ANN: PortAuthority 2.3 released

[Kevin Walzer]

I'm very proud to announce that version 2.3 of PortAuthority, my GUI for 
MacPorts, is now available. This release has many improvements, focusing 
mainly on speed, responsiveness, and ease-of-use:

* All tree and table items return data with a single click.

* Searching and sorting information is now much faster; the list of 
ports is cached and updates by calling MacPorts only when a package is 
removed or added.

* When installing a port, user stays in the same table view when the 
installation is done; it no longer pulls away to the updated list of 
packages.

* The progress bar and beep are only called during long-running 
processes (installing, removing, upgrading ports). Simple or quick 
processes (fetching info, filtering by category) simply display the 
proper data.

* Bug fix: Preferences now update correctly.

On a personal note, this release is something of a milestone; it 
represents the culimination of several months of work in trying to make 
PortAuthority as polished and "Mac-like" as possible, without rewriting 
it from scratch. The basic functionality of PortAuthority has long been 
stable, but it has left something to be desired in terms of how 
intuitive it is to use; it's been slow to run commands, has required 
double-clicks when single-clicks should work, and has been ugly.  With 
version 2.3, I think it's finally about there in terms of look and feel: 
I've used Mail, iTunes and similar applications for the layout and 
behavior of the UI.

These changes have been made largely in response to user feedback; some 
users have e-mailed me off-list with very specific and detailed 
suggestions. This input is invaluable, and I thank everyone who has 
taken the time to do this.

More details about PortAuthority, including pricing and download 
information, can be found here:

http://www.codebykevin.com/portauthority.html

Thanks again to all!