Charles 3.0.2 released
Monday, April 23rd, 2007The second minor update to Charles 3.0 has now been released. These minor updates fix bugs or make small improvements to functionality. Thank you to everyone who has reported problems and helped to resolve them.
The 3.0.1 update fixed a bug in the AMF Detail view and removed the system tray icon on Windows. The later because the new library (JDIC) I used for the system tray caused crashes on some users’ computers. Unfortunately a fix for that bug isn’t yet available so the system tray icon remains missing at this time; I am going to roll back to the previous system tray library so it will return in 3.0.3 (please email me if this is causing you problems right now and I’ll get you a prerelease copy!).
The 3.0.2 update fixes a number of small problems, as described in the version history. The most exciting changes for me are the cosmetically improved Windows installer and Mac OS X platform integration!
The Windows installer has been upgraded to use the modern installer user interface. It now looks a lot slicker and can automatically start Charles after installation. It also tries to cover-off one of my personal bug-bears; it confirms that you can install Charles over an existing installation. I’m sometimes unsure whether I need to first uninstall the previous version of an application… if you are too (and you read the installer’s welcome page) you’ll be reassured.
The installer also now puts the Charles icon straight into the Programs folder in your Start menu, rather than creating a subfolder. However, in keeping with my re-installation thoughts above the installer will only create the new style Start menu shortcut if it can’t see an existing old style shortcut - so this change is for new users. I didn’t want to change existing shortcuts; that seemed like a recipe for confusion!
I’ve also had the opportunity to test Charles in Java 1.6 and on Windows Vista. In 1.6 the Charles window icon was displayed particularly poorly, so that is fixed in this release. Everything else appears to work, and it even works well on Vista, so far. A big thank you to local Charles user John Ballinger for lending me a Vista laptop. If you’re a Twitter user then check out his Tweetr twitter client built using Apollo and debugged with Charles!
On Mac OS X I’ve removed the docs folder from the download, so the download is now just the Charles application. The docs folder contained SSL certificates that weren’t immediately useful, and didn’t feel very Mac-like… I’m going to work on a better way of delivering these. Also the Mac OS X proxy helper application now shows the Charles icon if it has to ask you for your password… making Charles feel more and more at home on the Mac!
Also for the Mac, Charles 3.0.2 includes the latest release of Quaqua - the Java UI improvement library for Aqua. The most notable improvement is to the file chooser dialogs; they now respond more accurately to quick clicks! An ongoing thanks to Werner for his work on Quaqua.
That’s it for 3.0.2. You can download from the usual place. As always, I thrive on your feedback so please feel free to post comments or email me using the contact form.