iPhone World

So there are still some things I want to get added to µGrowl, but have been slow at working on it mainly because all of you seem to be quite content with its current state. For those that haven’t been following the forums, the main addition was to be integration with a torrent site or two. This has proven to be fruitless as site layouts are constantly changing and maintaining such a thing would be a nightmare. So that has all been scrapped.

Don’t cry just yet though, while there won’t be full-on integration, there will be RSS support. This may not seem like much, and you may wonder why I’d bother since µTorrent can already do RSS, so I’ll tell you. The biggest weakness in the µTorrent WebUI (in my opinion) is the lack of ability to view any of the feeds in µTorrent. If you have feeds that are not set to auto download, you must use µTorrent itself to get them going. With the RSS addition, it won’t be quite perfect, as feeds in µTorrent will not display in µGrowl. Rather the idea would be to add the feeds separately (or only) to µGrowl. It is not in this release, but I have already worked out adding a .torrent file via µGrowl. See where I’m going with this? After the next update, there will be little need to ever look at µTorrent itself. Some other little things will be coming also, like confirmation when removing things.

Soooo. Now that you know what is NOT in this release, let me tell you what is. Don’t get too excited because it’s nothing major. A bug was discovered that would prevent Windows from shutting down if µGrowl is running. A number of folks had reported this in the forums, and I am happy to announce that it has been fixed.

Head on over to the µGrowl page to grab the latest version!

µGrowl has finally moved out of beta and in to 1.0. Especially for those of you still on 0.9.3, there are loads of new features here!

Be aware that it seems the WebUI in the new beta of uTorrent causes some notifications to not work correctly.

New in 1.0

• Ability to start / stop / remove / remove+delete any torrent in the list
• remove and remove+delete do so with no confirmation.
• Ability to start with Windows finally!
• Ability to add a new torrent by URL
• Selectable columns include status, upload/download speed, % done, ratio, seeds & peers, total downloaded/uploaded, ETA, and label.
• Columns can be clicked to sort and all columns sort perfectly
• Columns can be rearranged but the positions are not saved
• Torrents with a ratio of 1 or greater can be shown in bold
• Automatic check for updates, which can be disabled in the settings
• Automatic check for important notices, also can be disabled
• Tweaked the status coloring
• Fixed a bug causing the window to be resizable only once per execution
• Fixed a bug causing the window to be visible when minimized to the tray
• Fixed a number of other bugs that now escape me

Still to come:

• The ability to add a .torrent file directly (as you can with the WebUI)
• The ability to send comments and feedback from within µGrowl
• Compatibility with the upcoming release of uTorrent
• Your request here

So everyone head over to the µGrowl page and download the 1.0 release!

Version 0.9.9 Beta of µGrowl has just been released. This one has some major UI changes and enhancements. Read the official write-up and download the newest version at the µGrowl page. It is now at 0.9.9 Beta as I hope this will be the final beta release, and may already prove stable enough to become 1.0.

-The screenshot still shows 0.9.3, I know, yours won’t

Changes in 0.9.9 Beta

• Complete UI redesign.
• Added Snarl support.
• Added a list of all currently active torrents.
• Added µTorrent bandwidth usage on status bar.
• Counts for total, active, downloading & seeding are displayed.
• Errors now displayed for authentication or connection failures.
• Window is now resizable.
• Settings have been moved off of the main window.
• Removed from Alt-Tab list when minimized.
• Close button now minimizes to the tray.
• Fixed bug preventing the server settings from being saved in some cases.
• View menu now has option to turn on debug messages. Not much at this point.
• Support link added to the help menu.

Features yet to come

• Ability to start, stop, remove & delete torrents from within µGrowl
• Ability to control µTorrent max bandwidth usage from µGrowl
• Ability to add torrents right from µGrowl
• Toggle to display all torrents, not just active
• Control run at startup
• Your request here?

Head over to the µGrowl page to download.

The interest in µGrowl is much higher than I thought it would have been. Once again I want to say that this is provided at no charge. If you feel µGrowl is worth a few bucks, even if you feel it is worth a quarter, please consider making a donation.

Well folks, we’re up to 0.9.3 Beta. This time I’ve managed to get in a bit more testing before releasing to the wild and I think I have all of the issues to date licked here. The problem with the threshold notifications came down to a rounding error. You may have also noticed that no matter if monitor at launch was checked or not, it did not how you say, monitor at launch. This has also been fixed. I did not add any features in this as I just wanted to get all of the quirks worked out of the existing features first. So as long as nothing big pops up here, I should be able to start adding things shortly. So, if there’s anything you want µGrowl to do, now would be a good time to make yourself heard.

*Update* Shortly after posting the new release, I noticed one fatal flaw. The checkbox for monitoring was indeed checked at startup if it was supposed to be, however the monitoring was not actually started! Only a few people downloaded it during that window so to you, please update again and I apologize. Along with that, I had already began working on the next version so you get a little added benefit here. There is now a differentiation between changing from Downloading to Seeding and Seeding to Finished, though both are covered under the ‘Finished’ option.

Currently in the works

• More informative notifications. For example, threshold notices are nice, but  wouldn’t it be better to know how much is left?
• Some kind of summary on a user defined interval. (X active, X total, X seeding, total bandwidth, etc)
• An option to consider a transition from Downloading to Seeding to be a finished torrent.
• Alternate delivery methods for those who do not use Growl. Perhaps via email? If you could benefit from µGrowl if it supported another notification method, please post in the comments or forums.

Enough of the small talk, on with the goods!

Head over to the µGrowl page to grab the latest version.