3.1 Advance Look (MacTelnet Home Page)

Last updated: Monday, May 5, 2008

This page shows off some of the features of MacTelnet 3.1 that are in progress. Check back periodically to see new stuff!

You can just jump to the screenshots and video gallery at the end, if you like.

If you want even more detail than this, check out the change log for the daily builds, which sums up pretty much everything that has ever happened since 3.0!

MacTelnet 3.1 is not finished. It is finally available for testing, and is updated very frequently in the form of daily builds. Your constant testing and feedback will speed up development and allow MacTelnet 3.1 to be ready for general use much sooner.

New Protocol Support

IPv6: So the only host address you have looks like 2007:000a:001c:1dba:0000:ffff:1170:9820? No problem!
Secure Protocols: MacTelnet now provides front ends for SSH-1, SSH-2, and SFTP in addition to TELNET and FTP. (Yeah, we need a new name for this program.)
URLs and Files: A significant number of URL and file types can be directly handled by MacTelnet, including Apple ".command" files and the "x-man-page" extension. And if you feel like writing some Python code, you can literally extend MacTelnet to handle any file type or URL that you want!

Enhanced Emulation

Rewritten VT Core: A new foundation to allow better performance, flexibility and accuracy in terminal rendering.
Vector Graphics Improvements: You can once again copy rendered graphics to the clipboard. A number of other bugs have been fixed.

Updated Key Palettes

Key palettes have been reimplemented as fully native Aqua windows with regular buttons and crisp new icons. [Screenshot]

Full Keyboard Access: Use the standard Control-F6 sequence to focus a keypad and navigate it using the keyboard.
Help Tags: For keys that are normally labelled only with an icon.
Show/Hide Key Equivalents: So you can bring them up quickly without using the mouse.

Notifications

Let MacTelnet monitor sessions for you, automatically flagging or responding to interesting events!

Activity Notification: For windows that sit idle for long periods, you can have MacTelnet tell you when new text appears.
Idle Notification: For windows that are really “noisy”, MacTelnet can tell you when they seem to have finally settled down.
Keep-Alive: For sessions that may automatically terminate after long periods of inactivity, this allows you to send text to them periodically so they stay “alive”.

Enhanced Terminal Views

The primary terminal window interface continues to improve. [Screenshots]

Optional Tabbed Interface: Glue windows together if you want to, so they move at the same time. Unlike typical tabbed interfaces, MacTelnet keeps each tab in its own window. So tabs can have different sizes, or their own custom toolbars, or even open sheets that do not block other tabs. Finally, you can unglue any tab as the start of a new workspace of tabs.
Live Resize: One of the most overdue new features is live resize information, allowing you to pinpoint your window size (in either terminal screen dimensions or font size!) while you drag.
Focus-Follows-Mouse: A new preference allows you to type into whichever terminal is underneath the mouse, a Unix-like behavior.
Random Formats: You can choose to pick the set of colors and fonts for new windows randomly, based on whatever Format Favorites you have defined. So now it is easier than ever to distinguish all your open windows at a glance, without making changes manually!
Cool Blinking Text: When something as annoying as blinking text is part of the standard specs for a terminal, what should we do? Why, make it downright cool, of course! A quadratic-delay pulse effect makes blinking text animate smoothly in MacTelnet, so it is far less distracting than actual flashing. And you can still change the blinking colors to anything you want.
Intelligent Paste: If the Clipboard contains more than one line (often a disastrous thing to dump into a Unix shell), using Paste will now display options: for example, joining the lines together before continuing with the Paste.
Matte: In addition to the regular background, terminals can now have a border whose color is set separately.
Custom Terminal Bell Sounds: Although MacTelnet has always allowed arbitrary bell sounds through a magic filename, now there is a proper user interface for choosing any sound in your library.
Floating Command Line Improvements: Command history is now available via a pop-up menu and the up-arrow key.
Terminal Search Improvements: MacTelnet now has a very fast, scan-as-you-type, multi-selection Find dialog: all matches in the active terminal window (main screen and scrollback) are immediately found. Also, the search window now remembers your recent searches and saves its state between uses. [Video]

Fully Upgraded Preferences System

Both the back-end and front-end to preferences are overhauled in MacTelnet 3.1.

New Look: MacTelnet now uses a window style that is more consistent with the rest of Mac OS X.
Translation Favorites: Translation tables are back, along with an interface for making your own character mappings.
Format Favorites: Now fonts and colors are on their own, free of those cryptic terminal settings!
Live Collection Editing: Now, when you select Sessions, Macros, Translations, Terminals or Formats, a drawer appears with all of your saved collections. Just click a collection and edit it live in the Preferences window! Manage the list of collections directly from the drawer.
XML: No more opaque files! MacTelnet 3.1 uses XML, like so many other Mac OS X applications, and even includes a converter application to automatically import your settings from older versions.

Session Manager

Interact with every open session from a single window, using the Session Info command. (Menus also provide much of this functionality, as they have in previous MacTelnet versions.) [Screenshot]

Customizable: Go ahead and put your favorite short-cuts in the toolbar, or mess with list columns.
Interactive: Double-click a session in the list to activate its window, or click its window title to rename.
Clear: At a glance, see the status of everything; for example, which sessions have sent notifications.

Session Duplication

The Duplicate Session command now works properly: it automatically opens a new session that uses the same command as the active session.

Accessibility

Full Keyboard Access: Since the entire user interface has been upgraded, MacTelnet natively supports full keyboard access in all user interface elements by default, and will support any future assistive technologies added by Apple.
VoiceOver: In addition to default behaviors, MacTelnet provides a number of descriptions and relationships between elements to improve the experience for users of VoiceOver or a similar technology.

Extensibility

External Data: MacTelnet default configuration data is now available in its bundle, allowing administrators to customize it very easily.
Python: The core of MacTelnet 3.1 is a revolutionary new framework exposed to the Python programming language. From this foundation, MacTelnet is poised to become the most scriptable application of its kind!

And More

MacTelnet 3.1 provides the little features you have come to expect on Mac OS X. [Screenshot]

Check for Updates: Run one command to see if your version is the latest available.
Special Characters: A standard Edit menu command to access the system-wide palette of symbols.
Unicode Support: Finally, write characters from any language into your filenames, window titles, and more.
And...: So many others that even I have forgotten them all!