered. When the bar is moved, it snaps to the horizontal screen center. A centered bar is resized to both directions simultaneously to retain its centered location.
• Dragging an item from the LaunchBar window no longer requires the Option key to be pressed. Just click and drag the item's icon. Starting the drag from any other location is still possible by holding down the Option key.
• Dragging items from the search result pop-up list no longer requires the Option key to be pressed either.
• LaunchBar now supports Emacs key bindings. In addition to the arrow keys, the search result popup list can now be navigated with Control-p/n/b/f/a/e.
• When you start browsing into a folder using the Arrow Right key, the initial search result that delivered this folder is preserved. You can restore this search result by browsing backwards with the Arrow Left key.
• On Mac OS X 10.3 the strings in the search result pop-up are now truncated with ellipsis if necessary.
• The Info.plist setting for running LaunchBar as a background application has been changed from NSUIElement to LSUIElement. See the LaunchBar Help, chapter "Tips & Tricks" to learn more about this topic.
• Command-Period can now be used to close or abort dialogs and to hide LaunchBar.
• The LaunchBar context menu has been rearranged.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where "Show in Finder" didn't work when the corresponding file or folder was not readable.
• Fixed an issue where symbolic links pointing to itself caused the Setup Scan to hang in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.
• The small 3 pixel overlap of the LaunchBar window when running on a dual display configuration has been fixed.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.12

• New preferences option: "Sort folders above files during file system browsing". This option is turned on by default.
• During file system browsing, filenames containing numbers are now sorted in numeric order (this feature requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later).
• The Preferences window has been cleaned up.
• The string encoding for real name prefixes in mailto-URLs is now determined automatically. The corresponding preferences option has been removed.
• Improved scroll wheel support. See also the LaunchBar Help chapters "Application Switching" and "Recent Items".
• Addresses several issues related to the developer preview of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.
• Fixed an incompatibility with Mac OS X 10.1.
• Fixed an issue with the abbreviation search algorithm.
• The "Default Web Browser" and "Default Email Reader" preference settings have been removed. Please use the corresponding settings in System Preferences instead, or use the "Open with Application" setting of your LaunchBar configuration.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.11

• LaunchBar no longer becomes active upon "Hide" or "Quit" of other applications. When you activate an application via LaunchBar you can now simply hide that app to switch back to the previously active application (this behavior could already be achieved by running LaunchBar as a background application, which is now no longer necessary).
• The "Get/Drop Finder Selection" command now also works with single folder selections in Finder's column view (this didn't work before due to a Finder bug).
• Addresses an issue with the Camino bookmark parser (some bookmarks were not recognized).
• Improved Address Book Scanner: Using "Company" or "Job Title" if no name is available.
• When a folder path is copied or dragged from LaunchBar, a trailing slash character is now appended to the path.
• The "Sound Files" filetype definition has been extended by AAC file types ("m4a" and "m4p" audio files created with iTunes 4).
• The "Movie Files" filetype definition has been extended by MPEG file types.
• The shortcut of the Preferences menu item has been changed to Command-,
• Entering characters without their diacritical marks now also works properly with stroked Latin characters.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.10

• LaunchBar now fully supports the Mac OS X Address Book. The default configuration has been extended by a corresponding entry. You can update an existing configuration by clicking the "Add" button in the configuration window and selecting "Address Book" from the list of "Factory Defaults".
• The LaunchBar Help files have been significantly expanded. It's highly recommended to take a closer look at the documentation to learn more about LaunchBar and its numerous features.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.9

• Fixed a bug that caused LaunchBar to freeze during startup.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.8

• LaunchBar now supports localized filenames. Applications, Preference Panes and folders can be searched by their localized names. This feature can be configured in the "General" pane of LaunchBar Preferences. Please note that changing this preference setting may cause some disk activity, since the filename index must be updated for all items in your setup.
• index.html files can now be searched by their parent folder's name (especially useful for searching documentation files).
• The default configuration has been extended by a couple of new developer documentation entries. You can update an existing configuration by clicking the "Add" button in the configuration window and selecting "Developer Resources" from the list of "Factory Defaults".
• The "Open with Application" setting can now be applied to bookmarks and email addresses as well. This allows you e.g. to provide separate bookmarks files for alternative web-browsers, containing only those URLs that do not display properly in your default browser.
• Scanning for files has been further optimized (it's up to 25% faster).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an incompatibility with the latest version of Path Finder.
• Leading space characters in filenames are now properly ignored to gain better search results for these items.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.7

