Fixed issue with sorting on secondary and tertiary specifications on the View Sightings Setup window. Would always sort ascending.
Fixed issue with displaying photos from the main window toolbar and asking for ratings.
Fixed issue where photos assigned a star rating during Sightings Entry did not remember the star rating afterwards and had to be manually set by editing the sighting.
V6.0 Build 45 – 26-Jun-2023
Due to a Build 44 change, showing photos from the main toolbar Photo button (camera icon) could produce an error. This has been fixed.
Due to changes in my host provider’s server software upgrade, the “Help | Internet: Check for a program update” feature fails to work properly. You must manually go to the Downloads page on this site and upgrade by downloading the installer and running it. Going forward from Build 45, this has been remedied and the previous functionality will work.
V6.0 Build 44 – 12-Jun-2023
Before closing the Sightings Attachments window (photos, etc), if any attachments do not have a rating above zero specified, you are asked if you would like to specify ratings before closing. You can disable this feature on the prompt window.
When opening the View Sighting Setup window by double-clicking a row in the Outings Grid (View | Latest Outings Grid), if you had a UDF filter previously used, that would still be applied. That is not correct. The UDF filter is now disabled under these circumstances by checking the disable checkbox to the right of that filter, so that you get all sightings from the clicked outing.
V6.0 Build 43 – 3-Jun-2023
Fixed bug that did not correctly select dropdown values under very rare circumstances. This occurred with the recent changes to the Worldwide Search window.
V6.0 Build 42 – 29-May-2023
Fixed bug when editing Sighting Comments from the View & Edit Sightings window using the popup menu or ‘V’ quick access key. The underlying data was being updated, but the grid did not update the changes if you scrolled out of view and back into view again.
On the HTML Report, photo lifers were counted, but the photos were not tagged to let you know which species were new photo lifers. A new camera icon shows on the photos now, if that photo is the first attached to a species in BD.
On the HTML Report, Lifer Photos used to have the background changed to a gold color. Now, instead, you get a “Lifer” icon (gold circle with a white “L” inside) on the photo. The same Lifer icon you get in the sightings list on the report.
When adding photos to sightings, you might rarely and intermittently get an error popup. This error didn’t affect anything and everything works as expected. This error has been removed.
V6.0 Build 39 & 40 – 19-May-2023
Correct some issues with the HTML report rendering the full Ansi character set in UTF-8 format.
V6.0 Build 38 – 17-May-2023
When importing sightings from BD Mobile, you will be prompted as to whether you want to auto-create new User-defined Fields to capture the BD Mobile fields: Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, horizontal accuracy, vertical accuracy, distance traveled. You care read about these here.
Corrected dialog sizing on “Don’t ask me again” prompts.
Remember Observer and Taxonomy selections for the three Sightings Import options (eBird, BD Mobile, and native) so that when jumping between importing from BDMobile and eBird sightings, you don’t have to reset those fields.
Fixed bug when importing Sightings with a new/unrecognized user.
When using the View Sightings Setup window and checking the “Attachments” checkbox, it will only search for sightings that have attachments with the selected ratings. But, prior to this release, it would still show all attachments for any such sightings. Now, it will only show those attachments for Sightings that match the selected ratings. For example, if you checked the Attachments checkbox, and only checked the 4 & 5 ratings boxes, leaving 0 through 3 unchecked, it would find only Sightings that have attachments with 4 & 5 ratings. When you show the attachments for those Sightings, even if it also has attachments with a rating of 2, it will only show those attachments with ratings of 4 & 5. You will need to reset the Sightings Setup parameters to see all.
In the View and Edit Sightings window, added a shortcut key of “V” to auto-popup the Comments Editor for the current row. Prior to this, you had to right-click on the desired row and choose “Comments Editor”.
Disabled show Comments Editor in Checklist Entry mode when clicking in the Comments column. You can still double-click in that column to bring up the comments editor.
V6.0 Build 37 – 5-May-2023
More tweaks to the new Worker Process. I moved creation of the Worker process to the end of the User Interface startup, to avoid most all database conflicts. In testing this works much better and avoids all issues I could test against. The user will still not be able to perform backups or taxonomy imports until the Worker process completes, but you are notified of this fact and then notified as soon as the Worker process completes.
V6.0 Build 36 – 30-Apr-2023
More tweaks to the new Worker Process enhancement released in Build 33. Tests and allows for the situation wherein the Worker Process still shows as running, but it is not.
