Old News

30th June, 2007

ASM now has a new publisher for 1-800-Save-A-Pet.com. Thanks to Bill Wheeler of Mountain Home Pets and Abbie at 1-800-Save-A-Pet.com for supplying me with the information necessary to do this.

This is now available in the new 2.0.22 release. I'll also be updating CafePress with a CD Master of this version as the current one is now a little out of date.

25th February, 2007

2.0.18 is now available with the bug fixes rolled in. This fixes all icon problems, bugs with the In/Out and Not-Microchipped reports and a few other minor issues.

24th February, 2007

Looks like I missed a couple of spots where icon names needed updating. They shouldn't cause any problems, but I've fixed them and updated the release jar to 2.0.17.1. If you've downloaded an installer, update the asm.jar file to this latest one.

It would appear that 2.0.17 in general was a bit premature as a few people have reported other bugs. These are now fixed in a 2.0.18 development release available for download now.

23rd February, 2007

2.0.17 is released, this is mainly a maintenance release, cleaning up a few bugs people reported. It also adds an amd64 Linux build, so you people with nice fast amd machines don't have run ASM in 32-bit mode.

11th January, 2007

I've finally managed to get a professional CD sorted. You can buy ASM CDs here for a nominal donation.

October, 2006

Do you run a clinic at your shelter? Adam Spencer (the guy who set the initial requirements for ASM) has turned his hand to writing open source software and produced a full-fledged vet management application - go check it out at http://evette.homeip.net. Features medical stocks/controls, surgery/appointment tracking and a lot more.

25th September, 2006

2.0.16 is released. This one is more of a cleanup and rationalising of some things, improving support for OpenOffice 2, better default templates and saner defaults for new users.

4th September, 2006

2.0.15 is now available - this one fixes the last of the v2 rewrite bugs and adds support for BSD and other Unix variants. I'd recommend everyone upgrade as soon as possible.

15th July, 2006

2.0.12 is released. Due to problems at SourceForge, this is not a complete release and only contains a replacement asm.jar file - you should download 2.0.11 and install that before upgrading the asm.jar file if you are a new ASM user.

In addition, a new SwingWT has been released and is included here, this is a replacement for the swingwt.jar file in your ASM/lib directory and fixes the grey background and truncated file chooser bugs under Windows.

2.0.14 (for superstitious reasons) will be released next week when normal service is resumed with proper installers.

2nd July, 2006

Half way through the first rental term on the dedicated server running FindMeAPet.com and things aren't looking good. So far only 8 shelters have signed up and of those, only two are publishing animals. There's 3 months left to go and it's looking like I'm going to pull the plug. I'm not going to waste any more of my own money trying to help shelters who clearly don't want it.

6th April, 2006

2.0.6 has been released, this fixes another pile of bugs reported recently (the move to 2.0.0 involved a lot of rewriting so unfortunately there were always going to be bugs - on the upside I think that's the last of them).

It also adds support for FindMeAPet.com - a new site I've started to allow shelters to publish their adoptable animals and allow members of the public to find the animals they want online. It's currently UK, US and Canada only, but if anyone from another country wants the service there, contact me about it - we can have it up and running in a few days.

27th March, 2006

An interim 2.0.2 ASM has been released. This fixes a couple of bugs from the previous 2.0.1 release. Copy the asm_2.0.2.jar archive over asm.jar in your ASM installation directory.

22nd March, 2006

ASM 2.0.1 is out, this release includes bugfixes from the 2.0.0 beta and some improvements to OpenOffice handling (and adds support for AbiWord).

12th March, 2006

ASM 2 beta is now available from the development builds section. Note that a new install is required. While it doesn't look much different from ASM 1.x, it has been largely rewritten to allow much greater flexibility for future releases (and to make translation efforts easier) and most importantly, database portablity - ASM will happily work with HSQL, MySQL and PostgreSQL (and allow you to freely copy between any of them via System->Copy Database)

I recommend you try it out before unleashing it on your live data. To do this:

  1. Download the appropriate ASM installer for your platform
  2. Rename $HOME/.asm (typically Documents and Settings/YourUser/.asm on Windows) to something else to prevent ASM 2 interfering with it (you can rename it back later when you want to use a previous version).
  3. Install the new ASM in a location separate to your normal ASM
  4. Start up the new ASM and when prompted pick "Create new local database". This gives you a scratch database you can play with while testing the new release.
  5. When you're done, rename $HOME/.asm to something else and your previous one back again to use the client.

