This page summarizes the history of Montage 3.0 program versions, listed
chronologically from newest
to oldest version. The online help documentation corresponds to the most
recent version listed, near the top of this page.
To determine the version of Montage while it is running, see the About
Montage dialog. Also you can use Windows
Explorer to tell the version of a copy of MONTAGE3.EXE, by right-clicking and
choosing
Properties. (The "build number" is the third part of the version number, e.g.
version 3.0.373.0 is build #373.)
This public release is a major update of the most recent prior public
release, build 521 of 10/10/2004. It is a significant
update from build 559 of 3/23/2008, which was restricted to
registered Montage users. The changes in this release, relative to build
559, are summarized as follows:
New and improved menu commands
- enhanced New Montage command
The New Montage command has been revised to
be more useful, with the introduction of a
New Montage dialog, which simplifies the process of creating new
montages. It includes a provision
for specifying a template montage and optionally creates a
Shortcut to the new
montage in a single step.
- extensions to the Format menu
A number of new commands have been added under the Format
menu to facilitate the arrangement of entire rows and columns of Shortcuts. These
make it easier, for
example, to maintain large collections of Shortcuts neatly arranged into snaking columns.
The new commands include Align Column/Row,
Shift Column Up/Down,
and Shift Columns Left/Right,
all with corresponding new
hot keys.
- new command for generating compressed montages
The new Save to Zip command can be used to
create a compressed montage
suitable for general purpose backup, as well as
dynamically fetching whole
montages. The
resulting .ZIP file contains not
only the Montage metafile components, but also
some or all of the files to which the montage refers. This makes it
easier to backup or distribute entire montages efficiently, in a way that is
modular and
portable.
- miscellaneous menu changes
Under the File menu, the previous "Save View"
command has been renamed to Save Montage,
and "Save View As..." has been renamed to simply
Save As.... Under the Help menu,
the Register command (as well as its
accompanying Registration dialog) is new.
For convenience, hot keys also have been added for Save Montage (Ctrl+S), New
Montage (Ctrl+M), and Properties (Ctrl+P).
Dynamic fetching refinements
- fetchability of entire montages, in compressed form
In addition to the previous capability of
dynamically fetching
individual files across the Internet, it is now possible to fetch entire
montages, including both the primary metafile components and files to which
the montage refers. The new Save to Zip command makes it easy to create
fetchable montages in a compact
form for efficient distribution.
- dynamic fetching of password-protected content from registered web
sites
Montage now supports dynamic fetching from private, password-protected web
sites. Using the new
Registration / Authentication dialog, you can enter your credentials
(username and password) once into an encrypted
table of authentication data,
for one or more secure web sites to which you are a registered subscriber.
Montage then can retrieve secured content on demand without requiring any
further interaction, as though those sites were publicly accessible.
- samples now dynamically fetchable
Instead of including sample montages
with the program or requiring you to manually download and set them up, all of
the samples now are fetched automatically, as needed.
These include a main sample montage linked to a collection of other public
samples, plus additional samples and content restricted to registered Montage
subscribers.
- application data directory separate from program directory
Following standard practices aimed at enhancing Windows security, Montage now
supports a separate, per-user
application data directory, apart from the installed
Montage program directory.
This avoids intermingling static programs and support files with various types
of dynamic data, enabling users with limited access rights to use Montage
without requiring administrative privileges. The Montage application
data directory is created automatically, when first needed. The
standard setup optionally creates a shortcut
(i.e. a link) on the Windows desktop
for opening your default montage in
this application data directory. (In previous
versions of Montage, this shortcut on the Windows desktop opened a montage in
the program directory, where storing user data is now discouraged.)
- revised location of Montage's icons directory
In keeping with the purpose of separating dynamic data from static programs,
Montage's icons directory is now located under
the application data directory, instead of being under the Montage program
directory. Also, a number of flexible
configuration options have been added, to allow specification of a
different icons directory location.
- revised location for Montage samples
Likewise, instead of keeping sample
montages under a subdirectory of the program directory, these are now
stored by default in a samples directory
under the Montage application data directory. New
samples configuration options allow
you to specify a different location, if desired.
The following new runtime libraries are
now included with Montage: MSVCP71.DLL, MSVCR71.DLL, VFP2C32.FLL,
VFPCOMPRESSION.FLL, and VFPENCRYPTION71.FLL. These are required to support
an enhanced file-picker dialog, and new compression and encryption features.
(If you are updating a previous
installation of Montage, download these new runtime library files
(in VFP6LIBS.ZIP) and extract them into the Montage program directory.)
Miscellaneous enhancements and fixes
- change in default behavior when Montage is invoked without arguments
Instead of creating and/or opening the default montage, MONTAGE.MO3, in the
current directory, invoking the program MONTAGE3.EXE with no
command line arguments
now creates/opens a user-specific default
montage in the Montage application data directory.
