Time to dip my toe in the sandbox!

I'm pleased to report that I have been able to drag BlogAssist, my handy tool to help with HTML markup, into 2012: it is now fully sandboxed, providing increased security, and signed with an Apple-issued "Developer ID" so it plays nicely with Mountain Lion.

I also raised the minimum OS version from Leopard (10.5) to Lion (10.7). I know some people are still on Snow Leopard (and a tiny percentage still on Leopard), but I felt it was worthwhile moving to Lion, as the majority of customers are on this OS (and soon will be moving up to Mountain Lion), and it enables me to leverage lots of great OS features moving forward.

It is now a 64-bit app... which isn't really necessary from a data perspective (BlogAssist doesn't use lots of data), but means it uses the "modern runtime", which offers some great benefits on the backend.

This release also includes handy new substitution preferences, which non-English customers will particularly enjoy (it's something my French localizer originally asked for). Easily convert symbols and accented characters into their HTML entities.

This is a beta release, with lots of big infrastructural changes, so please let me know if you find any issues. It all seems fine in my testing, though. BlogAssist is a simple app, which is why I moved it to Lion, 64-bit, sandboxing and Developer ID first.

Here are the full release notes:

• Added a Substitutions preference page, that optionally replaces symbols and accented characters with the HTML entity equivalents.
• Updated all three BlogAssist modes to support the new substitution preferences.
• Reimplemented the auto-launch preference to work with Mountain Lion and sandboxing.
• Removed the quit confirmation preference.
• Added a license button to the Preferences window, when unlicensed, to make it easier to buy the app. (Standard edition only)
• Removed the in-app purchase options, since not compatibile with 64-bit, and rarely used. (Standard edition only)
• Fixed display of license entry date in the Licenses editor. (Standard edition only)
• The standard edition of the app is now signed with a Developer ID to support Gatekeeper on Mountain Lion. (Standard edition only)
• The app is now fully sandboxed, providing increased security.
• BlogAssist now requires a 64-bit Mac and a minimum of OS X 10.7 (Lion).
• Many other behind-the-scenes improvements made possible by dropping older OS versions, PowerPC and 32-bit support.

Download BlogAssist 2.4b1 now!