• Added support for Safari Bookmarks. To make the Safari Bookmarks accessible via LaunchBar you must add a corresponding entry to your LaunchBar configuration by clicking the "Add" button in the configuration window.
• Much improved Unicode support. Characters with diacritical marks (accented characters, German Umlauts, etc.) are now handled properly when searching for items. The non-diacritical form of a character can be entered as well to find the corresponding items, e.g. to find "Österreich" you may enter "ÖST" as well as "OST".
• LaunchBar now adapts much faster to your preferred abbreviations. You can now re-assign an already used abbreviation to a new item simply by using this abbreviation twice with the new item.
• The latest Chimera builds introduced a slightly modified bookmarks file format that was no longer recognized by LaunchBar. This problem has been fixed.
• The buttons in the Quit dialog now appear in the "correct" order. The "Quit" button is now default, the Escape key can be used to cancel the dialog.
• Some of the graphics appeared too dark (especially the blue background in the search result popup) due to embedded color profiles.
• Clicking a System Menu (e.g. the "Volume" or the "Date & Time" menu) while the LaunchBar window is visible no longer deactivates the LaunchBar window.
• File System Browsing now properly considers the "Visible Rows" preference (the preference value is now taken into account if it exceeds the minimum of 16 rows that's used otherwise during File System Browsing).
• Some other bug fixes and improvements.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.6

• Fixed a bug causing the preferences to be trashed when the bar was resized to maximum width.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.5

Changes and Improvements

• Dragging files from LaunchBar has been improved to work properly with Terminal (space characters are escaped) and Mail (the dragged file is added as an attachment, instead of inserting the file path as text).
• The Help pages are now opened in the "Default Web Browser" instead of the "Default HTML Viewer".

Bug Fixes

• Hiding the bar at login should now work properly (the bar didn't hide when a Setup Scan was performed).
• The "Scan Subfolders" option couldn't be modified in the Inspector drawer.
• Fixed an occasional problem where the bar disappeared when auto-hiding was turned off.
• Fixed an issue causing LaunchBar to hang at startup.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.4

• Fixed a bug causing the Setup Scan to hang when processing directories that have no execute permissions set.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.3

New Features and Improvements

• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar compatibility (see below for details).
• LaunchBar now reads Chimera, Mozilla and iCab bookmark files.
• Reads "Group vCard" files exported from the new 10.2 Address Book.
• New preferences option to remove duplicate items from the search result.
• Filetype recognition and file scanning has been rewritten. Scanning for files is now up to 30% faster, invisible files are now ignored properly, and the scan now considers the HFS type code as well as the filename extension (previous versions considered the extension in favor of the type code).
• Filename extension processing is now case insensitive. It's no longer necessary to maintain two versions (uppercase / lowercase) of the same extension.
• New activation hotkeys: Control-Tab, Control-Esc
• Copy/Paste onto LaunchBar now trims surrounding whitespace characters and accepts multiple file paths separated by lines.
• During "File System Browsing" LaunchBar now displays up to 16 items at once.
• Help pages are now displayed in the web browser.
• The configuration window is now a bit more self-explanatory:
  • The enabled state of configuration entries is now labeled "Enabled" instead of "Disabled"
  • The Inspector drawer is opened automatically
  • The "Scan Deep" option has been renamed to "Scan Subfolders"
  • Several new icons in the configuration window

Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar compatibility

• Command-Tab is reserved for the Dock application switching behavior and third party applications can no longer override this hotkey. Therefore LaunchBar provides Control-Tab as an alternative.
• When running on 10.2 LaunchBar will use Command-Option-H instead of Command-Shift-H for the "Hide Others" hotkey. The Command-Shift-H shortcut is now used by OS X to perform "Go Home" in Finder and in Open/Save dialogs.
• Selected table rows in the configuration window are now displayed with the proper text color (white on blue).
• Some issues with the display of the bar have been fixed.
• Improved Email Scanner, reads "Group vCard" files exported from the new 10.2 Address Book. Please note that this is only an interim solution, LaunchBar 3.3 will be able to access the Address Book data directly.
• LaunchBar no longer turns off the Login Items / Hide option (this was necessary in previous versions to work around a bug in OS X 10.0). In order to start LaunchBar with a hidden bar at login, you have to make sure that the 'Hide' option is checked in System Preferences. Note that the Login Items / Hide option does not work, if LaunchBar is configured to run as a background application, in that case the bar will always appear after login, regardless of the 'Hide' setting.

