On Thursday, software company Delicious Monster released version 3.0 of the shareware favorite, Delicious Library. Delicious Monster allows Macs with webcams to scan the bar codes of any book, movie, music CD or video game, then creates an archive based on background information from the Internet. Additional features help keep the library organized and reseller’s tools allow for items to be quickly posted for sale online.
The new version, an 81 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and changes:
Major New Features:
– Fully 3D cover view.
– All items are drawn in full 3D [industry first], with multiple light sources and normal, reflection, and environment maps.
– Books are rendered at actual thickness based on page count.
– Live lighting changes as items are selected.
– Shadows draw dynamically behind all items.
– Many gorgeous woods to choose from for shelves.
– New “Recommended” pane.
– Makes smart recommendations by considering everything the user owns and has ever rated.
– User can now rate items they don’t own to improve recommendations (using search widget).
– Recommended items that user’s friends own have badges so they can be easily borrowed.
– Add recommended items to the wishlist with a single click.
– New “Wishlist” pane.
– New Flexible Smart shelves.
– New global search.
– Displays results in a table/popover like iTunes 11.
– Searches through user’s collection, friends’ collections, and online.
– Can be used to find existing items or new ones.
– Can be used to rate items user doesn’t own but has opinions on.
– User can also search by speaking or selecting a cover color.
– New iOS barcode scanner app.
– New interactive charts mode.
Preferences
– Entire UI redesigned to be bookshelf-centric.
– Show covers, a table, or charts using buttons at upper left of the window.
– Switch between owned items, recommended items, and wishlist items at the upper center.
– Find existing or new items in search widget at the upper right.
– Switch between media types with buttons at the lower left.
– Change sorting at the bottom middle.
– Show and hide auxilliary right pane using button at the lower right.
– Source list is hidden by default but available for advanced users.
Medium-sized New Features:
– We’ve eliminated the “Preferences” panel–all options are set where they are actually used, instead of in a single global panel.
– iTunes books will be read into Delicious Library 3 when iTunes is launched.
– Two new Amazon stores are now accessible: Italy and Spain.
Popover Details:
– Dates entered manually remember their precision, so if the user specifies “Jan, 2000” for a book’s release date, it won’t switch it to “Jan 1, 2000.” However, dates are still formatted according to the user’s localization settings in System Preferences.
– When editing multi-line fields, the “return” key goes to a new line as users expect (no need to figure out “option-return”).
Sorting:
– User’s favorite sorts are remembered and can be re-applied anywhere.
– Improved per-language article-stripping; e.g., ignoring “a, an, the” in English, “der, die, das” in German.
Publishing:
– Now remembers multiple places; e.g., set up publishing both to Dropbox and FTP site
Live preview the generated web pages.
– Privacy options moved to publishing shelves.
Printing:
– Added “Compact” template to minimize paper use.
– Added “Insurance” template to show fields insurance companies care about in the event of theft.
– Interface cleaned up so template selection is obvious.
Scanning history:
– User’s last 500 added items are shown above scanner window for easy rating or deleting.
– Provides context if a book isn’t found online so it can be entered manually.
– Import from another library.
– Import libraries from other machines without removing current items.
– Importing the same library twice applies the changes but doesn’t duplicate items.
– Can be used to easily sync libraries between computers.
– Multiple people can scan in items on multiple computers, then merge all the items into one collection.
– Importing is now undoable.
Friends:
– Loans now appear in friends’ sidebars instead of in main bookshelf view, to reduce confusion.
– Send loan reminder e-mails with a single click.
– Friends can be re-ordered in source list. If friends are dragged into a sorted order, they’ll stay in that order automatically.
Help:
– The “Search:” field in the main menu’s Help searches our online forums for relevant answers.
Tiny New Features:
– When user first launches the app, most panes explain why they are empty and what to do.
– All item types from Amazon are supported (user prompted for the type if item is from a store we don’t recognize).
– More descriptive titles for most menu items; e.g., “Delete 4 Books” or “Delete Shelf” instead of “Delete”.
– Added expand-on-hover, so if titles or authors are ever drawn truncated they can still be read.
– Cover view responds to some EMACS keybindings for selection movement.
– Items can be dragged from and to more places.
– Items can be dragged to the trash can to delete.
– User can copy media with command-C and paste into text areas or URL-taking places.
New Features from OS X:
– Scene Kit: for fast, gorgeous, interactive 3D graphics
– Sharing Services: tweet, iMessage, Facebook, or e-mail items to friends
– SQLite write-ahead logging: user’s database can no longer be corrupted if machine crashes
– Full-screen mode: added and optimized
– New drag architecture: multiple items can be dragged in or out at once
– Spotlight: Library items are written to Spotlight, can be found quickly in the global Spotlight search pane (command-space) with structured queries like “media:book color:blue” (standard Spotlight keys include: kMDItemAlbum, kMDItemComposer, kMDItemContentCreationDate, kMDItemDirector, kMDItemGenre, kMDItemMediaTypes, kMDItemPerformers, kMDItemRecordingDate, and kMDItemMediaTypes).
– QuickLook: Spotlight items (or media dragged onto the desktop) are viewable in QuickLook with full-color covers and complete descriptions.
– Retina graphics: high-resolution graphics used throughout.
– State restoration: Delicious Library opens up exactly as it was last closed.
– 64-bit: for unlimited memory, and because it’s faster.
– Obj-C 2 runtime: faster, future-proof.
– ARC: eliminates certain categories of crash bugs.
– Constraints-based layout: makes the layout of all buttons and text much more natural
NSSupportsSuddenTermination: quits instantly when it’s safe.
– If it’s not safe to quit, user can force quit if there’s a long operation in progress, or the app will auto-quit when long operation is over.
– Automatic termination: can automatically quit under memory pressure.
– Power assertions: the machine won’t idle-sleep during long operations (publishing, importing, etc.)
Some Bugs Fixed:
– Deleting thousands of items (and undoing that deletion) is now close to instant instead of taking minutes.
Friends:
– Friends’ libraries now download in the background, NOT blocking the program from running. Yay.
– Friends’ libraries aren’t re-downloaded every launch but only if the friend has changed something.
– Friends’ libraries are imported MUCH more quickly.
– If friends are removed from Contacts, the app doesn’t forget their names.
– Undoing the deletion of a friend restores items loaned to that friend.
– Adding a new friend doesn’t spam Google when automatically searching for the friend’s published library.
– Adding friends is undoable.
Delicious Library 3.0 retails for US$40 and requires OS X 10.8 or later to install and run.
If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.