Hello everyone,

Today sees the release of the multi-purpose commodity for your Workbench, Jack 3.0.

Aside from a overwhelming number of bug fixes of which make up most of this 3.0 release; there are a number of new features:

* Playback of videos in the following formats: OGG/AVI/WMV/MP4/MOV/FLV
* Over 10 new image effect processors
* You can now open and save SVG files inside the image editor

Concerning video playback, my experience has been not that favourable on my wee SAM 460 with Radeon HD 4650 and beta sound drivers. I urge everyone to give it a go and report back on your success with various formats - does the sound play correctly when in half size mode foreinstance? Do you experience any lock-ups? In this release I have disabled Forward/Rewinding of the video as well - due to the fact on my configuration it results in Jack locking up all the time. I will most likely enable them in a future release - but for now please test the hell out of the video player in its current incarnation.

"So how do I test the video playback I don't see a button for it???"

Simply drag the videofile over the calendar interface - top-left corner. You can drag whatever you want on this large icon, a volume, a drawer full of images or simply a file - Jack will either try and open it for you or display file information.

To download simply visit OS4Depot ( www.os4depot.net ) - be sure to check the Upload queue!

You can also update Jack by clicking on the Info icon in the interface or starting Jack afresh. However, amongst other things this requires Jack to have left OS4Depot's upload queue.

For complete information visit the Jack for AmigaOS website ( jackforamigaos.wordpress.com

CHANGES SINCE 2.9.3

* Start up: Jack will now close gracefully and with a message via Ringhio if no
internet connection can be found. Don't forget if you have Jack installed in
WBStartup you can use the DELAY Tooltype to determine how long Jack should wait
before checking for a connection.

* Installation script: Prefs.info was being overwritten on the system partition by mistake during the installation
of Jack. OpenURL and it's associated icon now be copied into Prefs correctly.

* Image Editor: Extensive selection of new image effects added.
Contrast, hue, colour balance modulation and more still to come.

* Image Editor: All image manipulations are now stackable.

* Image Editor: All image crops are now stackable in other words you can do
multiple crops.

* Image Editor: Quality of rotated images is much improved.

* Image Editor: Crop has been adapted to a few changes in the interface the
following limitations and behaviour apply.
1) You will NOT be able to crop images smaller than the interface window.
2) You will NOT be able to crop images larger than your screen (as before).
3) If you resize the window larger than the actual dimensions of the source
image and then try to crop- when you release the mouse button the window will
first resize allowing you to re-crop correctly; as long as the image meets rule
1 above.

* Image Editor: When opening the image editor the tint slider knob was drawing
in the wrong position. Fixed.

* Image Editor: When resizing the image window the image filename would
disappear from the window title.

* Image Editor: First/Last buttons on post processed window (available during
a batch image processing) were working - but Next/Previous did not work at all.
All four buttons now work correctly.

* Image Editor: Repaired missing shortcut keys.

* Image Editor: A color wheel is provided for selecting a tint color.

* Image Editor: Fixed errors inside the Image Resize window which didn't allow
the toggle 'Resize?' inside the Image Save window to function and inadvertedly
resized the actual working image instead of a temporary image.

* Image Editor: It is now possible to up open vector graphics inside the Image
Editor for converting into a bitmap format.
This includes the W3 Scalable Vector Format (SVG), other formats are unknown at
this time.

* Drag n Drop: It is now possible to drop Videos on the drop area for playback.
The following video formats are supported OGG/AVI/MPEG/MPG/MOV/FLV/MP4/WMV, XL
and CDXL. Unfortunately stability and compatibility with the aforementioned
formats isn't that great through the codec plug-in provided with Hollywood.
Rewind and Fast forward are currently disabled as well again due to stability
issues. Hopefully the situation may improve in the not too distant future. However,
could just be my hardware configuration.

* Drag n Drop: Dropping documents written in the Rich Text Format will now open
in NotePad. As will XML files and LOG files and files with the name 'Project
Notes' in them.

* Drag n Drop: It is now possible to drop scalable graphics on to the drop area.
This includes the W3 Scalable Vector Format (SVG), other formats are unknown at
this time.

* App-Store Caching: Recursive file deletion, updated against HW 5.0 API.

* App-Store: Brief black flicker associated the the download progress bar
window has been removed.

* File manager: Filters/File extension matching updated against HW 5.0 API.

* Calculator: Removed black flicker on opening window.

* Knowledge-Base: Updated Samba for Idiots Guide website link.