The notorious and infamous RTE 13 but that has been around since Vista - has finally been located and resolved. No more of these in v3.7!
New Checklist Editor
Allows for much more efficient maintenance of world-wide checklist
data.
Updated Checklist Import features
Ability to import free-form checklist data for updating information
in Birder's Diary on which things
occur where. Many more additional
enhancements to checklist import/export functionality.
Updated and improved SmartSearch functionality.
Checklist Entry Find feature now resolves duplicate name matches.
Checklist Entry now allows you to modify column widths and have those modifications remembered.
View/Edit Sightings window allows you to create, save and restore unlimited number of layout definitions.
This updated Online Help Manual!!!
Updated Video Tutorials.
Updated Checklist Report options.
Fixed Checklist report options not being saved correctly.
Fixed Restore selection to allow restoring from read-only media
New feature available from the popup menu in View/Edit window that allows for thing cross-referencing
Allow for importing sightings from outside source based on scientific names and band codes in addition to common names.
Updated Petey dialog for each Birder's Diary window
Enhanced checklist report formats when including subspecies
Ability to modify the layout of the Keyboard Sightings Entry window
Proper highlighting of "Highlight Things Already Seen" in Checklist Entry
Ability to specify a Name in View/Edit setup and have it match on all subspecies of specified tax list. In the past, you would only see the sightings of the thing specified. Now, if the selected tax list has subspecies and you have sightings of those subspecies, those sightings will be listed as well!
Ability to have background sightings report based on selected observer. (View | Options - Background TAB)
Fixed taxonomy refresh after editing tax list in Taxonomy Editor.
Ability to configure name matching in Keyboard Entry mode. You can specify any of the following: common name, scientific name or band code. In the past, matching was automatically done on all three. Now you can specify to match on only the types of names that you will enter.
Removed fixed formatting for Group By report fields in all report formats. You can now select the font, weight, color etc for any group by fields just as you would with the others. The background highlighting has been removed. You can also select to show counts or not for the group by fields.
You can now specify Underline and Strikethru attributes on report fields. This is available from the FONT button on the Output Columns subwindow of the report designer.
Fixed bug when trying to close Birder's Diary while it is in a minimized state. It would hang.
New Quick Counts toolbar button that displays a window allowing you to quickly contain life/year counts for any location, observer or time-frame.
Fixed bug that incorrectly stored UDF fields of date, time or date/time types. The bug also caused problems when editing such fields.
Checklist reports now allow you to specify which location should be used for the options: "Include Only Things Not Seen" and "Check off Things Already Seen". For example, you can ask for a checklist of Texas, but to check off things already seen from your backyard.
Fixed issue where clicking on Filter button on View/Edit window would result in View/Edit window being hidden behind other windows if any present.
Change caption of View/Edit window to include first selected taxonomic list selected in Filter window. This also shows up in the Window menu. Also, on the bottom of the View/Edit window, it shows all selected taxonomic lists.
In previous versions, importing sightings into Birder's Diary required that the name in the import file contain internal Birder's Diary thing names. With 3.7, this option still works best for importing files created by exporting sightings from Birder's Diary. Now, you have the option of importing sightings files which have taxonomic common names in them. This greatly improves the process of importing sightings previously kept in other programs or in spreadsheets.
Two new abundance graph reports!
Nice reports that work on your existing sightings data collected for
any location, observer, etc.
Fixed issue when doing a Restore operation on the Birder's Diary database. The Restore operation closes Birder's Diary and forces you to restart it manually.
Fixed issue with new Checklist Editor that allowed the user to inadvertently and unknowingly remove checklist data for a given location. Now, the name search/add field is not activated until the user clicks the Load button.
Fixed issue with end-dates on multiple screens. If a sighting was entered with a time other than the default of "00:00:00", then that sighting would not be captured by the View/Edit window or any reports if the end date was the same date as the sighting. That is because it was specifying an end-date of "mm/dd/yyyy 00:00:00". Now, unless a time is specifically set by the user, any end-date is appended with "23:59:59".
Fixed a bug in the Checklist Entry method that occurred when a time was specified along with the date. It reported an error even though the sighting(s) was entered correctly.
Added new features for taxonomic list creators. These new features help the taxonomy creator in Birder's Diary maintain the annual updates with much greater ease. These features will not be visible nor available to the average user. If you are a taxonomy creator or want to be, contact support for information on how to enable these features.
Added new Split Wizard feature to help users migrate to updated versions of taxonomic lists. It shows you possible sightings that may be orphaned and require reassignment when going from an older version of a taxonomic list to a newer one - and assists you and making those reassignments. It also shows you the changes between versions of taxonomic lists. You can export changes to a CSV file and open that in a text editor or a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. Here is the problem that this new window assists the user in solving... when you upgrade, for example, from Clements 2008 to Clements 2009 you need to know if any of the changes from the old version to the new version affect any sightings you have; specifically, have any of the sightings you recorded against the older version been orphaned because things were lumped? This new window's default settings will show you all such sightings you may have and assist you in reassigning those sightings. In addition, you may wonder why your life list count went up or down. This will show you things you have sightings for which may have been split or lumped thereby affecting your life list count.
Updated the Sightings report type to highlight lifers (World,
Year-birds and location lifers) for any sightings report. This is
an optional feature that you can turn on or off. Highlight none, one,
two or all three categories of lifers. It also counts each category
and puts the totals in the report header. You can select the highlight
colors you want to use if you don't like the defaults. In the example
below, yellow highlight designates an 'Annual Lifer' (first of the
year at the report location) and the green highlight designates a
'Location Lifer' (first time this species has been seen at the report
location). 'World Lifer' indicates first time the species has been
seen anywhere.
