About Me

  • Adam Behringer

    Seattle, Washington USA

    Adam is the founder of BEEDOCS, an artisan software company that makes great timeline software for Mac OS X.

  • Enter your e-mail to receive blog updates:

Previous Posts

BEEDOCS Shirts

  • Bleached Bee T-Shirt

Archives

What's New in March '09

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Video still of rope on a table

There have been many small improvements to Bee Docs Timeline over the last few months. Besides the release notes, I thought it would be fun to get into the habit of putting a video together each month to highlight a few of the changes. Hopefully you will find it entertaining and informative!

Click here to visit our movie page

Labels: ,

Bee Docs Timeline 2.5.1

Thursday, March 26, 2009

I released yet another update to Bee Docs Timeline earlier this week. We are working on a video to show some of the new features, but until then, here is the list of improvements...

Release Notes - 2.5.1

  • NEW: Select which monitor the 3D Mode uses for display in Preference pane
  • IMPROVED: Up to 10x performance increase for automatic layout
  • IMPROVED: "Things" importer has option for excluding completed To Do items
  • IMPROVED: Tall timelines (stacked events, many rows) are more efficient in width
  • IMPROVED: Shift-arrow and control-arrow combinations now work as expected
  • FIXED: "Things" importer works with databases stored in non-standard locations
  • FIXED: Sometimes arrow keys didn't traverse in the proper order
  • FIXED: Height of complex timelines were sometimes too tall
  • FIXED: Subversion (SVN) compatibility for timeline documents improved
  • FIXED: Change default export from Pixlet to Photo-JPG for wider compatibility
  • FIXED: Exporting 3D timelines that use image backgrounds would sometimes show a white flickering line on the back edge of the chart

Labels: , ,

Bee Docs Timeline 2.5 - Released!

Thursday, March 05, 2009

I just published the 2.5 version of Bee Docs Timeline. This is one of our biggest releases since the launch of the 3D Edition almost a year ago. We (yes, we!) will be working on some more detailed blog posts and some videos to demonstrate the new features, but I wanted to give you an overview as soon as possible.

First, we have made bulk edit more stable. Bulk edit mode has not been as stable as the chart view modes and certain combinations of actions, usually involving undo, would sometimes freeze the application. I put an emphasis in this release on tracking down and fixing these bugs.

Second, I have improved the quality of video exports. I won't get into the technical details here, but the bottom line is that your video exports should look better (and render faster). I have also added professional quality motion blur for video exports. Motion blur is a advanced topic, but it basically makes the motion of your timeline look smoother and more realistic. Please note that turning on motion blur will significantly increase your video export wait times.

Third, this version allows you to export video segments to Keynote! Not only that, but you can choose to pause only on selected events which will allow you to highlight the parts of your timeline that you choose. See an example Keynote export here.

Finally, I added an automatic importer for Things by Cultured Code. Things is a new application winning rave reviews that allows you to create To Do lists. If you have To Do items with due dates, you can now import them into a timeline with just a couple of clicks.

Version 2.5 is a free upgrade. So please use "Check for Updates" in the "Timeline 3D" menu to update today!

Release Notes - 2.5

  • NEW: Export full motion 3D QuickTime to Keynote slides
  • NEW: Option to skip to selected events for 3D exports
  • NEW: Professional quality motion blur for 3D video exports
  • NEW: Automatically import To Do items from Things by Cultured Code
  • IMPROVED: Video export is more efficient (faster)
  • IMPROVED: Quality improved for video export presets
  • IMPROVED: When entering 3D mode, current selection is respected
  • FIXED: Removing an event in bulk edit while editing text caused freeze
  • FIXED: Undo was not working properly for deleted events in bulk edit
  • FIXED: Undo was not working properly for newly added events in bulk edit
  • FIXED: QuickTime chapters are no longer added to HD exports for compatibility with iMovie

Labels: , , ,