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Muse (code name) Beta 7.0.1 update
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Muse Beta 7.0.1 is now available for download, and addresses the following bugs introduced with the Beta 7.0 release:
Improved usability of text frames by drawing a selection highlight around them and fixing a bug where the text cursor didn't blink in empty text frames
Fixed a bug where placing certain SWF files caused an export error. If you experienced this bug, a warning message will direct you to replace the failed SWF file.
Fixed a crashing bug that occurred when saving pages that contain certain HTML page items
Fixed a crashing bug when gradient fills are in graphic styles
Fixed a bug where selecting images in the layout failed to select the image in the assets panel
Muse (code name) Beta 7 Update Now Available
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
A new update to Muse public beta software is now available for download, delivering incredible improvements to performance and a significantly more streamlined workflow for previewing and publishing your sites, plus a host of bug fixes and enhancements.Highlights
There are three changes in Muse Beta 7 that may require you to take special action:
- If you've published sites to Adobe Business Catalyst, you need to use the e-mail address for your Adobe Business Catalyst account when logging into Muse Beta 7;
- Review and adjust the appearance of your Slideshow widgets and Composition widgets; and
- Review and adjust the appearance of your Menu widgets.
01. Changes to your Muse publish log-in
Muse Beta 7 and Adobe Business Catalyst now use a single user name and password for access to both the Muse application and the Adobe Business Catalyst Service. If you have temporary or paid sites hosted on Adobe Business Catalyst you'll need to use the same e-mail address to login to Muse Beta 7 that you use for your current Adobe Business Catalyst account. If you have multiple Business Catalyst accounts, or for some reason can't use the same e-mail address for both Muse and Business Catalyst, you can switch to use a different e-mail to login for Business Catalyst in the Preferences dialog in Muse.
02. Slideshow and Composition Widget Formatting Change
Slideshow and Composition widgets have an outer "Widget" item in the Design view that encompasses all the parts of the widget. In Beta builds prior to Beta 7 it was possible to apply formatting (stroke, fill, effects, background image, etc.) directly to this outer widget item. Unfortunately, in order to address bugs related to the appearance and function of some Muse sites in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, we've found it necessary to remove this ability. If you have sites with designs that were relying on this ability, you should be able to achieve the same visual effect by either applying the formatting to a part (i.e. the hero image frame) within the widget or by formatting a rectangle and positioning it behind the widget.
03. Menu Widget Change
A bug in the Menu widget has long permitted hyperlinks on individual menu items to be changed when the Menu Type was set to "Top Level Pages" or "All Pages." This was only intended to be possible for a Menu widget set to "Manual." If your site contains a "Top Level Pages" or "All Pages" menu and some of the items have had their hyperlinks manually changed, you may have noticed the Menu widget failing to update when pages were added, moved, deleted or renamed in the Plan view.
If your site contains Menu widgets that were set to "Top Level Pages" or "All Pages" and had hyperlinks manually altered, Muse Beta 7 may have to regenerate your menu widget as part of conversion to Beta 7 in order to insure it updates correctly going forward. In doing so, some items may be added, removed or rearranged and some formatting may be lost. You'll want to review your menu widgets for unexpected formatting changes.
Additionally, Muse Beta 7 replaces the "Include Page In Navigation" option for each page with a new set of "Menu Options" accessible via a context menu in the Plan mode, or in the Page Properties dialog. There are now 3 choices: "Exclude Page From Menus", "Include Page with Hyperlink" and "Include Page without Hyperlink". The "Include Page without Hyperlink" option can be used to create a menu item for a page without a hyperlink. This is useful when you have a category of pages you want to show in your menu bar, but you don't want a link to the category page itself. Also, menu items for pages marked "Include Page without Hyperlink" are allowed to have a different hyperlink manually entered, so now you can add additional links into your automatically generated menu bar by creating a placeholder page in your plan view and marking the page "Include Page without Hyperlink", then applying your own hyperlink to the resulting menu item.