4th March, 2006

ASM 2.0.0 is nearing release - I'm currently looking for beta testers so if you want to try it first, drop me a line! ASM 2 has many improvements, including:

5th August, 2005

Time for ASM 1.40! - note that if you didn't upgrade to 1.39 then you still need to import your media. This is purely a bug fix release, curing MacOSX display problems, some 64-bit Linux performance issues, broken icons, Linux PNG support (so David's icons look much nicer) and many minor bugs squashed.

24th May, 2005

I'm back from holiday and had an excellent time! Once again, thanks to Gary and Jane of nwrr for their hospitality on the way down (and it's nice to put faces to names after all this time!).

If anyone's interested, I stuck up a few photos here

3rd May, 2005

1.39 is finally out - I made the decision to get it out today so there's at least 2 days for anyone to report anything unpleasant and for it to be fixed before I go away.

Note that so much has changed with 1.39 that you cannot download a replacement jar - you should rerun the appropriate client installer for your platform (don't forget to untick the server box if you are using Windows and already have an ASM server setup on your machine).

Note that you will still need to reimport your old media after updating to 1.39 (see instructions below).

21st April, 2005

The screenshots were a bit old, so here are some new ones.

14th April, 2005

New dev build is up...

Thanks to David Rolfe, we have some improved icons in ASM (you can see them in the latest dev build) - these are a great improvement. There are a couple of bugs we have to work out on PNG alpha transparency (at least under GTK2) so don't worry that some have black backgrounds.

I'd also like to thank Mike Streeter for the first bit of contributed source code I've had for the core application - thanks to him we now have donation document/receipt generation (and I couldn't resist consolidating owner and adoption donations into one logical place either).

Since we're on the subject of thanks, Asoka Desilva has also put in a lot of good work and completely rewritten the Mac installer as well as helping me debug the Mac version.

Upgrading to 1.39

For those of you upgrading to 1.39 (currently in dev, but will go stable soon), note that ASM no longer needs the media server as everything is now stored in the database. You will need to import your old media.

7th March, 2005

The first 1.39 beta release is out with a number of extra features, including better video capture support, owner thumbnails, extra sysinfo on Help->About and a few other bits and pieces.

I have decided to abandon the SourceForge support trackers. I've been considering this for some time and I've done it for the following reasons:

  1. Trackers don't really promote discussion as other people don't go out of their way to see them. By directing these items to the discussion forums or mailling list, more people can comment on RFEs/bugs and help answer support requests.
  2. New users who install the software, can't be bothered to read the FAQ or manual, have a problem and post a bug, feature request, support request and a forum entry all saying "URGENT, NEED HELP" (not to mention personally emailling me). I am tired of closing these and this way others can correct these rude individuals on the forums.
  3. Trackers look far too much like a TODO list and I get stressed about getting items done. This is not fair given that this is a spare-time project which I ultimately do to help animals (and fund myself). The items that were outstanding have been moved to the source control based ASM TODO list in CVS (they have not been forgotten about and will appear in 1.39)

Hope everyone understands.

23rd February, 2005

1.38 is finally released. There are still a pile of RFEs I want to add, but right now, the current dev build was so stable I wanted to put out a stable release before breaking everything again with the new round of features. Besides, it's been months since the last stable and many people were missing out on new features.

8th February, 2005

A new development build with a couple of cool new features:

Enjoy!

10th January, 2005

Happy new year! I've just put up a new development build that adds lots of friendly features for Windows users having trouble with missing database servers and things. It also adds support back in for Windows 95, 98, SE and ME (although they are very poor and you really should use something else.

24th November, 2004

I'm going to be working away until Christmas so I will not be around to answer support requests or do any work on ASM. In the meantime, please try to help each other out as much as possible.

23rd November, 2004

There is a potential pitfall with MySQL 4.1 - the current MySQL driver shipped with ASM only works with MySQL 3.x and 4.0. If you do want to use MySQL 4.1, then you'll need to get the latest version of the ConnectorJ package from the MySQL site and replace the mysql-cj-307-stable.jar file with it in your asm/lib directory. Assuming it's backwards compatible (which I haven't checked yet), I'll start shipping the new MySQL driver with ASM 1.38

14th November, 2004

1.37 is released. There are a couple of small feature requests in this build, but the majority of the work done has been around fixing a lot of bugs and generally making various bits easier to use.

12th October, 2004

1.36 is now available - note that we now have native platform installers for all flavours of Linux, MacOSX and Windows. The Windows installer also includes everything in one download so hopefully I won't get any more support requests from people unable to install Java!