Known problems with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar

• Due to a Finder bug the "Get/Drop Finder Selection" command doesn't work if a single folder is selected in Finder's column view. However, it works with single file or multiple file/folder selections. There seems to be no workaround for this bug, so we have to wait for a fixed Finder version.
• If a "non-activating panel" (a new feature in 10.2 that allows panels to receive user input without activating the corresponding application) is ordered to front while LaunchBar is active, the activation hotkey (Command-Space) doesn't work.

Bug Fixes

• Invalid configuration entries (e.g. entries referring to nonexistent file paths of removable disks that have not yet been mounted) are now loaded properly.
• Fixed an incompatibility with CodeTek's Virtual Desktop.
• The height of the bar no longer increases when the screen resolution is changed.
• Auto activation of the selected item in the running apps menu (Command-Space-Space, then release the Command key) now also works if the desired item is selected with the mouse.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.2

• The names of Preference Panes and Watson Tools are now extended by a suffix indicating the item's type, e.g. "Internet Preference Pane" instead of "Internet". This allows you to use abbreviations like e.g. "IPP" in order to select the "Internet Preference Pane".
• Watson Tools are now displayed with their individual icons instead of the generic tool icon.
• Dragging multiple files onto an application item now works properly even if the target app is not yet running.
• Fixed a crash in the configuration inspector.
• Fixed a file permission problem in the application package (insufficient read privileges).

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2.1

New Features and Improvements

• Improved Bookmark Scanner, reads Opera Bookmark files.
• Improved Email Scanner, reads Eudora address books and address book data exported from Mailsmith.
• New preferences option to hide all other applications when an item is activated.
• New "Setup wizard" lets you easily create common configuration entries (click the "Add" button in the configuration window to open the wizard sheet. You may press the Option key in order to skip the wizard sheet).
• Items can now be dragged from the result popup list (hold down the Option key to start the drag).
• Server aliases are now handled properly, the "Connect to Server" dialog is shown if necessary in order to mount the corresponding server.
• Improved Watson support, provides direct access to all "Watson Tools". The corresponding configuration entries can now be easily created using the new "Setup Wizard".
• Improved Path Finder support: Get / Drop Path Finder Selection.
• System Preference Panes are now displayed with their corresponding icon (instead of the generic "empty document" icon).
• The "Setup Scan" panel is now much smaller and it no longer floats above other windows.

Performance

• Much improved display performance: Scrolling the result list with the arrow keys is now noticeable faster.
• Improved navigation performance in the Configuration window.

Bug Fixes

• The Setup Scan no longer raises the "Connect to Server" dialog when accessing alias files. This bug also caused LaunchBar to hang during startup, when the remote machine was unreachable.
• Java applications are now managed properly in the list of running apps.
• Bookmark and Email entries in the setup refused "Setup Scan" settings other than "Automatically".
• The "Paste" command now expands "tilde signs" in a pasted file path.

Incompatible Changes

• LaunchBar no longer works on Mac OS X 10.0 (now requires 10.1 or later).
• Preference Panes are no longer searched by their filename, instead the pane's display title is used (e.g. "International" instead of "Localization.prefPane").
• The modifier key that has to be pressed when dragging items from LaunchBar has changed from "Shift" to "Option". This change became necessary to allow the dragging of items from the result popup list.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.2

• Search performance has been improved: LaunchBar searches are now more than twice as fast!
• Much improved Drag & Drop functionality (see below for details).
• Alias Names can now be assigned to URLs and email addresses as well.
• The list of running apps can now be browsed backwards using the Shift key.
• File System Browsing: Improved handling of empty or nonexistent folders.
• Reveal in Configuration (Command-Option-O): locates the selected item in the configuration window.
• The abbreviation search now considers the root folder of each configuration entry as well. It's no longer necessary to add these folders to the setup manually.
• UTF-8 encoding has been added to the list of possible mailto-URL encodings (required for Apple's Mail application).
• The window level of the bar has been raised above the dock.
• Closing the configuration window with unsaved changes now offers "Don't Save" instead of "Save Later".
• Resizing the bar no longer causes the result popup list to flicker.
• The bookmark scanner now reads URLs inside tables as well.
• Several minor bug fixes, improvements and optimizations.