V6.0 Build 35 – 28-Apr-2023
With the change in Build 33 that moved long running upgrade tasks to a background worker process, it was found that this was interfering wth users attempting to import new tax lists and/or perform a database backup – resulting in a fatal error that crashes the program; although no loss of data occurs. Both of these functions now check to see if the worker process is running. If so, it alerts you and will inform you as soon as the worker process finishes (as long as Birder’s Diary is stil open and running) so that you can complete the tasks.
V6.0 Build 34 – 21-Apr-2023
Importing checklist downloads from eBird was still producing bad character encoding in BD. This is now fixed for location names, etc. when importing eBird checklist downloads.
V6.0 Build 33 – 21-Apr-2023
During upgrades to new versions, long running database upgrade operations have been moved to a new worker process. This means that starting BD after an upgrade will happen much faster than in the past.
Modified and Enhanced the eBird World Search feature. Making it more intuitive and giving the ability to search on the eBird Region, Sub-region or Hotspot after specifying the Country.
Also, no more funny chars in downloaded names or locations on this window from eBird. Finally figured out how to handle the character encoding used by the eBird API.
V6.0 Build 31 – 11-Apr-2023
Fixed bug with backup initiated when database grows too large and the user gets notified.
Fixed rare bug where photos/attachments added to your sightings might end up overwriting other attachments by the same name. A test is done to make sure the same file name doesn’t exist and if so, the name is made unique and tested again.
V6.0 Build 29 – 21-Mar-2023
Added a new Rating feature to Sightings Attachments (e.g. photos, videos, etc.). You can now rate your attachments/photos from zero to six stars.
When adding new photos or editing/reviewing existing photos, you can assign a star rating by mouse or keyboard.
When generating HTML reports, you can select the number of stars each attachment must have in order to be included in the report.
When selecting Sightings to View or Edit, you can filter based on whether the Sighting as attachments and whether any of those attachments have the specified number of stars.
V6.0 Build 28 – 21-Mar-2023
Created a new tool to identify Sightings for Things in IOC where the Thing does not exist in Clements, and vice versa. The purpose of this tool follows from a long and very complex discussion in the Forums on this matter. The problem comes from the inability to align Things between the two taxonomic lists and is to be used only by users that attempt to maintain an accurate picture of sightings across both taxonomic lists. The issues come from a variety of types and sources. Some include: splits in one tax list but not in another, taxon recognized by one tax list but not another, errors in naming or classification by either authority, and this is only a short list. The recommendation has always been to maintain one tax list or the other as the Master and use the other for reference only. It is not possible to correctly align all the individual taxon between the two. This new tool only shows the Sightings were you have mismatches. It does not recommend making changes. And you do so at your own risk. This new feature is available under the main menu: Features | Sightings | IOC Sightings vs Clements Sightings.
V6.0 Build 26 – 18-Mar-2023
Fixed bug where the selector to support the number of years that each of the left/right grids on the main window search back was broken, and no matter what value you selected, it always used the value of 4. This bug was introduced in v6.0 Build 0 when the Options dialog was rebuilt.
V6.0 Build 25 – 14-Mar-2023
Fixed bug when adding sightings attached to Trips. Sometimes erroneously resulted in Sightings does not fall within Trip Dates. Fixed.
Added Database Size to the main window status bar at the bottom. This value is updated regularly and if the size falls within 75% of the maximum Access DB size allowed by Microsoft (which is 2GB), the user is warned to backup the database (which does a compact of the DB).
V6.0 Build 24 – 22-Feb-2023
Fixed bug introduce in Build 0 of v6.0, wherein the Backup on Exit prompting never occurs.
Fixed bug where all sightings import types attempted to import a track file (only meant for BD Mobile).
Fixed bug where importing sightings produced by the Export Sightings feature, produces an error; due to code change in Build 22.
V6.0 Build 23 – 10-Jan-2023
Fixed bug that happened intermittently when importing multiple Sightings files.
V6.0 Build 22 – 3-Jan-2023
Fixed bug when attempting to export Sightings which contain UTF-8 chars in the Comments field, using the File | Import/Export window.
Added new info prompt window to Desktop Sharing feature, to better inform the user what to expect.
Added error handling to the Reconcile window to better trap for an intermittent error.
On most errors, they are now written to the application log file in addition to displaying a message.
V6.0 Build 21 – 28-Dec-2022
Corrected code which was not preserving Family Name/Descriptions when updating a taxonomic list if that option was chosen in the Options dialog.
