MarsEdit 4.4.12 is now available on the MarsEdit site and on the Mac App Store.

This update includes a real mish-mash of delightful little fixes. Here’s the complete list:

• Improve the VoiceOver accessibility of Preferences and Blog Settings
• Fix a bug that prevented custom media folders from working on Apple Silicon Macs
• Fix a bug that caused blank values in the the Author column of the main post list
• Fix a bug that prevented newly added blog from becoming selected in the main window
• Avoid a hang-up that occurred when trying to download a preview template with no blog configured
• Custom field values can now be set on a post via AppleScript
• Selecting “New Post” from the app’s Dock icon menu now activates the app as well
• Increase the text size of labels in the Media Manager

If you enjoy MarsEdit, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter, and of course, writing about the app on your own blog! Thanks for your support.

Over on my development blog, Indie Stack, I shared a lesson learned about developing for iOS, where I’ve been making some progress on Black Ink.

The problem? Black Ink’s keyboard shortcuts don’t show up as expected when holding down the Command key on an iPad keyboard. The solution? Suprisingly simple. Follow the link above if interested. Here’s how it looks now!

Progress on the iOS version has been slow but relatively steady. I hope to push through to a public beta release which I’ll share within the next few weeks. Hang tight!

It’s been a long time coming, but I’m happy to announce that the Red Sweater Store now supports Apple Pay!

With this change, I took the opportunity to revise the whole checkout process in the store, adapting to the latest features that Stripe, my payment processing company, has to offer. This means that customers whose cards adopt 3D Security features will also now be able to authenticate their purchase right in the store with no additional hassle.

The Stripe support for the “Apple Pay” button extends beyond Apple Pay. Theoretically it supports Google Pay, Microsoft Pay, and others. I don’t expect that most of my customers will use those payment options, but it’s great to know that they’re there in case it’s what happens to work best for the buyer.

I also took this opportunity to revise the amount of information requested from customers when making a purchase. Historically, I asked for name and mailing address, because that was typically what payment processing companies required. These days it’s not unusual to make payments with just an email address and a credit card, so that’s all I’m requiring now. It makes for a much more streamlined purchase flow.

How well does this new store work? I don’t know, why don’t you give it a try and let me know!

FastScripts is one of Red Sweater’s most beloved, albeit niche, apps. The Mac-based scripting utility adds a menu bar icon for running scripts, and supports attaching keyboard shortcuts to them. Like many customers, I’ve been running it on my Mac literally every day for … seemingly forever.

Although the app has been continuously developed over the past twenty years or so, and has received many updates, it’s been a long time since I released a major upgrade. I went looking through the Red Sweater Blog archives to try to discover when FastScripts 2.0 shipped, and I couldn’t find a post. Why? It shipped before 2005, the year when this blog debuted. I had to resort to searching my email archives, where I discovered that FastScripts 2.0 was released on June 10, 2004. That release inroduced keyboard shortcuts and a number of new preferences to the app.

Over the years I’ve had a lot of ideas about how FastScripts might evolve, and have worked on new features intermittently. As part of my recent decision to reinvest in Red Sweater, I decided to focus on finally shipping some of those features in a major 3.0 upgrade. Today, I’d like to share what I’ve got so far, as a public beta:

Download FastScripts 3.0 Beta
(Free of charge until public release – Requires macOS 10.14.6 or later)

The major changes in this upgrade are the introduction of a search feature so you can easily sift through all the scripts in the menu, and a major overhaul to the way scripts are executed so that multiple scripts can be fired off in rapid succession without interfering with one another. The upgrade also includes a number of other changes. Here’s the complete list:

• Scriptlight: quickly search your scripts from the FastScripts menu
  • Currently matches based on script title, may expand to match content
• Scripts are always run in a separate process
  • Low latency execution by priming script running process
  • No limit to running simultaneous scripts
  • Scripts can’t “hang up” the main app or cause it to crash
• FastScripts scripting changes
  • New “open web page” command streamlines visiting favorite URLs in whatever browser is active
  • FastScripts’s own hierarchies of scripts are now described as “script collections”
  • Improved the layout of text in the “display message” message panels
• Other improvements
  • Conflicts are now detected when setting keyboard shortcuts for scripts
  • Keyboard shortcuts are now disabled while editing a script’s keyboard shortcut
  • Symbolic links are now supported in script folder hierarchies

Apart from the changes listed above, I hope to soon offer the ability to monitor and cancel long-running scripts are launched from FastScripts.

This upgrade will address a lot of of minor usability limitations of FastScripts 2 while also setting the groundwork for continued evolution of the app going forward. If you run scripts on your Mac, I hope you’ll consider giving it a try!