Drag & Drop

• The desired Drag & Drop action can now be chosen using the modifier keys.
• Default actions for dropped files can now be configured in the "Drag & Drop" pane of LaunchBar Preferences.
• Various file operations: Move, Copy, Make Alias, Make Symbolic Link (Absolute or Relative), Make Hard Link.
• Get Finder Selection (Command-G): Transfers the current Finder selection to LaunchBar.
• Drop Finder Selection (Command-D): Simulates "Drag & Drop" of the current Finder selection onto LaunchBar.
• Copy/Paste of a full file path now pops up a menu asking for the desired file operation. This allows to perform entire file operations using the keyboard: Select source, Copy (Command-C), Select destination, Paste (Command-V).

Preferences

• The Preferences window has been redesigned.
• Several new preferences options.
• Default Web Browser, Email Reader and FTP Client can now be configured independent from the setting in System Preferences.
• Default File Browser: For users of Finder alternatives such as Path Finder.
• New option: "Activate recent items when modifier key is released".
• Default actions for dropped files.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.1.2

• Smart Email Address Scanner: Reads Outlook or Entourage exported contacts, html files containing mailto-URLs, as well as simple lists of email addresses in a variety of formats.
• Due to several shortcomings, LaunchBar no longer runs as a "background application without dock icon" per default. Please see the Tips & Tricks chapter in the "LaunchBar Help" for details why this change became necessary and for instructions how to revert to the previous behavior.
• The system wide "Hide others" hotkey has been changed from "Command-Alternate-H" to "Command-Shift-H" to avoid conflicts with the "Go Home" command.
• Command-Tab has been added to the list of possible LaunchBar activation hotkeys. Please note that this hotkey overrides the Dock's app switching hotkey.
• The "Hide" & "Hide Others" hotkeys now work properly with the Dvorak keyboard layout (you have to set the corresponding option in the preferences panel).
• When determining the type of a given file, LaunchBar now considers the filename extension in favor of the HFS type code.
• LaunchBar now works properly with the Japanese language preference.
• A problem during autostart at login should now be fixed.
• A memory leak has been fixed.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.1.1

• Position and size of the LaunchBar window are now adjusted properly when the screen resolution or layout is changed.
• LaunchBar now supports alternate screen locations as well. You can move the bar to your preferred position by holding down the Command key. Note that you may also move LaunchBar across multiple screens.
• The setup table now uses the proper background color for selected items, depending on the key window status of the configuration window.
• Activating an already running application didn't bring all its windows to front. This has been fixed.
• Dragging files onto LaunchBar no longer causes the program to crash.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.1

• Ready for Mac OS X 10.1
• New menu bar icon, matching the new look of menu icons in Mac OS X 10.1
• The list of running apps is now sorted by activation time (this feature can be turned off in the Preferences panel). This allows you e.g. to switch between the two most recently used apps simply by hitting Command-Space-Space.
• Activating an application now opens a new empty window if necessary to conform with the standard activation behavior in Mac OS X.
• Real name prefix in mailto URLs, e.g. "Real Name <name@domain.com>"
• The abbreviation search algorithm now also considers the filename extension

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Holding down the Alternate key to perform "Hide others" didn't work when the application wasn't already running. This has been fixed.
• The "Hide others" option now also works when opening URLs and email addresses.
• The context menu no longer obscures the bar. It's now placed below the bar.
• The graphite appearance is now fully supported.
• The appearance of the result popup list has been slightly improved. The one pixel gray border has been removed.
• Double clicking the context menu icon no longer activates the selected item.
• The Backspace key can now be used to correct the entered abbreviation.
• The name of a setup entry can be edited by pressing the Return key.
• The "Filetypes" configuration now allows to enter HFS type codes containing space characters.
• The filetype recognition has been further improved. Especially some .mp3 files have not been recognized properly.
• Application packages without an .app suffix are now recognized properly.
• Server aliases (HFS type code 'srvr'), folder aliases and hard disk aliases are now recognized properly. They are treated like folders.
• LaunchBar now saves its internal caches more frequently.
• Reduced memory footprint.
• Several other improvements and bug fixes.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.0