V6.0 Build 20 – 29-Nov-2022
Corrected bug wherein if user set option to not update Order and Family names on Taxonomy import/update, they were still getting updated and overwritten. The feature now works correctly.
V6.0 Build 19 – 23-Nov-2022
Minor updates and corrections to the Reconcile Report changes from Build 18.
V6.0 Build 18 – 22-Nov-2022
Improved the detail and conciseness of the Reconcile Report. It only shows what matters to the Sightings in the current database instead of showin you all changes, it only shows you those changes that had sightings attached to them and a more concise list of exactly what was reconciled by the user.
When importing Checklist data via the Windows Clipboard, access to the clipboard could timeout and cause an error. This has been fixed.
V6.0 Build 17 – 17-Nov-2022
Fixed issue created by new Clements 2022 taxonomic list. Some subspecies could be dropped due to a condition in the new taxonomy that has never occurred before.
On the HTML Report order the Trips by Start Date. Before, they were ordered in a random fashion.
V6.0 Build 16 – 29-Oct-2022
Fixed issues with backup of Attachments directory. Prior to this, only new files were being backed up. Edited files, such as cropped, rotated, etc. where the filename remained the same were not getting backed up. The original version was all that was saved in the backup directory. Now, all new and modified files are backed up. Files that have not been modified are not re-copied to the backup directory. Files that exist in the backup directory but are no longer in the attachments directory are removed. Also, the backup process is logged in the BDxyzz.log log file in the root BD directory. Also, a log of all attachments copied are maintained in a file in the root BD directory called Backup_Attachments.log.
V6.0 Build 15 – 25-Oct-2022
Fixed bug created in Build 14 where you might receive RTE 6 Overflow if the number of bytes saved by resizing exceeded 2GB.
V6.0 Build 14 – 25-Oct-2022
Updated the eBird export functionality such that the “from name” and “to name” also function on scientific name matches. For example, prior to this, you only had to set from “Rock Pigeon” to “Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)” for eBird to accept the import file without asking for mismatch corrections. Now, it expects the scientific name to be “Columba livia (Feral Pigeon)”. To properly deal with this change, your From text field should read “Rock Pigeon,Columba livia” and your To text field should read “Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon),Columba livia (Feral Pigeon)”.
Added a new feature that allows you to specify a maximum height and width for any photo added to a Sighting. If this checkbox is selected, then whenever you add a photo to a Sighting, it will be down-sized only to the maximum height/width specified. This setting will be remembered and will happen automatically whenever photos are added. This can result in a significant savings in disk space on your computer. In addition, there are 3 other new features on this window:
Resize All Existing Files button – this will resize all existing image files attached to your sightings and trips to the maximum width/height specified.
Clean Documents Directory button – this will move all files located in your documents directory that are not attached to a Sighting or Trip. It will move these files to a special subdirectory where you can review them and then delete them if you like. Extraneous files can be found here due to a variety of things such as user copying to the wrong directory. It just cleans up the directory.
Remove References to Missing Docs button – this will remove references from Sightings and Trips to documents/photos that do not exist. This can happen for a number of reasons; a move to a new computer, hard disk crash, etc. It will log the Sightings or Trips that referenced a non-existing file so that you might take corrective action to reattach from original sources.
Fixed bug where photos were not always shown in the same order in the photo viewer window or in the HTML report. Docs/Photos are always shown by order of when added to BD for the same Sighting or Trip. If you want to change the order, you can remove and readd the photos in the order you want.
V6.0 Build 12 – 16-Oct-2022
Enhanced the special Ctrl+N feature of the Sighting Attachments window. It has new functionality to improve performance and decrease the time it takes to attach photos to the day’s outings. Let me know if you have any ideas for further improvement on this process.
You can currently add files via the following methods on the Sighting Attachments window.
Copy/Paste via Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V. This method does not preserve the EXIF photo info such as shutter speed, ISO, etc.
Drag-n-drop from any other application onto this window.
Select one to many files from Windows File Explorer (“+” button in the toolbar)
Ctrl+N for this new feature.
Fixed minor bug in export to eBird functionality. It was discovered that exporting times with lowercase “am/pm” was not processed properly by eBird on import. This has been resolved by exporting uppercase “AM/PM”.
Fixed bug introduced in v6.0 where the Sightings Attachment Directory was not properly display in the Options window. This could cause some issues rarely if attempts were made to change this value here.
