GUI Design Studio version 3.4 is now available for immediate download. This is a maintenance release with some important changes based on customer requests, and is a free upgrade for all registered users.

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

(1) Project Organisation

Now you can re-organise your projects with ease. In previous versions, we restricted the ability to move and rename design files to ensure that references remained intact.

In version 3.4, you can rename files and move them around using drag and drop. GUI Design Studio will track the changes and keep those references working.

New projects will automatically get this functioanlity but you’ll need to enable this feature for existing projects using the “Project | Enable Move and Rename…” menu command. This is a precaution to ensure that team members synchronise project files first.

(2) Enhanced Team Collaboration

Version 3.4 also brings new collaboration features to allow multiple designers to work on the same project simultaneously using a shared Subversion (SVN) repository. Move and rename are fully supported and changes by different team members to the same file can be merged automatically (in most cases).

(3) Image and Component Replacement

Have you ever wanted to change an icon or bitmap image, or replace a design component? Well now there’s a new “File” tab that allows the associated file to be changed. If the replacement component is compatible, such as a duplicated variation, then all navigations from within the component will be maintained.

When files are deleted, we’ve made it easier to work out what’s missing by displaying the filename in the placeholder box and now include the placeholders n simulation, printing and image generation where they were previously ignored.

(4) Other Changes

In order to make the simulation of Browser mode more realistic, Back and Forward now restore the view position (scroll bar states) instead of always jumping to the top of the page.
To help you edit elements more quickly the F2 key can now be used as a shortcut key to edit text for the selected element. You can still just start typing if you simply want to replace the whole of the text.
We’ve also fixed a number of bugs such as making GUI Design Studio use less CPU time on certain machines when idle and transferring project options to distribution files for use in the Viewer.

Happy designing!