This does mean that the installation procedure has changed, so read the instructions carefully for upgrading.

If you are upgrading your windows version, make sure you untick the "Server Environment" box during the new installation to prevent the installer trying to overwrite your existing database.

8th October, 2004

We have a brand new development release - this is going to become 1.36 so please download it and test it as much as possible. There are many new features in this release, such as automatic logout, support for animals without images when publishing, multiple movement donations, Tattoo support, FIV/FLV support, video capture support (Linux users only at the moment) and much more.

1st October, 2004

ASM is highlighted as part of the Debian-Med project. On a related note, I'm pleased to announce that SwingWT (the cross-platform, free graphical toolkit I wrote for ASM) has been accepted into Debian (my Linux distribution of choice).

24th August, 2004

After a good long wait, 1.35 is finally ready! Once again, all outstanding bugs and feature requests have been cleared. This release also adds full support for MacOSX and a screenshot is now included.

11th June, 2004

1.34 is out! The SF bug and feature request lists have been cleared. Due to new libraries required, testing has been carried out by just a few select shelters. Further to my recent forum post on the subject, this may be the last release of ASM for a while - I have less time for it these days and it is much more mature as a product. Stability-wise, ASM is solid as a rock and I'm available if you want to pay me to add your desperately needed feature request.

14th April, 2004

1.33 is now available - many bugs are fixed, along with a few new feature requests. In addition, DEB and RPM packages are now available to make life even easier for Linux users!

16th March, 2004

We got a high profile mention on the main RSPCA website! Apparently they're thinking of using ASM.

5th March, 2004

1.32 is now available! It adds much greater stability to the application, along with new installers which work much better for *nix platforms (and are compatible with Kaffe and the GNU Java Interpreter). Finally, we have some new features implemented, including a new handy shortcut bar on the find animal screen, support for declawed animals and more.

1st March, 2004

Are you using a very low end Linux machine and find GTK2 a little resource hungry?

There is a much older, faster widget set you can use that is compatible with ASM called "Motif". Download this file and unzip it to your tmp folder. Copy all of the .so files to /usr/local/asm/lib and copy the .jar files to /usr/local/asm/lib, overwriting the existing ones.

When you next start ASM, it will use the motif widget set instead - it's ugly, but faster and uses much less resources than GTK2.

20th February, 2004

Have you found the latest releases of ASM to be slower than the old ones when opening the animal editing screen under Linux? This has proved to be quite elusive but I've finally solved it. The problem is the performance of the native GTK2 combo box component, and if you used the fresh ASM database, it has about 500 breeds in it - 500 breeds that will be loaded into a combo!

I have written an improved combo box (something I was going to do anyway) that neatly avoids this problem and it now takes under 1 second on my development machines to add/edit an animal. Upgrade to the development build today to get this new functionality! In addition, the windowing toolkit ASM uses (which I am also the author of) has been optimised further for additional speed and efficiency.

20th January, 2004

1.31 is now available for download. Yet again - no major shakes functionality wise, although there are a number of bug fixes and little feature requests. The main aim of this release is stability - I can get back on with feature requests now! New screenshots are also online.

7th January, 2004

1.30 is now available for download! Functionality wise, it is pretty much the same as 1.22, with the exception of all the advantages of native platform specifics. The installer now includes native binaries for MacOS X, Linux (all distributions) and Windows (all versions).

Even if you ran the installer for the BETA, you must run the installer again to upgrade to 1.30. I have not included the usual asm.jar in the release as it is not possible to upgrade this way.

I'll upload new screenshots soon and update the manual (thought you would all appreciate getting your hands on the goods first!)

30th December, 2003

Happy new year! ASM 1.30 BETA is now available for download. Note that it is just the installer, and you will need to run this (regardless of whether you have an existing ASM installation) to get the new version. Download it here.

This new version runs much faster, uses about 1/20th the memory and now uses your OS' native toolkit (GTK2 for Linux, and native Windows - MacOSX and OS independent will follow). It also fixes the long standing bug with Swing shortcut keys.

It is still beta, so I wouldn't suggest you run this in production just yet - if you have a spare machine you can throw it on to try and let me know what you think, that would be great!

19th December, 2003

Nearly 2 months of big fat nothing! I haven't been idle though, although it isn't quite ready yet, I'm hoping to release ASM 1.30 by the new year! It's a big change, meaning ASM will take up less RAM, work much better and look great under Windows and Linux! You can see some screenshots of the new version over at the SwingWT site.

