It feels like just a few weeks have passed, but it’s now nearly 3 months since 1.1, time flies when you’re having fun!
Sparkle 1.1, and the 1.1.1 update that followed shortly, was a massive update to our seminal 1.0 release. We added a ton of new features that brought Sparkle under Apple’s attention, and ultimately resulted in a Mac App Store featuring that propelled Sparkle under a global attention.
All we can say is we’re humbled and feel lucky for all the customers and, really, new friends we have met through Sparkle. We’re also not so proud of the instabilities and performance issues that 1.1 had, though we got in touch with every single one of you who reported a crash, and found a solution with a custom beta version every single time.
The good news is 1.2 is a rock solid foundation that will take us together to a new level. Thank you so much for your support so far, please get in touch if you have any request and keep reporting bugs and crashes and we’ll be get back to you with a fix.
Sparkle 1.2 adds many small and useful features, and some small but helpful things:
add format bar for quick access to layout buttons
add element alignment, sizing and distribution controls
add per-device visibility of elements
add resizing of variable width embedded content
add facebook button integration
add image letterboxing for galleries
add email address obfuscation
add "current" color, not synchronized across elements
add many UI improvements for multi-device layout
buttons can be used as links as well as for form submission
only export updated resources, to make file sync easier
fix gradients fading to transparent
layout engine fixes
many menu-related fixes
fixes to preview fidelity
many reliability, performance and feature improvements
add Simplified Chinese localization
You can find the update on the Mac App Store or by relaunching the non-App Store version Sparkle.