Authors- *getant, =slow-burn.

Version 0.2 is now available for download. This version includes several new features, many bug fixes, and a neater code base. Full details listed below.

- Windows binary version 0.2
- cross platform source version 0.2

But, first For those of you not familiar with desktop-deliverance -

desktop-deliverance is a small application designed to deliver information from deviantart.com to a small popup window on your desktop. The reason? Well as deviants ourselves we wanted to be able to monitor the latest deviations and our account information (i.e. page/deviation views, messages etc) all in one place. The advantage with desktop-deliverance is it allows you to do all this but in a small window that sits on top of every application on your desktop.

The application is open-source, there is a Windows binary version made available for the convenience of users but the source is available and will run the same as the binary provided you have Python 2.4.1 (www.python.org) and wxPython 2.6 (www.wxpython.org) installed on your machine.

The source code is made available so that you can download and evaluate the software for yourselves. The software is not designed to do anything other than retrieve and display information from www.deviantart.com. However we have to point out the following WE CAN TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY PROBLEMS CAUSED BY RUNNING THE APPLICATION, NONE WHAT SO EVER.

INSTALL, CONFIGURE AND RUN:
To install deliverance simply extract the zip you have downloaded to somewhere convienent.

The configuration file is found in the desktop-deliverance or desktop-deliverance-src folder and can be edited by any text editor. The settings that are designed for the user to edit are at the top of the file and are commented as such.

To run the binary open the desktop-deliverance folder and double click the desktop-deliverance.exe.

To run the source open the desktop-deliverance-src folder and double click the desktop-deliverance.pyw.

NEW IN VERSION 0.2.

Well there are not as many improvements as we had hoped for but it is still a big leap from verison 0.1 and the cleaner code base now in place means we should be able to develop new features faster.

- Threaded URL requests
This helps to make the data retrieval more reliable and efficient, also fixes a bug that use to freeze the user interface when the application was retrieving data.

- No connection alert removed
In version 0.1 if no connection to www.deviantart.com was possible the application would show an alert message informing the user, then close down. Now the application has a connection status icon and continues to run no matter if a connection exists or not.

- Category monitoring
By specifying a path in the config file you can now browse by category, later versions will include a selection facility, but for now you'll have to use the config file (e.g /digitalart/drawings/cartoons/). Mature content can not be shown by the system since you are not logged in and DA will therefore not output such content to you. Later versions may allow you to specify your login details. To build a path I recommend using DA to browse to the category you are interested in then cutting the path from the web address displayed by your browser.

- Page views
The number of page views you have can be monitored on the application now. To use this feature uou must specify a username in the configuration file.

- Cross-platform support
Special effort is being made this time to provide a cross platform version of the application. This version is being designed for Windows, Mac and Linux.

- Quick launch
The application will now attempt to start loading deviations immediately unlike the previous version which could take up to twice as long as the specified refresh period.

- GIF, PNG support
Support for GIF and PNG images now, previously only JPG support was provided.

Thats all for now, hope you enjoy.