Merry Christmas!

1st November, 2003

Version 1.22 STABLE is now available! Mainly bug fixes in this one, although there are quite a few new features outside of the main program. For a start, a source distribution is now included with the program, a new UNIX server installation is available, problems with the manual have been fixed and quite a few other bits and pieces.

31st October, 2003

Making a living...

I just wanted to bounce an idea and see what people think.

I've spent over 3 years working on ASM to make it the best, free shelter management package around and it would be pretty nice if I could make a living from doing it - as things stand I work full time as a consultant and it doesn't leave me a great deal of time these days to work on ASM.

First of all, ASM will always be free - free as in beer and free as in freedom (as the saying goes). I'm not going to suddenly start charging for the software.

What I propose is to offer a small monthly subscription shelters could pay to get extra services. I was thinking a modest fee of something like 15 pounds sterling ($20ish USD) in return for:

  1. Access to new releases early
  2. Feature requests and custom work
  3. A new ASMLive service I've been thinking about for a while which will allow shelters using ASM to link up over the internet and pool data, chat online, etc. This could have many uses, such as the ability to perform lost/found matches against shelters in your surrounding area, check if an owner has been banned by another shelter before adopting animals to them, etc.
  4. Complete site hosting for shelters using the web interface, so distributed shelters could work on the same data over the web. This also means shelters can have an ASM management system without having to install anything on their local PC.
  5. Just pledging your support so the community owns and steers ASM.

Would anyone be interested in this? I figure I need about 150-200 shelters to sign up to make this worthwhile. If you are interested, please add a post to this forum letting me know (or drop me an email - bobintetley@users.sourceforge.net)

If you have any other ideas then I'd very much like to hear them. Please don't just ignore this - if you don't like the idea, then tell me what you would like.

Robin

24th October, 2003

I'm still busy working away, however I've managed to get together enough bits and pieces for a new development release. Many improvements have been made to the installer mechanism, and a new easy server installer for UNIX/Linux/MacOS X users will be available from the next release. In addition, the ugly font bug for the ASM manual in PDF format on Windows has now been fixed (thanks to Chris Montgomery)

I've also started a new project to handle on the fly conversion of Swing (the windowing API used by ASM) to native components used on Windows, Linux (GTK2), MacOS X, etc. Check it out here. This will make ASM faster, use less memory and fit in exactly with your operating system.

24th September, 2003

Pets911.com integration has been confirmed as ok by the team. You can now publish to PetFinder.com, Pets911.com and your own site directly from ASM through the UI, or command line interfaces. Work is progressing at 1-800-Save-A-Pet for their automated upload facilities, so integration to them will be a possibility in the near future.

Version 0.02 of the web interface is now available. The demo has been updated accordingly, so you can now view and edit animals online!.

13th September, 2003

Version 1.21 is finally released! Lots of new features and fixes in this one, including categorised diary tasks, logout/close prompt, new look and feel, generic log records (bite tracking, weight charts, etc.) and a new medical treatment view.

The initial framework is together for a web interface of ASM, which is now downloadable. You can also try a very limited demo of it online here.

I am currently working in London, and as such my time for ASM is less than usual - this will continue for another 8 weeks or so. I still check on things, and I will be around if you need me - you may have to wait slightly longer though.

1st September, 2003

Integration to Pets911.com is now in and working in the latest development release. French and Turkish translations are apparently progressing well.

BUG: Sorry, there is a known bug in the client installer, which causes an extra quotation mark (") to appear at the end of the shortcut on some Windows machines. It only occurs on some Windows machines, and it is not restricted to any particular version. You can fix it by right clicking on the ASM shortcut on your desktop, selecting "properties" and deleting it from the end of the "target" box if it affects you. It has already been fixed for release 1.21, due at the end of this week.

28th August, 2003

We're back! SourceForge suffered a disk failure, wiping out the websites of all projects with names beginning with the letters s, j and y. They restored from a backup on the 20th, but left the sites read only so I have been unable to update it. Work has not stopped on ASM in the meantime, and there are five days of excellent new features and fixes available on the nightly build page!

22nd August, 2003

More translation efforts underway! There is now a Translation HOWTO in the document area if you are interested in helping translate ASM to your language. Many thanks to Deniz, who is looking at a Turkish translation and Josef (Czech translation).

20th August, 2003

I'm back off yet another short break. The new medical tracking system has had an overhaul and is now even better (thanks to Brian for suggestions). Get it from the Nightly Builds page.

