An Exciting Giveaway

Well, it's Friday and by now y'all know what that means – new blog post!

This week, we're really excited to announce…a giveaway! What's even better is that there isn't any contest and there isn't only one winner.

As you may know, we used to sell "boxed" version of Delicious Library 2 in Apple Stores. Since Apple launched the Mac App Store on OS X version 10.6.6, they phased out all boxed software products in their physical stores. Since we still have some leftover boxes, we'd like to donate them to organizations that really deserve them!

We're looking for nonprofits, schools, and other groups that might find our software useful in cataloging their physical collections. Maybe you're a charter school with lots of books and you need to know how many books you have and which students are reading them. Or maybe your company collections donations for the less fortunate and you'd like to keep track of what you've received. Maybe you teach a class to seniors that involves you lending out CDs or DVDs so they can continue learning at home. Whatever the case may be, we'd like to support you!

If you think our software would be useful to you or you know of an organization that might benefit from our product, please email lia@delicious-monster.com and let me know how many license codes you'd need (you can use one unique code on up to five Mac computers). To run Delicious Library 2, you'll need to make sure you're using OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or newer.

We'd love to help you help our community!

VERSION UPDATE: 2.7.7 is out!

In case you haven't heard, version 2.7.7 of Delicious Library was released late last week! This free update (for those of you already using version 2) has a lovely mix of bug fixes, anti-crash improvements, and snazzy updated features.

We've fixed the bug that caused crashes when accessing a library shared over Bonjour or when right-clicking an item, along with a bug causing cover view to become unresponsive. Best of all, everyone's favorite tool (the decorrupter) now fixes more database problems than before. Hooray!

Note: If you're still running an older version of DL2 (2.7.6, 2.7.1, 2.6.3, etc.), please try updating to the latest version before sending us a crash report, as it's likely v2.7.7 will fix your issue! Not only is it in your best interest to go ahead and update first, but since we know you like us, you'll also be saving the lone support person (me!) from asking the lot of you to try this anyway.

If you haven't installed 2.7.7 yet, just relaunch the app and a window should automatically come up asking you to update. If it doesn't, go into your Preferences and check the box next to 'Tell me when a new version of Library is available'. Alternatively, you can download that free update here. If you're a Mac App Store user, you'll need to download updates through there so please do not use that link. Instead, launch the App Store and 'updates' should pop up in the top right corner of the Store panel. Just look for version 2.7.7!

You can check out our full list of release notes here. (Just scroll to the bottom of the page to see 2.7.7)

Enjoy!

How to Publish Your Library Using Dropbox

Update, September 2016: DropBox has sent the following notice out to its users. The publishing method outlined in this blog post is no longer viable:

We’re writing to let you know that we’ll be discontinuing the ability to render HTML content in-browser via shared links or Public Folder. If you're using Dropbox shared links to host HTML files for a website, the content will no longer display in-browser.

Please note that this change will take effect for your account on October 3, 2016, and only impacts how shared files are displayed on the web. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox.

***

With MobileMe being phased out, we know that finding alternatives for web publishing is a major concern for customers. Luckily, we have a great (and free!) option. Below are simple step-by-step instructions for how to publish your library using Dropbox.

1) If you don’t have Dropbox installed, go to dropbox.com and follow the directions to install Dropbox and set up an account.

2) Open Delicious Library and click 'Publish' at the bottom of the application window. Select 'Configure…'

3) Double-click on 'Folder' under 'Publish To:' and go to 'Choose.' Find and select the folder called 'Public' under your 'Dropbox' folder.

4) Choose whether you want to publish everything or just certain shelves under 'Publish What:'

5) Click 'Publish Now' When it's done, a finder window will pop up with your published folder selected. Note: publishing times will vary depending on the size of your library. The resulting files will have a blue badge while they’re being copied to the Dropbox servers, which will change to green once they’re ready to access from other computers.

6) To view your published library, right click (or hold down the 'Control' key while you click) the file called 'index.html' and select 'Dropbox' > 'Copy Public Link.' You can now paste this link into a browser window, bookmark it on your smartphone for on-the-go viewing, and share it with friends.

We've also been getting a lot of e-mails recently asking if users can publish to iCloud in the same way they used to publish to MobileMe. Right now, the answer is no, but that's not our decision. Apple has removed all of their iWeb services meaning that publishing is not possible on iCloud. However, we're still in the early days of iCloud and Apple is still making decisions on what features to provide. If you feel strongly about it, you can write to Apple and ask them to consider web publishing as a feature in iCloud. You can provide feedback to Apple here.

We know all these changes can be confusing, so we're here if you have questions!

Playing Movies Directly From Your Library

While Delicious Library is mainly an application to catalog and organize your physical collections, we understand that a lot of our users have their movies digitized. That's why we added this really cool (but kind of hard to find) feature: you can link your movies in Delicious Library to your digitized movies on your computer.

Pretty cool, right? Wrong. REALLY cool!

"Really cool indeed!" you say. "But how does it work?" It's easy! Each item can be linked to a URL, which can be the address of a page on the web or a file on your computer.

To edit an item, just select an item and click on the 'Details' panel to the right. Click on the edit button (the one that looks like a pencil) and look for the URL field – it should be just under the Location field.

Click the arrow to the left of where it says 'URL' and select 'Choose File.' Find the relevant file on your computer, select it, and hit 'Choose.'

To end edit mode, just click the pencil button again or hit the 'Enter' key.

Now, to launch the movie from Delicious Library, right-click the item on your shelf and select 'Play.' You can also just hover your mouse over the item and hit the 'Play' (>) button that will appear.

As always, if you have any trouble with this feature or questions, just shoot an e-mail to support@delicious-monster.com

Get Deliciously Satisfied

Have you ever had a random question about Delicious Library? Or encountered a problem that you weren't sure how to fix, but were sure that other users must be going through the same thing? Have you come up with a great feature idea or a way we could make an existing feature even cooler? Maybe you've just had a great experience and want to share your love for Delicious Library with the world. All of these things are possible (and easy) on our forum!

You may be thinking, "I don't know, I've looked at the forum and it looks like a whole lot of questions and not many answers. Does anyone even check it?" The answer to all that is that yes! The forums are moderated directly by Delicious Monsters with help from some superstar users. Most questions are answered within a day or two.

The forum is a great way to ask a broad question and get answers back from multiple users. A good example of this is if you have a bluetooth scanner and you're not sure it will work with Delicious Library – you can search existing threads by the scanner name or you could post a new question asking if other users have had success getting it to work. Our support team is small (there are only four people who work at Delicious Monster!) so we think the idea of being able to reach out to a larger community is really helpful for everyone.

Like any public place, please do your part to keep things clean. Before posting a new thread, try doing a quick search to see if an answer is already there. If you do post something new, please pick the appropriate category (question, feature request, problem, or praise).

Ready to get started? Check out our user-built community here.