• Updated the Mount service and notifier plug-in to work around an Apple bug that sometimes causes remote volumes to not unmount properly.
• Updated the Twitter service and notifier plug-in to the latest version of the Twitter engine.
• Now bundles the latest version of the iPhone report template; previously was bundling an older version that didn't work quite right.
• Fixed an issue with the RSS Feed report template, where the pubDate value wouldn't validate in some RSS feed readers.
• Fixed a bug in the Port helper that prevented it from working properly with slow servers.
• Added more logging to the Port helper to help diagnose difficulties sending text to the remote server, that solved the above issue.
• Added a hidden preference to output debug information from the helper for the Upload to Remote Server report plug-in. It can be activated by entering "defaults write com.dejal.simon2 RemoteWebDebugMode YES" in Terminal.
• Fixed a bug with setting the TestLastRecoveryDate and TestLastRecoveryTime notifier variables that caused them to output the previous recovery date and time when a recovery occurs.
• Improved the date variables to output "never" when appropriate (instead of a date in the distant past), e.g. if outputting the failure date when the test hasn't failed yet.
• Fixed a bug in the Spanish localization that prevented the Check for Updates feature from working.

• Fixed a bug with building the session script for the Port plug-in.
• Fixed a bug where a server that returns binary data could cause a Port-based test to fail, with an exception logged in the Console. The binary data is now correctly recorded as hex values.
• Added a hidden preference to output debug information from the helper for the Port plug-in. It can be activated by entering "defaults write com.dejal.simon2 PortDebugMode YES" in Terminal.
• Also added a similar hidden preference for the Ping plug-in. Activate via "defaults write com.dejal.simon2 PingDebugMode YES" in Terminal.

Monitor window:

• Changed the test scheduler to better queue the checks. When multiple tests are to be checked at once, they are added to a queue, and checked at the interval specified in the Advanced preferences (one per second by default -- set to zero to always check immediately). This helps spread out the load, and provides more accurate results. The Next Check column in the tests table shows "queued manually" when multiple tests are queued via a Check Now command, or "queued" and a time interval if queued automatically when due.
• Now records and displays the Check Duration and Failures Time to one decimal place -- now it'll show that a check took 0.3 seconds, instead of just rounding down to zero.
• Added a preference to use simplified status triangles, by popular request. Normally, Simon displays a green upwards triangle icon when there is a new change, and the green slowly fades to grey as time goes by. Similarly, it shows a red downwards triangle for a failure, which changes to an orange upwards triangle when it recovers, and that fades over time. With this preference, you can choose to have it simply use red for a failure, bright green for a new change, and a lighter green for success (older change or recovery).
• Fixed a cosmetic issue with paused tests. If a test was paused for a specified time interval, and it was due to resume while Simon wasn't running, the status icon was being left in the paused state until the test was next checked. It's now set appropriately.

Services, Notifiers and Reports:

• Added a Calendar notifier plug-in, that enables you to add events or tasks to iCal, or events to Google Calendar. Failure and recovery events even cover the actual downtime range. This plug-in is only available when Simon is running under Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or later.
• Added a Twitter service plug-in, that enables you to monitor Twitter updates, direct messages, friends, followers, and more for changes and/or failures. For example, have Simon notify you when someone follows or un-follows you, or someone posts an update (even if you don't follow them), among other possibilities.
• Added a Twitter notifier plug-in; use it to send updates or direct messages to yourself or others via the popular Twitter service. View Simon notifications anywhere you can see tweets -- on the web, in Twitterrific, or on your cellphone.
• Added Incoming Mail (POP) via SSL, Outgoing Mail (SMTP) via SSL, Mount Volume, Network Time (NTP), Port Available, SNMP Status, and TCP Port Scanner services.
• Added APC Masterswitch and Growl Change notifiers.
• Now new services, notifiers and report templates that are bundled with a Simon update are automatically added to the available ones -- previously existing users would have to create them manually. It only adds them if they are new, so if you don't want any, you can delete them and they won't unexpectedly come back at the next update.
• Extended the Port service plug-in to operate as a notifier plug-in too. It is the same as for services, but includes fields for the domain, username and password.
• Fixed a long-standing issue with the Port plug-in's helper, where it could get impatient while receiving text from a slow server. It now waits for a little while if it doesn't receive what it wants, in case the desired text is on its way.
• The Ping service plug-in now supports the Smart Change Detection and Preview features. So you can now look for changes in parts of the ping output, if desired, and preview the ping session to see what is received.
• The Application service plug-in also now supports the Preview function.
• Fixed a bug with the Post method of the Web (HTTP) service, where the final form boundary was missing, which upset some finicky web servers.
• Fixed a bug with the Speech notifier plug-in, where the volume slider was only accepting zero and full volumes.
• Fixed a minor bug in the Script service plug-in, where adding a second "Success" custom result would cause it to not be deletable; now only one "Success" is allowed.
• Added iPhone and Variable Test report templates, kindly created by Joe Savelberg. The iPhone template is a simple iPhone web app to allow browsing the Simon monitoring from your iPhone or iPod touch. The Variable Test template shows all of the report variables and what they output, to assist in creating or customizing templates.
• Added the ability for plug-ins to specify a minimum required OS version, so they can leverage new technologies.

