I’m excited to share that MarsEdit 5, the next major upgrade to the desktop Mac blog editing app, will be officially released in about two weeks! I am still tying up some loose ends but I want to share an early peek with any users who want to give some of the new features a look:

Click to Download MarsEdit 5.0b7

This update includes a number of changes, both big and small. When the public release is complete I’ll write a more thorough description, but in the mean time here’s a bullet list of some of the biggest changes:

• New Markdown syntax highlighting in plain text mode
• New “Micropost” interface for streamlined publishing of short-form posts
• New calendar-based date editor changing publish dates
• New inline find/replace interface used throughout the app
• Support for inserting photos and sketches directly from iPhone or iPad
• Rich editor updated to modern WebKit2 for improved performance

There may be a few surprises in store yet before the official release, but I hope you enjoy checking out what’s there now in the mean time.

MarsEdit 5 will be a paid upgrade for existing licensed users of MarsEdit 4, and a free upgrade for people who purchased MarsEdit 4 after July 1, 2022. So if you’re excited about what you see and want to ensure you get MarsEdit 5 for the lowest price, purchase MarsEdit 4 today!

FastScripts 3.2.3 is now available on the FastScripts home page, or by selecting “Check for Update” from the FastScripts menu.

This update improves performance when invoking scripts that use AppleScriptObjC to import functionality from Foundation or AppKit. Several advanced FastScripts users reported issues after upgrading from FastScripts 2 to FastScripts 3, that such scripts had degraded in performance. It turned out to be rooted in the fact that FastScripts 3 initializes a whole new script runner for each script invocation, and the cost of initializing Foundation and AppKit when the script runs caused a slight delay. With this update, each script runner is pre-initialized with such support to avoid the delay when a script runs.

Complete list of changes for this release:

FastScripts 3.2.3

• Improve invocation time for scripts that use AppleScriptObjC
• Fix a crash that occurred when pressing Command-Delete in the search field
• Changed the AppleScript command name for running scripts back to ‘invoke’ to avoid ambiguity
• Fix an issue that could cause keyboard shortcuts to be lost after restarting computer

If you enjoy FastScripts, please consider spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support.

Recently, Mac automation legend Bill Cheeseman retired, and left his highly regarded UI Browser, a utility for interrogating the Mac’s accessibility and GUI scripting facilities, in the hands of Mark Alldritt, who develops Script Debugger. The app is no longer for sale but remains available to download as a free trial, and as a fully functioning product for folks who had already purchased the app.

Today Mark Alldritt announced that UI Browser 4, a Swift rewrite of the app, had also been in development. The great news is that the unfinished product has now been published as open source. There are caveats about the incompleteness of the app, but it’s great to know that there might be a future for this very niche, very useful app. I’ll certainly give the source code a look and see if there are any modest contributions I can make.

Today is the official release date of macOS 13 Ventura, Apple’s latest update to the Mac operating system.

We’re happy to share the news that all Red Sweater apps are 100% compatible with the update. Enjoy!