- improvements to application intelligence, most notably for Internet
Explorer 8.0 (IE8)
In previous versions, Montage had difficulty properly detecting more than one
instance of IE8 at a time. (There was no such problem with
Internet Explorer version 6.)
Montage's application
intelligence has been improved to support proper detection of multiple
concurrent instances of IE8. Also, Montage now does a better job of detecting the Windows Task
Manager (TASKMGR.EXE) and TweakUI.EXE utilities, without requiring the use of
Advanced settings.
- changes to the About Montage dialog
The About Montage dialog now
includes additional buttons to launch Samples and Register for access to
password-protected resources. Also there have been some additions and
fixes to the detailed information displayed, and this dialog now supports
re-evaluation upon Refresh (F5).
- improvements to in-place editing of Shortcut titles
When in title editing mode, pressing
Enter now exits from edit mode, instead of launching. Also the display
of Shortcut tips in a
wait window is now suppressed, but
tips are still displayed in the status bar
while in edit mode.
- more consistent assignment of dynamic default Explorer icons
Dynamic folder icons are now
initialized to correctly indicate whether or not a given Shortcut is set to
open Windows Explorer in
TreeView mode.
- assorted small refinements
This version also contains some minor bug fixes,
including FIX: empty target after drag and drop of
Shortcut to current directory, and improvements to the
Refresh command.
This version (build 577) was released to the general
public as a full, self-installing executable, MOSETUP.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about the
standard setup and
updating a previous installation of
Montage. If you are updating a previous installation, be sure to copy the
required additional runtime libraries into your
Montage program directory. Also, if you have been keeping any of your data
(e.g. montages) in the Montage program directory, consider moving them into your
Montage application data directory, for a cleaner directory
organization.
This is a major update that includes a number of bug fixes, functional
extensions, and interface refinements. New features have been added to
improve usability in general, including enhancements to Montage's
drag-and-drop capabilities,
metafile compaction and
portability improvements,
keyboard shortcuts, new icon
options, plus numerous refinements to menus and various
dialogs. Facilities for creating graphical
montages have been significantly extended with the introduction of dynamic
Internet fetching and additional wallpaper
features.
In addition to the changes summarized below, this release contains a variety of fixes that are detailed more fully in
FIX: summary of bugs and problems fixed in Montage build 559, of 3/23/08.
Among the more notable fixes are those relating to occasional drag-and-drop and
shutdown problems, relative paths,
environment variables,
off-screen display issues, and preservation of mixed-case filenames.
- dynamic Internet fetching
- The new dynamic fetching
capability enables missing files to be retrieved transparently across the
Internet, and then retained indefinitely for future use as local files.
This feature optionally applies to any sort of Shortcut
target document, as well as icons and wallpaper images.
Through dynamic fetching, it is possible to create and distribute graphically
rich montages that incorporate large amounts of imagery without directly
including the images themselves, thereby greatly reducing the size of the
files that need to be distributed and avoiding potential copyright
issues.
The new Tools menu provides commands and options related to dynamic fetching,
including a new analysis tool for detailed reporting on montage contents and
missing/fetchable
files, commands to Fetch all missing files immediately or
Fetch all with prompt, options for automatic Fetch on Demand, Prompt
Before Fetching, and a
fetch timeout setting.
- wallpapers
- Each montage now supports up to 9 alternate wallpapers, which can be
cycled through with the F3 and
Shift+F3 hot keys, or accessed
directly via Alt+number key. The new Wallpaper submenu of the
main View menu includes commands to Insert, Append,
Change, or Remove
a wallpaper, and the Fit to Wallpaper option
dynamically resizes the Montage Desktop window to match wallpaper image
dimensions. (This setting has been added to the Graphical
vs Standard group of global options.)
Also, a new option to Hide Shortcuts
(F4) enables you to quickly toggle the visibility of all Shortcuts, for an
unobstructed view of the background image.
- Shortcuts
- A number of Shortcut refinements have been made, in addition to supporting dynamic fetching. The capability of
dragging and dropping Shortcuts
between montages has been enhanced to include numerous
Shortcut properties that cannot be represented
by standard Windows links. Also,
a new global Shortcuts dialog has been
introduced, accompanied by simplifications to the main
View menu and
Montage Options context menu.
This dialog allows you to perform various
actions against all Shortcuts
and more easily adjust global options pertaining to icons, style settings, and
tips.
New icon related features have been added, including the Icon is Target
and Image is Icon settings for deriving icons directly from target images,
the new Pre-Fetch Icons
option, and commands to
Reset All Icons to Default and
Clear Icon Cache.