Variables:

• Added general service and notifier variables: AppDataPath, AppLanguage, AppName, AppRelease, AppURL, and AppVersion. These output information about Simon, for use in scripts, etc.
• Also added UserComputer and UserName as general service and notifier variables, to output your computer's name and your name, in case these are useful for scripts, speech, or elsewhere.
• Added test-specific service and notifier variables: TestChangeCount, TestFailureCount, and TestRecoveryCount, that output the number of changes, errors, or recoveries that have occurred for the test. Useful for example to determine in a script if this is the first failure or just an ongoing failure, if the option to only notify for the first one is off.
• Changed the TestStatusType variable to output tidier values: Failure, Recovery, Change, Unchanged, etc.

Other:

• The Preview window for non-web services now displays the source text while performing the check, instead of waiting till done, so you can see what it's doing.
• Fixed a cosmetic bug with the Check for Updates feature when using a general release and waiting only general releases, and a beta release is available.
• Updated the built-in Kagi purchasing tool to the latest version, which fixes some issues with Leopard.
• Updated the French and German localizations.
• Added Spanish localization, thanks to Oscar A. Mata T.
• Switched the distribution method to ZIP archives instead of disk images, as it's simpler for everyone. Feedback welcome!

• Improved the notifications to avoid notifying again if the test is already failing; it used to notify again if the error was slightly different, but that's usually just annoying. You can turn off the "Only notify once for each failure" checkbox to get repeatedly notified until recovery.
• Improved the SSH service to avoid protocol identification warnings in the Console.
• Fixed an issue with the FTP service where it had the wrong default protocol, which caused the incorrect Edit Test view to be displayed.
• Improved the FTP service to work with the Security section of the Edit Test window, allowing checking secure FTP sites (without having to prepend the username and password to the URL).
• Fixed a bug with the Basic service plug-in where it would mistakenly look for cookies for FTP services, which while harmless most of the time, can cause crashes in some situations.
• Fixed a bug in the MySQL notifier plug-in where the Password field wasn't enabled correctly when using notifier-specific authentication.
• Fixed a minor typo in a couple of report templates.
• Fixed the tooltip for the "keep backup" checkbox in the Advanced preferences.
• Enhanced the URLs for the Help menu to better support localization.
• Updated the built-in Kagi purchasing tool to the latest version, which fixes some issues with Leopard.
• Updated the French localization.

• Fixed a bug with the optional status menu (on the right-hand-side of the menubar) where the item contents would be duplicated if it was toggled off and on.
• Fixed a build issue with the previous release that broke Mac OS X 10.3.9 compatibility.

• Changed the way the test scheduler works, so checks are started one second apart (actually at the check interval set in the Advanced preferences), instead of using the overlap prevention feature that was there, since that could cause difficulty when there are lots of tests (like more than 60).
• Improved the report feature to allow digits in test detail URLs, to avoid duplication when several test names differing only by numbers are used.
• Improved the Local Web report plug-in to include index files in URLs when saving to a file://-based location.
• Added a SummaryPath report variable, which is the same as BasePath unless a file:// protocol is used, in which case it has the index filename appended.
• Updated the default report templates to use SummaryPath on the bottom of the detail pages.
• Updated the Growl framework to the latest version.
• Fixed a cosmetic bug with disclosure triangles in the editor windows, where for example a test with multiple notifiers assigned would only show the first one if the disclosure triangle was in a collapsed state when the window was opened.
• Updated the German localization, to fix some missed resources and improve some translations.

• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevents the License or Setup Assistant windows from displaying.

• Rewrote the Port service plug-in to use a helper app to do the work, to avoid instability caused by multithreading and resource usage issues.
• Added support for the Preview function for the Port service plug-in. It displays the session script at the top, and the actual transcript of the check at the bottom.
• Changed editor windows to not reuse the window instances, to avoid issues with windows appears incorrectly in some circumstances.
• Added German localization, thanks to Manfred Brandstater.
• Updated French localization, thanks as always to Philippe Bonnaure.

