FastScripts 2.7.6 is now available for download from the FastScripts home page and on the Mac App Store.

Since macOS Mojave 10.14 shipped, many folks have noticed the increase in “permission requests” when an app wants to access something like your Photos, Calendar, Contacts, etc. FastScripts doesn’t itself ask for permission to access the data from these apps, but the permission prompts appear when some script that a user runs itself attempts to obtain data from the protected apps.

At some point along the way I think Apple tightened things up so that the permission prompt is not even displayed if the host app (FastScripts, in this case) doesn’t include a ‘usage description’, which explains to the user why it wants access. In FastScripts’s case, the explanation is always just some form of “because you are running a script that does this”, but nonetheless, I think I need to include these strings in order to support scripting these privacy-guarded assets.

This update also fixes a Dark Mode bug when presenting scripting errors:

• Adapt script error panel to macOS Mojave’s Dark Mode
• Add usage explanation strings for requests via scripts to access Reminders, Photos, and Calendar information. This fixes a problem where scripts that attempted to automate these apps wouldn’t prompt for user permission to do so.

If you enjoy FastScripts, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, or spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support. Questions or concerns? Get in touch at [email protected]. Thank you.

I have bad news for MarsEdit users who publish to Blogger: Google is shutting down the Picasa Web Albums API, and MarsEdit will no longer be able to upload images to Blogger/Blogspot blogs.

I had anticipated being able to switch to the Google Photos API, and put a substantial amount of working into transitioning to that service. Unfortunately, I’ve since learned that Google does not provide the same interface to Blogger albums via Google Photos that they did via the Picasa API. Furthermore, images uploaded separately to Google Photos albums cannot be embedded into other web content such as a blog post.

Uploading images to Blogger has never been straightforward. Since I first added support for Blogger almost 12 years ago, I have needed to jump through hoops to support image uploads for the service. Their API has never directly supported image uploads, but I had been able to accommodate solutions using Picasa’s API.

Without support for uploading media, I can no longer endorse Blogger as a suitable blogging service for MarsEdit users. After March 15, 2019, I will update MarsEdit to remove Blogger as a supported system. I have not yet decided whether I can leave some form of support in the app to accommodate folks who are satisfied to continue blogging without the ability to add images to their posts.

This is a very disappointing development, but it sort of comes with the territory for an app such as MarsEdit that supports a variety of services, none of which is under my control. Over the past 12 years, I’ve witnessed the disappearance of services such as Vox and Posterous, and the elimination of support for 3rd party apps by services such as Squarespace.

For customers with Blogger blogs who wish to continue using MarsEdit, I recommend switching to a service with full-featured image upload support. WordPress is a good alternative, which has always been supportive of 3rd-party apps such as MarsEdit. Because it is based on open source software, even if one hosting service were to go away or eliminate access, there would undoubtedly be other services offering suitable WordPress-based hosting.

MarsEdit 4.2.6 is now available at the MarsEdit home page and on the Mac App Store.

This update restores the ability to upload images to Google’s Blogger/Blogspot blogs.

As luck would have it, when I released 4.2.5 on Tuesday, it happened to coincide with the very day Google shut down its interface for 3rd party apps that use its Picasa Web Albums API. They are now requiring all apps to use the Google Photos API instead.

It’s going to take a little time to shift MarsEdit to the newer API, but luckily Google provided a bit of a safety valve, allowing apps like MarsEdit to continue using the Picasa API for a couple more months while we make the transition. It just required a minor change to the app to “enable” the workaround.

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.

MarsEdit 4.2.5 is now available at the MarsEdit home page and on the Mac App Store.

This update fixes a bug, introduced in MarsEdit 4.2.4, that stopped tab and shift-tab keystrokes from changing the nesting level of bulleted and numbered lists in Rich Text mode. It also fixes a couple crashing bugs, and improves the reliability of MarsEdit’s authentication (login) mechanism for some WordPress and AtomPub based blogs.

Complete list of changes for this release:

• Restore functionality of tab and shift-tab for changing the indentation level in lists
• Improve authentication reliabiity for WordPress servers that return invalid authentication challenges
• Fix authentication prompt for Livedoor and other AtomPub based APIs
• Fix a crash that occured while reorganizing the Format menu contents
• Fix a crash when a server returns unexpected data in response to a new post request

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.