Updated the Sightings Edit window and pre-selected text in both the Min and Max Count fields. This was not being done before. This is usually how all text fields in BD behave with preselection on focus.
V6.0 Build 11 – 16-Sep-2022
Rebuild Location Performance table after BD Mobile import if required. This wasn’t happening with the new v6 Mobile Cloud Import. Forcing the user to rebuild manually.
A further update to the Grid positioning after Edit on View & Edit Sightings. This task is intractable due to all the bugs in the 3rd party grid in use. The simplest and safest method is to simply show the last selected row after edit somewhere in the visible part of the grid. That is the only reliable functionality that this control offers.
Web API 12-Sep-2022
Fixed bug in Web API database storage code that failed when names or comments contained apostrophes and other miscellaneous characters.
V6.0 Build 10 – 9-Sep-2022
Changed behavior on the View & Edit Sightings window when repositioning the Grid after editing one or more sightings. Sometimes, the edited sighting (originating near the end of the grid) would be repositioned such that there were empty rows shown at the bottom. This was a major rewrite of a 25 year headache of working with this 3rd party control. It is very buggy and this code does the best it can with repositioning.
The Show Range Description feature, available from Rosetta Stone (F12) among other places is now updated to deal with non-species-level Things instead of crashing.
Updated code to save Checklist Report checkbox settings and properly restore them when the template is saved.
V6.0 Build 9 – 1-Sep-2022
Corrected for temporary filenames when the BDMobile downloaded Outing location has non-alphanumeric characters in it.
V6.0 Build 8 – 31-Aug-2022
Fixed typo in Build 7 for the same functionality.
V6.0 Build 7 – 31-Aug-2022
Fixed a bug in downloading BD Mobile Outings from the Web API Cloud when the last known import directory for BD Mobile no longer exists. When this happens, it will default to the current BD directory.
V6.0 Build 6 – 30-Aug-2022
Added new feature to new Taxonomy Tree filter on the View Sightings Setup window. In some instances, you only want to see sightings for the Thing you specified in the Name dropdown and not everything under it in the tree. For example, if you had an Order-level Thing defined as “Passerids sp.”, you would get every Passerine sighting in your database. When all you really want is to just see those sightings attached to that Thing. Now to the right of the SubSpecies tick in the slider, you can choose OFF to turn off this feature.
Corrected a situation that produced “DAO.database System Resources Exceeded – RTE 3035”.
Corrected a rare situation in View and Manage Duplicate Sightings wherein when Comment matching is used, duplicates are found, but the matches are not found.
V6.0 Build 5 – 27-Aug-2022
Updated BDMobile import process to account for Outings that have zero Sightings but a valid Track file. Corrected messages shown when Sightings Import file has no sightings in it. Since there is no Sightings to import, no Trip gets created on the import and the Track file is ignored and left as is. The user is instructed to create the Trip manually and import the track file if they want. The empty Sightings file is deleted after the process completes.
V6.0 Build 4 – 27-Aug-2022
Fixed bug wherein if you import a BD Mobile file with the Quiet setting checked, it won’t ask you if the location is not recognized; it will add it under ‘Orphaned Locations’ and not rebuild the Location Performance table afterwards. This makes your sightings hard to access. This has now been fixed. Even in Quiet mode, if it encounters an unknown location, you will be asked what to do with it.
V6.0 Build 3 – 26-Aug-2022
If the Charts/Graphs panel was set to show at the bottom of the main BD window on startup, it was failing to show after startup. You had to close it, exit and restart BD. This is now fixed.
If starting the BD Main Window Maximized (e.g. full screen), and the Photos Panel is set to show, sometimes enough photos won’t be shown to take up the entire width. This is now fixed.
V6.0 Build 2 – 23-Aug-2022
Corrected the installer program to check if BD is running, and ask the user to close it before continuing.
V6.0 Build 1 – 23-Aug-2022
There is a new menu item under ‘Features | Sightings’ in the main menu. Check for New BD Mobile and eBird Import Files. You can also access this via the ‘Ctrl+I‘ shortcut. These files are looked for whenever you start Birder’s Diary. But sometimes you already have the program running and you want to check for new files you have just downloaded without having to stop and restart the program.
V6.0 Build 0 – 23-Aug-2022
Added brief descriptive text to the 4 numbers presented by Lifer Bars (optional feature) on the main screen background. It was not intuitive what each meant prior to this.
Fixed issue where rarely log file code attempted to execute on exactly the second (x.0000) and would produce an error message attempting to parse the millionths of the second.
