What's New in StockXloader

For StockXloader 3 customers:

Compared with StockXloader 3, there are so many things that are new in StockXloader 4, so the best way to get acquainted with the new version is to read the features list. Most of those features are either completely new or enhanced relative to version 3. Perhaps the most striking new things are:

• a full-fledged ticker list editor with which you can create any number of ticker lists, where you can sort the list on any column, and enable/disable in batch;
• it keeps track of the last date individually for every ticker symbol, so if a particular symbol lags, StockXloader will pick up where it was left last time — no more need to "back the last date";
• you can see the last date individually for each symbol, and for snapshots you can even see the last trading time for the given price data, displayed according to your time zone and in your language's format;
• a Yahoo popup menu that can bring up the Yahoo web page that corresponds to the currently selected ticker symbol;
• ... and more, since not a single line of code from version 3 is carried over to version 4!

As a convenience for users of StockXloader 3, version 4 can automatically import your existing version 3 ticker lists into the new version, and it will thereafter operate completely independent of StockXloader 3. This way, you have a safe backup to your well-proven old workflow. Keep the old version and the old ticker lists until you are comfortable with the new version.

For StockXloader 4 customers:

Sorted in descending chronological order (most recent items are topmost).

4.2   2014-08-13

New Feature:

• You can now move the folder that contains your ticker lists and temporary items to a location of your choice. It could e.g be Dropbox if you want to have all files synchronized between two computers. To make this work, put an alias in its original place. For details on how to do that, see the Release Notes from within StockXloader's Help menu, or see the topic at Frequently Asked Questions.

Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite compatibility:

• Because of changes in how Yosemite (at least the current developer preview version) treats background processes, StockXloader 4.1 will halt indefinitely when it has downloaded all items. Version 4.2 of StockXloader solves that in a robust and backward compatible way.
• Mac OS X 10.10 brings several changes to the graphics and the layout of buttons and size requirements of text fields etcetera. StockXloader 4.2 has been adapted to make it fully compatible, avoiding any clipping of graphical or textual items. The code has also been adapted to avoid any minor complaints by the operating system as reported in the system Console or by the development tools.
• Mac OS X 10.9.5 and Mac OS X 10.10 brings new security requirements where Gatekeeper no longer accepts applications signed in Mac OS X 10.8. StockXloader 4.2 supports the new requirements.

Improvements and bug fixes:

• Some improvements in error reporting: In 2013, Yahoo servers could issue a new strange error for "Connection reset by peer". They appear to have solved that, but in case it occurs again, StockXloader 4.2 will report that in a smoother way.
• In the Download Controller, sorting on the number of symbols was incorrectly done. That is now fixed.
• Minor adjustments in the language settings for the Yahoo links (see Preferences) and in the resulting links so as to adapt them to recent changes at Yahoo.
• Minor changes to the Sample Ticker List.

4.1.1   2013-09-18

Improvements and bug fixes:

• Fixed a small problem with the Sample Ticker List where the ticker symbol for "XAUUSD=X" was mapped to an empty symbol when snapshots were imported to ProTA.
• Added a menu item to the File menu: Show Ticker Lists in Finder, which does the same as the corresponding menu item in the toolbar of the Download Controller under Extras.
• Small changes in the File menu for clarity.

4.1   2013-05-24

New Features:

• A separate button Snapshots Only in the Download Controller: This is a convenience button which does the same as the button Download, with the exception that it will skip download of historical quotes. This is useful in situations where you have a tick mark for both Historical and Snapshot and you have done a first download of these, but then you want to quickly update your data during the day with the latest snapshots. It saves you the trouble of deselecting Historical for all ticker lists. There is also a corresponding menu item, along with a shortcut equivalent.
• There are now two new choices of what to do with the downloaded and converted data:
  1. Default Text App, which will open the final resulting file in the application you have set as the default for text files.
  2. Show File in Finder, which will open the folder where the final resulting text file resides, and the file is then selected (highlighted). This will make it easy for you to drag & drop the file onto an application for import of its data.
• Date conversions: For import of data to other applications than ProTA, it will now convert all dates to the localized form according to your Language & Text settings in System Preferences. Earlier versions only converted the date and time stamps from Snapshots, whereas it used the ISO date format for Historical quotes. In addition, the text encoding is now UTF-8 for non-ProTA apps. The new all-localized policy for all dates, and the UTF-8 encoding, will expand the number of applications that can successfully import data from StockXloader without problems.
• A "secret" feature to remove the dates completely: If you change the Last Date of a ticker symbol (Set/Adjust Date, or double click the Last Date), and set the year to 0001, both the historical Last Date and the snapshot date/time will be removed completely. Most users will never have any use for this feature, but it has been useful when creating templates of ticker lists where it has been desirable to remove all dates, leaving those fields empty.

Bug fixes:

• The Oldest Snapshot, as shown in the Download Controller, displayed the oldest snapshot date of all symbols in the ticker list, whereas it should have looked at only the enabled symbols in the list. That issue is now fixed!

4.0.5   2012-11-25

New Features:

• Printing: It is now possible to print a ticker list to a printer or to pdf. It only provides basic printing though, no headers and no intelligent page breaks. The functionality is basically meant for temporary purposes to get a printout and make some notes etcetera. We do not expect that users will archive such printouts.

Improvements and bug fixes:

• Fixed program and document icons on Snow Leopard: On Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), the smallest program and document icons were downscaled on-the-fly from large versions rather than those optimized for that size. And the small icon in a document's title bar was absent. This was a consequence of supporting optimized icons for the Retina screen, while we knew that the tool Apple offered for creating such icon files did not produce files fully compatible with Snow Leopard. Since then, Apple has updated the tool, and we did some other measures to produce good icons visible on all targeted systems. Issue solved!
• Fixed a problem that can occur in rare occasions when the Yahoo servers are either very slow to respond or happen to drop the connection. The Message Log would say: Warning: Transient problem: timeout Will retry in 5 seconds. 2 retries left. However, it turned out that StockXloader took this as a serious error and therefore aborted the download. That is now fixed, so it will really make a new attempt after 5 seconds.
• Some minor fixes in text and formatting.

4.0: First release of StockXloader 4, 2012-09-03

Relative to StockXloader 3, this is a completely rewritten major release. StockXloader 4 has had 9 private beta releases before this public release. For features of StockXloader 4, see the features list.

In any new release of StockXloader, there is a Release Notes included with the StockXloader package that contains a detailed list of changes for every version, and it may list any known "issues". We recommend you to take a look at it. When StockXloader discovers that there is a new version available, it will also display a simplified list of changes.