Additional Updates in Beta 7
Improved Preview/Export/Publish Performance
Prior to Beta 7, during export or publish Muse would generate all the data for the site, but only write files to disk or upload files if the data for the files had changed since the previous export or publish. This minimized the time spent in the upload step of publish and only changed last modified dates during export for files that really changed, but it still required all the data for all the pages to be regenerated every time.
In Beta 7 Muse tracks what pages have been changed internally and only generates the data associated with a page during Preview, Export or Publish if the page has changed since it was last Previewed, Exported or Published. This makes re-publishing, re-exporting or previewing after a small change much quicker for most sites.
Improved JPEG and PNG Encoding Performance
We've replaced the JPEG encoding and PNG encoding library used by Muse. The new library is higher quality and roughly 3 times faster at encoding PNG images and 30 times faster at encoding JPEG images. This improvement in encoding performance translates to better performance during Preview, Export and Publish, faster import of large images and improved performance during some other image operations.
Faster Save and Close Performance
The time it takes to Save a Muse file is now proportional to the amount of data that's been changed since the last Save. If you make a small change to a very large site and hit Save, the Save operation is now nearly instantaneous. The performance of Save As is unchanged.
In prior Beta builds Close did an extensive check of the document before allowing the close to complete. This check has been removed. Close is now nearly instantaneous.
Size of Exported CSS Reduced
Muse now outputs the CSS for each master page just once and shares CSS across pages with the same master page applied. This reduces the amount of CSS generated and improves web page load times.
Publish Workflow Streamlined
The process of publishing a new temporary site on Adobe Business Catalyst is now as simple as:
- Click "Publish";
- Name your site; and
- Click OK.
Streamlined Site Management
We've added a "Manage" item to the top level list of tasks/modes in Muse—Plan, Design, Preview, Publish and Manage. Once a temporary site is published, the Manage option will take you to the Adobe Business Catalyst Administrator Console for your site. From the Admin Console you can upgrade your temporary site to paid, add domains, add additional administrators, view analytics reports and more.
Improved Assets Panel
We've flattened the entries in the panel. When there's only one use of a file in the site, there's now only one line for that file in the Assets panel. We added 2 new status icons to indicate whether an image is used at a size larger than the data in the Muse file (and whether or not Muse could get more data from the original file). We added a warning to the Link Status dialog displayed on Open and Publish/Export to warn about upsampled images (those that have been resized larger than their original size) since they may appear pixelated in the browser. And we added the ability to sort the entries in the Assets panel by clicking on the column headers.
Additional States on Widget Parts
Beta 7 adds support for States on some additional widget parts (i.e. the first, previous, next and last buttons, captions and the close box) enabling more styling and effects.
And many bug fixes!
Muse (code name) Beta 7 - Important notice if your website is hosted on Adobe Business Catalyst
Monday, March 26, 2012
As a valued Muse user with websites hosted on Adobe Business Catalyst, we aim to provide you the best service possible, along with regular updates and enhancements.With the upcoming Beta 7 release, you will see significant improvements to how you publish and manage your websites. One of those improvements is that Muse and Business Catalyst now use the same username and password, and you need only login to Muse once to use both Muse and Business Catalyst.
That said, we have identified a possible (but avoidable) snag with the Beta 7 release:
If you have an Adobe ID that uses a different email address than your Business Catalyst ID, Muse will automatically create a new account that isn't linked to your existing Business Catalyst account.
For best results, use or create a new Adobe ID with the same email address that you have been using to publish to Business Catalyst, and use this Adobe ID when logging in to Muse Beta 7.
Note: If you wish to use your existing Adobe ID to access a Business Catalyst account registered to a different email address, you will need to contact Business Catalyst support to have the new Adobe ID added to your Business Catalyst account. To do so, log in to the Partner Portal with either set of credentials, and click "Help & Support" in the top right.
We appreciate your support during the Muse public beta program, and encourage you to download Beta 7 to take advantage of the incredible improvements to performance and a significantly more streamlined workflow for previewing and publishing your sites, plus a host of bug fixes and enhancements. For a complete list of updates, see the Beta 7 Announcement Blog post.
Download the Muse beta to start creating unique websites without writing code.
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until the 1.0 release in early 2012
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