Options for Shortcut tips
have been gathered into a more convenient tab in the new global Shortcuts
dialog, and the description
field in Shortcut Properties
now supports an automatic ("++") substitution mechanism for augmenting tips
with basic target information. A separate page of the global Shortcuts
dialog is devoted to Shortcut color
and style settings, most of which can also be toggled from the View
menu and accompanying hot keys.
The Mouseover Effect
(Shift+F4) has been enhanced to display
hidden titles as well as
borders, and this option is now
always enabled.
The Shortcut context menu has
been reorganized, adding two new submenus for Icon and Internet options.
The Icon submenu includes new commands
to Copy Icon Path,
Show URL,
Copy URL, and
Fetch Icon from URL, and the
former "Use Default Icon" command has been renamed
Reset Icon to Default.
Under the Internet submenu are
commands to Show,
Copy, or
Fetch the
URL corresponding to the Shortcut's
target. Also there is a prominent
Fetch Missing Target command,
if the target is missing but known to be
fetchable. Assorted bug fixes and small improvements to the
Shortcut Properties dialog are listed in mkb00019.
- main menu and Montage Options context menu
- Main menu changes have been made under
the File, View, Tools, and Help menus. The
View menu has been reorganized, eliminating the obsolete Icon Size
submenu, adding the new Wallpaper submenu,
and assigning new hot keys to various
commands and options. Save View As...
has been moved from the View menu to the File
menu. The new Tools menu supports
dynamic fetching features (described above)
plus advanced diagnostic commands that were previously under the
Help menu.
Changes to the
Montage Options context menu
include a number of simplifications due to the introduction of the global Shortcuts dialog,
which led to the elimination of various redundant
actions (Normalize Children,
Minimize Children, Send Children to Back, and Close Children)
and submenus under the More submenu (All
Shortcuts, Shortcut Style, and Shortcut Tips).
Also under the More submenu, the Background
submenu includes extensions supporting new wallpaper features (described
above), there is a new
Internet Fetching submenu,
the Advanced submenu has been moved
from its previous location, and the Advanced,
Auto-Detect Montages option has
been moved from the menu into the Shortcuts dialog. A reorganized
More, Window Type submenu adds support
for 4 optional border styles.
- miscellaneous improvements
- The following list summarizes additional enhancements in this release:
This version (build 559) was released to registered
Montage users as an update to the runtime executable, MONTAGE3.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about
quick-setup and updating a previous
installation of Montage.
This major update introduces a new, graphical style of
montage, with
transparent Shortcuts superimposed on a background image (wallpaper), providing a more
visual way of organizing information. The following extensions, general
enhancements, and bug fixes have been added:
- variable icon size, ranging from 0 (no icon) continuously up to
48 pixels, and larger
- new Shortcut style options: border outlines,
transparent,
with or without titles
- user-selectable color of Shortcut titles and
borders, for contrast
against any background
- optional mouse-over effect, especially useful with fully transparent
Shortcuts ("hot spots")
- new Send Shortcut to Back command, for overlapping transparent
Shortcuts
- ability to resize Shortcuts via Ctrl + cursor
keys, or Shift + Ctrl +
cursor key for coarse adjustment
- Tab or Shift + Tab key for cycling through Shortcuts in
z-order, via
keyboard
- allow use of Enter key to launch
a Shortcut, equivalent to double-clicking
on it
- option to disable in-place editing of titles
when clicking on the title of a selected
Shortcut
- option to display or hide Shortcut titles (usable for "quiz
mode" in graphical montages)
- option to lock/unlock the position of individual Shortcuts, to avoid
accidental drag-and-drop
- revised the View menu, removing some redundant commands
(Clear, Abandon),
and adding others
- added a separate option for toggling background image (wallpaper) on or
off
- introduced a new Relative Paths
option, for easier creation of fully
portable montages
- revised initialization of sound,
wallpaper, icon,
target, and dir
paths for
either relative or absolute modes
- new commands for quickly switching between standard and
graphical montage
styles
- introduced distinctive new icons for Montage's built-in viewers
- made the default icon for Montage's image viewer be a thumbnail of the
target image itself
- changed the default directory for picking a wallpaper to be the current
dir, not the Windows dir
- fixed occasional (infrequent) errors caused by mouse actions while Montage
closes or timer fires
- added a Help menu command to launch Cosmic
Montage, a graphical astronomy montage
This version (build 526) was released to registered
Montage users as an update to the runtime executable, MONTAGE3.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about
quick-setup and updating a previous
installation of Montage.
Small refinements:
This version (build 521) was released to the general
public as a full, self-installing executable, MOSETUP.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about the
standard setup and
updating a previous installation of
Montage.