• Added a Mount plug-in, that can be used both as a service and notifier. It can mount a local, AFP or SMB volume, and optionally dismount it again. Useful as a service to check that the volume is available, or as a notifier to mount or dismount it if required.
• Enhanced the Script plug-in to work as a notifier too. The Script plug-in is the most powerful one, allowing custom services and now notifiers to be created based on AppleScript, shell scripts, Perl, Python, etc. One sample notifier script is provided; if you have suggestions for notifier scripts, or want to submit your own creations, please let us know!
• Infrastructure changes to support unified Service/Notifier/Report plug-ins. If there are any Service plug-ins you'd like to see as Notifier ones, or vice versa, let us know!
• Added support for loading plug-ins from standard locations outside the application itself. Plug-ins can be placed in ~/Library/Application Support/Dejal/Simon/Plugins (which is created automatically when first running this version), or similar paths at the root and network directories. Such plug-ins will override ones bundled with the app.
• Simon plug-ins can now be installed in the data folder by double-clicking on them in the Finder. An alert will offer to copy them to the appropriate folder for you. (Note: plug-ins are not currently distributed separately, but this feature will make it easy to do so in the future.)
• Changed the Basic service to use authentication that persists for the session (i.e. until Simon quits) rather than no persistence, to make it work with a few sites that require that.
• Disconnecting from a Port service session is now done on a secondary thread, to avoid blocking if it has difficulty.
• Added the ability to set a timeout interval for individual tests: it's in the Options section of the Edit Test window.
• Increased the default timeout interval to 3 minutes.
• Added a test option to allow checking when you don't have an internet connection. By default, a test goes into an Offline state if there isn't a connection, but it may not matter for some tests, or you might want to be notified if your connection is down.
• Added the ability to set second-based checking intervals, by popular request. It is constrained to a minimum of 15 seconds currently. Also added month units, for completeness.
• Added a new TestStatusPhrase variable for services and notifiers that uses English words to describe the status of the test, e.g. "just failed", "just recovered", "recently recovered", "not changed", etc. Useful for use in email notifiers, scripts, etc.
• Also added new TestLastEventDate and TestLastEventTime variables, so the same notifier text can be used for changes, failures and recoveries, if desired.
• Updated the graphing framework to the latest version, and adjusted the drawing to work better for the checks chart.
• Previewing a test now synchronizes the current plug-in settings, fixing an issue when previewing after changing something would use the old values till the next check.
• Improved URL tidying to recognize "localhost", and not automatically add "www." and ".com" around it.
• Resetting the statistics, logs, etc for a test that is currently paused will now leave the status as paused; before, the status would be reset too, making it look un-paused while still being paused.
• Fixed a memory leak when stopping a Port-based check or report output.
• Fixed an issue with the license assistant when an Upgrade license is needed.
• Fixed an error that a few people experienced when checking for updates.
• Some optimizations in the Simon Assistant window.
• Now uses the Leopard-native window style when running under Leopard (10.5), or the custom one under previous OS versions. Plus other minor tweaks for Leopard compatibility.

• Updated the Specific DNS service plug-in to work with the version of the dig unix tool that ships with the latest Macs.
• Added a little more exception logging, to help with diagnosing any future issues.
• Worked around a known bug in the OS, where resources aren't freed properly if there are no user events (e.g. while Simon is working for a long time without human interaction).
• Fixed a possible cause of instability when closing the Preview window.

• Fixed an issue that affected some people, particularly those who use Apple Remote Desktop or similar remote control products, where Simon would erroneously display "offline", some icons would disappear, and sometimes other cosmetic issues. This was a tricky one to track down, managed with the kind help of a customer. If anyone still experiences these symptoms with this release, please let me know ASAP.
• Improved the reliability of the Script service plug-in, so it doesn't terminate the script before all output has been received.
• Changed the Web (HTTP) service's plug-in to not record session-only cookies, to avoid issues with servers that get confused with such cookies in a different check (session).
• Fixed an issue with the Growl notifier plug-in that prevented it from working properly under Mac OS X 10.3.9.
• Fixed an issue with the Specific DNS service plug-in, where it didn't report a failure for some machine configurations.
• Added test check overlap prevention. During automatic checking (i.e. not when manually starting a check), if a test is already being checked when another is due, the latter waits till the former is done. The upshot being that only one test will be checked at a time, providing more reliable check times, and avoiding using too many system resources.
• Added improved exception logging, to help with diagnosing any future issues.
• The Check Now menu items for the Source and non-web Preview windows are now correctly enabled.