I'd also like to give a big "thank you" to Pascal Riendeau, who has volunteered to take on a French translation of ASM. Finally, I am currently talking with a number of adoption search engine sites about the facility to integrate to them directly from ASM (as we currently do with PetFinder and the standard website publisher). Thanks to Pets911.com and 1-800-Save-A-Pet.com for their interest and speedy responses. I now have technical specs for Pets911.com, so an export filter will be forthcoming soon.

14th August, 2003

Version 1.20 stable is now available, along with a new manual update! This is a biggy, with lots of new functionality (including the long awaited medical tracking). Please stand up and be counted - subscribe at Freshmeat if you haven't already!

1st August, 2003

Bug alert! - If you installed ASM with the server installer from the last release (1.12), your custom reports will be broken. You can still run them, but they get lumped together in one big category. To fix, download this file by right clicking and selecting "save target as". Save it to your hard disk, then start up ASM. Go to System->Database->Database Update and select the file you just saved. Go to System->Edit Reports and then close it again to update the report list on the menu.

Alternatively, you can upgrade to the latest development build and it will be fixed automatically.

Sorry about that! Thanks to Keith for pointing this out.

31st July, 2003

Lots of new features in the current development build - including diet management, clinic voucher tracking, non-shelter animals, lots of bug fixes and cosmetic improvements. Medical tracking will be returning soon! Since the SourceForge doc manager leaves something to be desired in terms of rich HTML, it now links from there to here so you can view the latest manual online in your browser. Since we are just starting this, I thought I'd give those of you who help me test a treat and the latest version of the manual early :-)

20th July, 2003

ASM 1.12 is out. This release contains a new command line interface, along with many new features and fixes. Don't forget to read the installation instructions before you install.

27th June, 2003

ASM 1.11 is out! Get it now! This release contains the stable PetFinder integration module, improved donation tracking, cosmetic improvements and more.

The latest ASM releases are also published over at FreshMeat - keep upto date by subscribing! (it's free)

WARNING FOR PEOPLE UPGRADING TO 1.11: ASM now features PetFinder integration and it will offer to merge the PetFinder Breed list with yours and map them for you. If you are a specialist shelter and do not deal in an eclectic range of animals, it is better to answer "NO" to the prompt and go to Internet->PetFinder->Map PetFinder Breeds in ASM and do it by hand. Even if you answer "Yes", you may still need to map some of your existing breeds. Obviously, if you do not plan to use the PetFinder support, you should answer "NO" and do nothing further.

18th June, 2003

Following an email from a very nice lady at PetFinder called Rebecca (giving me full info on the PetFinder import system), ASM now sports PetFinder integration! It will feature in the next stable release, however the impatient ones among you can get it now from the Nightly Builds page.

12th June, 2003

Java 1.4.2 is out! Go get it now - I tried it on my Linux test box and ASM seems to run approximately 50% faster than with 1.4.1!!! It also features a new XP kit, which Windows users among you can switch on by changing your Preferences->Settings theme engine to "Autodetect Based on OS". There is also a new GTK2.0 kit for UNIX/GNOME users (I will add the facility to enable this into the latest CVS builds shortly). It is well worth the upgrade - get downloading today!

9th June, 2003

Nightly build mechanism is now in place. Get the latest CVS builds now from here.

4th June, 2003

1.1 STABLE is now released, incorporating many new features and fixes, along with numerous improvements to custom reports.

3rd June, 2003

ASM is now hosted at SourceForge. The old forums are now dead (however I will transfer the items from the custom report board shortly). Public CVS is available through the SourceForge server for interested developers wanting to join the project. Also - note that support is no longer given through the forums, there is a separate support navigation option with trackers for feature requests, bugs and user support.

File releases are now handled through the SourceForge release system - ASM will consequently be available on a large number of fast mirror sites throughout the world.

12th April 2003

1.05 STABLE is now available, offering many new features and improvements.

11th February 2003

1.04 STABLE is now available. From this point on, two versions of the software will be maintained - a stable release for production environments and a beta release for those wanting to try out new features and offer help with testing.

10th February 2003

Animal Shelter Manager is now completely free software and the source code is available in the download area.

28th December 2002

The program is now fully internationalised for American audiences, and translations to any foreign language can now be very easily performed. If you want Animal Shelter Manager translated to your language, make a support request.

4th September 2002

The download site is now active and used as a distribution point for all the latest versions of Animal Shelter Manager.

Animal Shelter Manager is Copyright(c)2000-2008, R. Rawson-Tetley