More small fixes and enhancements:
- fixed problems with detection of Explorer view
modes under Windows ME
- added the Shortcut Refresh command,
plus other refresh-related refinements
- fixed occasional timer errors on right-click + drag-and-drop
- force new Shortcut into initially selected state
- fixed occasional right mouse button non-responsiveness after drag-and-drop
into Montage
- fix to very infrequent "variable 'targisopen' not found" on
invoking Shortcut context menu
- avoid "www." prefix on hard-wired URLs for this site, to avoid
small issues with FrontPage server
This version (build 520) was released to the general
public as a full, self-installing executable, MOSETUP.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about the
standard setup and
updating a previous installation of
Montage.
This is a major upgrade that enhances Montage's capabilities for launching, monitoring, and controlling
diverse applications, supports greater portability, reduces
metafile size, and now includes a collection of sample montages.
It includes
interface refinements to menus, Shortcuts, and the
Shortcut Properties dialog,
plus a number of bug fixes. Here are some of the highlights:
- automatic compaction of metafiles, reducing size and eliminating gradual
bloat (see mkb00001)
- enhanced application intelligence
for selected applications, including Microsoft Outlook and Word
- recognition of multiple instance restrictions
that apply to certain
applications (see mkb00003)
- avoidance of mis-detection caused by splash screens and
popup windows (see mkb00002)
- introduced exclusivity features,
so Montage is now an exclusive document application
- auto-detection of existing openings for certain applications
(Montage and Word)
- improved support of nested
montages, regardless of multiple, asynchronous
window openings (see mkb00010)
- portability features, including
short names, relative
paths,
environment variables, and dynamic properties
- extensions supporting special pathname syntaxes, including UNC (network)
paths, URL protocols, and CLSID syntax
- new features for highlighting, monitoring, controlling, saving, and restoring
application zoom states
- new command to send a Shortcut's target window to
back, behind all other
windows
- new global commands for performing actions against all
children or all open Shortcuts
- context menus and Shortcut Properties dialogs are no longer confined within the
Montage Desktop window
- enhanced automatic and manual icon initialization features
- free form Shortcut descriptions for notes and annotations attached to
Shortcuts
- automatic display of flexible Shortcut tips, controlled by hovering
the mouse
- better initialization of default directory for various Shortcut Properties
and Montage options
- improved capability for widening and narrowing
Shortcut titles
- editing context menus for all text fields in the Shortcut Properties
dialog
- cleaner separation of generic and application-specific Shortcut properties
- Selected checkbox for easier association of
a Shortcut with its Properties
dialog
- advanced settings for greater control of application launching,
detection, and closing
options
- respect applications that take responsibility for their own window sizing
and placement
- support of persistent Thumbnails view mode for
Shell Explorer windows
- small refinements and clarification of the New
Montage... command
- more concise titles for Shortcuts created by dragging-and-dropping
hyperlinks into Montage
- reduced clunky transient effects during Montage initialization
- eliminated useless, distracting messages from the status bar
- new timer options, e.g. background
refresh toggle, for performance tuning on slow machine
- refinements to organization and terminology in menus
and Shortcut Properties, for clarity
- added new Montage
command line options and revised previous default creation behavior
- revised conventions for Montage Desktop window
title, assuring uniqueness
- metafile versioning and automated metafile version
checking and conversion, as needed
- assorted fixes as detailed further in mkb00012,
including previously unreported problems
Most of our recent testing has been done
under Windows XP, and the initial selection of samples
is very small. (The previous release was tested mainly
under Windows 95, and had no sample montages.) An update of the full Montage setup program,
MOSETUP.EXE, will not be made until more extensive testing and debugging is done
across all versions of Windows, and a larger set of samples has been prepared.
This version (build 517) was released to registered
Montage users as an update to the runtime executable, MONTAGE3.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about
quick-setup and updating a previous
installation of Montage.
A minor program update, but immediately noticeable: adds sound effects and window activation options relating to view
restoration, i.e. what happens when you open a montage.
Instead of bringing the Montage Desktop window to the
foreground, the default behavior has been changed to leave the Desktop window
initially behind any associated external
application
windows that it launches, instead generating a
distinctive chimes sound to indicate when the view restoration has completed.
There is a new On Restoration submenu of the
Desktop
Options context menu, with a toggle to specify whether the Desktop window
should be brought forward (as it was previously). Also under the same
submenu are options to toggle the sound ON or OFF, to use the default sound (CHIMES.WAV),
or to select any other .WAV file (e.g. from the Windows Media directory) as the
custom sound for this montage.
This version (build 373) was released to the general
public as a full, self-installing executable, MOSETUP.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about the
standard setup and
updating a previous installation of
Montage.
The original public release of Montage 3.0.
This version (build 369) was released to the general
public as a full, self-installing executable, MOSETUP.EXE. For
installation instructions, see notes about the
standard setup and
updating a previous installation of
Montage.