• The free, built in evaluation license is sufficient for occasional use. It allows you to access a maximum of 7 different items per session. Those items can be accessed as often as you like, and even if you exceed the session limit you may still open 10 further items. To obtain a full version of LaunchBar please visit the LaunchBar Ordering Page.
• LaunchBar now runs without a Dock icon and without an application menu. In order to provide access to the various menu commands, LaunchBar adds these commands to its context menu (Control-Click the bar or click the small icon on the right edge of the bar to pop up the context menu).
• Command-H can be used to hide classic apps, Command-Alternate-H to perform "Hide Others". These features are turned off by default, so you have to turn them on in the LaunchBar Preferences panel.
• History: Type Command-Arrow-Down to pop up a list of recently used items.
• New Preferences Option "Show Abbreviation" to display the entered characters.
• Launching an application now takes the "Open in the Classic environment" setting into account.
• Improved Services support.
• Performing "Hide Others" by holding down the Alternate key now also works when browsing the list of running applications with the Command key held down (You have to press the Alternate key before releasing the Command key).
• The Page Up/Down keys can now be used in the result popup list.
• The Preferences panel now stays visible when you deactivate LaunchBar. This allows Drag & Drop into the Open Panel when you choose a "Default Application".
• A Help button has been added to the configuration window.
• The popup menu now displays the corresponding keyboard shortcuts.
• A bug in the "Email Addresses" Help file has been fixed.

What's new in LaunchBar 3.0 Preview 2

• Documentation is now available via LaunchBar Help.
• The "Tips & Tricks" section uncovers many hidden secrets!
• Filesystem Browsing: Arrow-Right shows the contents of a selected folder, Arrow-Left shows the contents of the parent folder. Unix Expert Mode to show hidden files and file package contents as well.
• Holding down the Alternate key while opening an item hides all other applications.
• Control-Space has been added to the list of possible activation hotkeys since it's a more convenient Command-Space alternative than Command-Esc.
• ScrollWheel support: The result popup list can now be scrolled using the wheel.
• Improved filetype recognition: The Setup Scan now searches for HFS type-codes as well as for filename extensions. To add your custom type-codes to the "Filetypes" configuration you have to enter them single quoted, e.g. 'MooV', '8BPS', ...
• A Default Application for opening files with unknown type can be configured via Preferences.
• The Hide / Unhide Animation can now be turned off via Preferences.
• Opening a folder in Finder now shows the folder's contents instead of the folder itself.
• Pressing Escape now hides LaunchBar.
• LaunchBar can now be run without a dock icon.
• Increased Performance: The loading of file icons has been optimized. LaunchBar now tries to create unique image instances whenever possible to reduce memory footprint. This also increases the search performance in the "warm-up-phase" (when the image caches are not yet filled).
• The display of the result popup list can be turned off via Preferences. This increases the search performance due to the reduced drawing effort. The popup can still be displayed using the arrow keys.
• The Setup Scan has been optimized to be less memory consuming especially when scanning large amounts of data.

Problems solved in Preview 2

• The Setup Scan didn't scan the contents of some Folders with a dot in their name (such as BBEdit 6.0 Folder).
• The Setup Scan now recognizes aliases and symbolic links to apps or files properly.
• The LaunchBar window no longer conflicts with other applications in fullscreen mode.
• Trying to open a malformed web URL (e.g. xxx://www.apple.com) silently failed. Now an error message is raised.
• The list of running applications now excludes all background processes properly.
• A crash during manual Setup Scan has been fixed.
• Pressing Command Return (to show a file or folder in Finder) doesn't cause a beep anymore.
• The LaunchBar window now stays hidden when it's started automatically at login.
• LaunchBar now works well with alternate Dock orientations.
• Activating an already running application now brings all its windows to front.