Fixed issue with the Location Hierarchy tree where Orphaned parents are never pruned. This did not cause any errors, only build-up of unused records in the database.
Fixed issue where some sub-windows can start in minimized mode and be hard to find or interact with.
Fixed minor issue with Trip editing due to the addition of Time to Trip start/end dates.
Added a new powerful feature to the Sightings View Setup window. Now you can query sightings based on a list of keywords or phrases present in the Comments of Sightings. For example, let’s say you wanted to see all Sightings that have one-or-more of the following list of words in the Comments field: “call,sing,song,vocal”. You would enable the Comments field by Checking the checkbox to the right, and then enter this list separated by commas, starting with a left brace “{” and ending with a right brace “}”. The Comments field must start with the left brace or it is treated as regular text.
The QuickSearch feature in the main window Toolbar and the Sightings View Setup window now have a new taxonomic branch slider for specifying the branch you are interested in finding sightings for. This is a real time-saver when you are looking for sightings for a particular branch of the taxonomic tree. Let’s say you are interested in what sightings you have for all COVIDAE. In the QuickSearch feature, simply type the name of a member of that branch (e.g. Common Raven) and hit enter to find sightings for Common Ravens in your database. The new dropdown grid has a slider at the top. It will initially be positioned over the Species setting. By dragging it to the left, you move to Genus (Corvus) and onto Family (Corvidae). The sightings in the dropdown grid are instantly changed to reflect all sightings in this Family. The same concept exists in the View Sightings Setup window under the Name dropdown. It functions based on the name specified. If no name is specified then it does nothing. The older taxonomic filter feature has been removed from this window.
When you edited Sightings in the past, changes you make are not checked to see if they would now create new World, Annual or Location Lifers. This has been changed. You will be notified now if any changes you make result in a change in lifer status as when you enter sightings initially. If you have these features turned on.
A new Find Any Feature function is available. It is activated by pressing F1 anywhere in BD. You can search for any feature or setting in BD by keyword. So, if you are wondering where a feature or a setting can be found, just press F1 enter a keyword or two and you should be able to find it and be taken directly to it.
Fixed rare issue with the Quick Search feature in the main toolbar when the text was cleared.
When importing BD Mobile files, a new Import Quietly feature is available. If selected, all files will be imported and deleted afterwards without status messages or questions that are not required.
When importing BD Mobile Sightings files, Track files are auto-imported if found.
On import of multiple sightings files (from eBird or other sources) name matches are remembered in the same session. Prior to this, you were asked for non-matched names whenever the import file changed.
Fixed bug when exporting your Sightings to eBird that happened in rare cases.
Rebuilt the Options window for a more intuitive layout, load speed (12x faster) and enhanced functionality.
Integrated Web API for transferring data from BD Mobile v2.0 and BD Desktopv6.0! While the older email, save and import feature is still functional and supported, this new feature is more automatic and saves the steps of reading email, saving files to disk and then importing them. Now, when you submit your sightings and track files to the Web API in the Cloud, no email is sent and the first time you start BD Desktop back at home, it finds your submitted files in the Cloud, downloads them and asks if you want to import them. No more two step process for Sightings and Track files. And multiple sets of Outings files can be imported without any effort required by the user! This process has been greatly streamlined. Your Outings will stay in the Cloud on Birder’s Diary private server until you download and import them. You never have to worry about losing them. As always, with everything in Birder’s Diary, your data is safe, secure and never-ever shared with anyone. Don’t worry, you are prompted in both the Mobile and the Desktop versions of Birder’s Diary that this new functionality is available and given the choice to start using it. You can revert back to the old method at any time you like. But why would you?
Updated the Sighting Attachments window. For the CROP function, we were just drawing a red bounding box as you dragged your mouse to select the area to crop. Many photo utilities will divide a photo into thirds. Thirds are considered important when framing and selecting contents for the optimum photo effect. Now, when you drag to select the crop area, the red bounding box is divided into Thirds via additional light gray lines as shown below.
Added new feature to View Sightings window. This feature matches a need that I and other customers have requested. The ability to Clone the Current Row (the row with the rubber-band around it in the grid, NOT a selected [e.g. highlighted] row), and then Edit that Cloned record. This can be helpful if you want to add a new record that has all the same attributes (location, trip, comments, lat/lng, etc) but give it a new name. You can press “C” while the View Table has focus and this will be activated, or you can use the dropdown menu for the grid.
Version 6.0