Family and Order descriptions (in English) are updated and complete now. And this new feature will allow them to stay updated from release to release.
Added Taxonomy and Location filters to Sightings Export functionality. Now you can be more specific about the sightings you want to export and share.
Updated Checklist report type to highlight potential lifers
for your checklist location (World, Year-birds and location lifers).
This is optional and you can turn on or off any of the three. You
can set your highlight colors. It also counts each requested category
and puts the totals in the report header. Now you can go out and target
the birds you want more easily.
Header Counts:
Highlighting: (note: the checkbox outlined indicates that it would
be a 'world annual' sighting as well.)
Footer legend:
Added ability to adjust right margin of report from 0.5" to 1.5" from edge of paper. Default = 0.5".
Corrected problem with Life List Disabler setting on user-defined fields (UDF). In the past, if you changed this value on a Yes/No UDF field, your sightings would not be updated to reflect this change. This is now corrected.
Fixed bug in the Language/Region Editor. When applying a name-set to a taxonomic list more than once, an error would occur at the end of the process. The error did not affect the application of the name-set to the taxonomic list, but it forced Birder's Diary to close and you had to restart it. This has been fixed.
Review/log window for Sightings Entry (keyboard mode). A new
optional window is displayed when in keyboard (text) entry mode for
sightings. It allows you to see the sightings you have entered during
the current session, and edit/delete any of those sightings as you
go.
Improved "Select Thing from Ambiguous Name" window. Made it more intuitive; easier to understand and use.
Fixed bug in Location import where Comments in import file were not stored and habitat, description and comments fields contained incorrect data.
Fixed bug in Sightings Entry Setup window. If you do not specify a location filter and had previously ignored the warning message concerning this, it will ignore the Continue button when you click it.
Updated and improved ambiguous name checking. Performance is much better; user selection is much more friendly and intuitive.
New Web Search feature allows you to search Wikipedia or Google
for any name (Common or Scientific) in your database; or any thing
whatsoever you want to search for. It auto-launches your default browser
with your search string to either Wikipedia or Google.
The toolbar has been revamped with new images and your choice
of two sizes. Since 3.5 the toolbar buttons have been 64x64 which
resulted in very large buttons taking up lots of space. On small screens,
the buttons would disappear of the right side. The new default buttons
are 32x32 with an option of reducing them even further to 16x16. Text
labels have been removed to further reduce the real estate requirement;
while the tooltip popups still occur in order to remind you what any
button does.
Added Alt+F2 functionality to all SmartSearch fields. Pressing Alt+F2 will bring up the Web Search window pre-populated with the contents of the SmartSearch field. This allows for quick web searching on any text in any field; e.g. scientific name, common name, location name, etc.
New most recent sightings grid
optionally displayed at the bottom of the main Birder's Diary window!
You can configure the sightings by observer(s), location, and multiple
taxonomic lists. You can also set the number of sightings automatically
displayed each time you start Birder's Diary from 20 to 250. You now
always know exactly what you have recently seen, every time you start
Birder's Diary. You can modify the size of each field and the height
of the grid area. You can also edit any sighting in the grid.
The configuration for this setup is available under View
| Options, Background TAB.
Once you configure the grid, it will always come up with those settings
whenever you start Birder's Diary. Or you can quickly show/hide the
grid from a new popup menu available on the main window.
Fixed bugs in Options window, Background TAB wherein settings for the background report were not properly restored each time. Also corrected the Taxonomy dropdown and ordering of fields.
Upon modifying sightings records, Lifer counts were not updated at the bottom of the main window. They are now updated when edits are made to sightings.
New background Lifer Bars
can be configured and displayed for any combination of observer, location
and taxonomic list. Each Lifer Bar shows the total species to be found
at a location (as long as there is checklist data for that location),
the observer's lifetime number of species seen at that location and
the observer's number of species seen at that location for the current
year. You can configure as many bars as you like and determine when
they get updated (each bar requires about 1-2 seconds to recalculate
after sightings entry). The data is either refreshed after data entry,
or manually when you choose. It does not delay startup of Birder's
Diary as that data is pre-calculated from the previous events.
Outputting reports to eMail or Text format now places the contents of the entire report into your Windows paste buffer. Using Ctrl+V will paste the report into your editor or eMail program.
Exporting multi-column reports now produce more reasonable output where fixed-width spacing lines up the columns correctly. In the past, horizontal Tabs were used to format which create a ragged column appearance. If pasting a report in text format into an email, make sure you convert that pasted text to a fixed width font (e.g. Courier) for a readable and consistent layout.
Updated Report Print Review window. Rearranged buttons and features to make using it more intuitive. Hopefully we got it a bit better.
The old Ignore Years checkbox on Sightings Reports and View/Edit Sightings Setup windows has changed. It used to count Julian days of the year and therefore February 29th would count as a March 1st sightings on leap years. This checkbox has been changed to Seasonal. And it correctly counts days of the month as you would expect. In addition, the years in the specified date (when this checkbox is checked) act as limits. For example, if you checked the Seasonal checkbox, and specified beginning and end dates of "2/1/2000" and "3/31/2010" you would get all of your sightings for the months of February and March for the years 2000 through 2010. You can also specify dates that overlap a year boundary and get the results you would expect. For example, specifying "12/1/2000" and "1/31/2010", you would get all of your December and January sightings from 2000 through 2010.
