LaunchBar 5 - Release Notes

Release 5 Beta 3

• New Clipboard History default action: Paste as Plain Text.
• The Clipboard History action “Copy and Paste” has been changed to “Paste”, so the current clipboard contents are no longer altered when pasting a clipboard history item.
• Added “Send to” support for Clipboard History items (by pressing the Tab key).
• Reduced memory footprint of Clipboard History.
• The Clipboard preferences help button now opens the correct help page.
• Creating iCal events: Several bug fixes and improvements when entering time and date:
  • The hour/minute separator (colon or dot) can now be omitted in non-ambiguous cases (e.g. Fri 0800-1030). However, it’s still necessary to enter the separator in ambiguous cases (Jan 13, 2010 vs. Jan 13, 20:10)
  • Fixed an issue when entering time ranges across noon or midnight (e.g. 10-12.30pm)
  • Fixed an issue when entering only weekday and time (e.g. Fri 7.30pm)
• Added “Recompress Image” actions.
• Fixed an issue when dragging multiple files onto LaunchBar’s Dock icon.
• Added missing German localization in software update check.
• Fixed an issue causing LaunchBar not to hide when started automatically at login.
• Fixed an issue with Instant Send / Get Finder Selection (Command-G) when there was nothing selected in Finder.
• The shortcut for “Run in Background” / “Execute in Background” has been changed from Shift-Return to Option-Return to resolve a conflict with the new “Apply last entered text to selected item” feature, which also uses the Shift-Return shortcut.
• The “Check Spelling While Typing” setting of LaunchBar’s input window is now preserved across restarts.
• Fixed some issues with Asian input methods in LaunchBar’s text input field.
• The ClipMerge sound effect can now be customized by providing one or more sound files in the ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Sounds/ClipMerge folder. If this folder contains more than one sound file, the sound effect will be chosen randomly.
• Improved ClipMerge when typing Command-C-C via key repeat (when Command-C is kept pressed until ClipMerge is performed).
• The Command-Space-Space app switcher can now be cancelled with Escape while the Command key is still pressed.
• Files can now be sent to Services menu actions via “Send to”.
• Fixed an issue causing launched applications not to become active (occurred only when running LaunchBar without a Dock icon).
• Fixed a crashing issue when invoking Entourage actions on computers not having Entourage installed.
• Fixed a rare crashing issue at startup.

Release 5 Beta 2

• Fixed a number of issues with ClipMerge. Most notably, all incompatibilities with third party applications should now be resolved.
• ClipMerge now requires “Enable access for assistive devices” to be turned on in Universal Access Preferences.
• Fixed an issue causing Clipboard History to contain duplicate entries under some circumstances.
• The Quick Look preview panel can now be scrolled with the scroll wheel.
• Fixed an issue with Calculator causing an “Error” result at certain calculations.
• Fixed an issue with Calculator when entering numbers in exponential notation (e.g. 1e-6).
• Pressing Space now correctly performs a deep sub-search in case of indexing rules.
• Fixed an issue when moving files across volume boundaries causing the moved item not to be removed from its previous location.
• Improved error handling when moving files.
• Fixed an issue when turning LaunchBar’s Dock icon on or off in Preferences > Advanced.
• Corrected keyboard shortcut of “Show Index” command shown in LaunchBar’s gear wheel menu.
• Showing the correct 10.5 style folder icon in case of application folders.

Release 5 Beta 1

• First beta release of LaunchBar 5. See the LaunchBar 5 Beta page for details about new features and improvements.

Firefox 3 bookmarks and history

If your current LaunchBar configuration already contains indexing rules for Firefox 2 bookmarks and/or history, you first have to delete these existing rules and then re-add them to the configuration to make them work with Firefox 3.

Firefox index updates

Firefox 3 stores its bookmarks and history information in an SQLite database. Unfortunately this database can only be accessed by one application at the time. It’s therefore not possible for LaunchBar to update its Firefox 3 bookmarks and history index while Firefox is running. In order to update the index you must quit Firefox first.

Note that LaunchBar automatically detects when Firefox quits to perform a necessary index update as immediate as possible.

New location of configuration and preferences files

LaunchBar 5 uses new locations for storing its configuration and preferences information. When you run LaunchBar 5 for the very first time, your existing LaunchBar 4 configuration data is copied to the new location.

LaunchBar 4

LaunchBar 5

As a consequence, when switching between LaunchBar 4 and 5, configuration changes made in LaunchBar 5 are not reflected in LaunchBar 4 and vice versa.