12noon

This release includes some significant improvements. Artwork for shows (if available) is now displayed in the detail panel, reminder windows, and reminder e-mails. The lineup and search configurations have been combined and moved from the AppLocal folder to the user’s Documents folder. This way, you can more easily back them up with OneDrive, Google Drive, or simple copy/paste.

* Combined Lineups.xml and Searches.xml and moved it to user’s Documents\Typecast\Typecast.xml.
* Added artwork to the detail pane and e-mail message.
* Added artwork and station logo to the reminder window.
* Added default stylesheet for e-mail message to the Mail.config file.
* Update search results when user changes the maximum number of search results.
* Improved load time of station logos on main window.
* Reduced startup time of the Search window.
* Improved formatting of main window’s detail pane, search window, and tooltip.
* When setting search display image, Typecast now opens the directory of the current image (if any).
* Don’t update search results if there are no changes when updating the listings.
* Fix: Eliminated unnecessary search when opening Search window.
* Fix: Corrected search parameters of a default search.
* Fix: Null exception in Mail plugin.
* Fix: Mail plugin now uses default stylesheet, which is copied to the Mail.config file for reference.
* Fix: Corrected searches for sports programs that used episode title or description.
* Fix: Display of station for each schedule.

Typecast is out of beta! Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect or I’m done. There are plenty of features I’m going to add and things I want to improve. First, though, I plan to update the screenshots on the Web site. 🙂

On resuming from sleep, wait for an Internet connection to be established before updating listings.
Added filters to the cast/crew listboxes to make it easier to find people.
Added button to toggle showing or hiding all searches.
Moved “program title” field into the Criteria panel on Search window.
Improved performance of displaying the search window.
Improved layout of Search window. Combined Criteria and Display panels.
Sort active plugins by lead time.
Center reminder window on main window.
Fix: Do not allow season or episode numbers to be zero.
Fix: Do not change original search’s stations when copying search.
Fix: The next upgrade will correctly display the release notes after Typecast upgrades itself.

I’ve made a number of additions and improvements in this version. You can now search on advisories and exclude specific advisories. You can now search on all content ratings for the lineup’s country. (Previously, Typecast saved only one, and it was for the U.S.) Typecast can now update the database if I change something structural (instead of deleting it and downloading all listings from scratch).

I think you’ll notice immediately that I’ve really improved the performance of common searches, and–-I think–-searching in general, especially at startup and after doing an update.

In order to avoid Typecast from freezing while it tries to display 200,000 schedules when someone accidentally searches for everything before 2015, I’ve limited the number of results per search to 1,000. Nobody wants to wait for 10,000 schedules to display, and nobody’s going to scroll through that many anyway. Even 1,000 might be too many. This limit is configurable (but only in the .config file, at the moment).

Enjoy! Feel free to send me an e-mail if you find an issue or have a request.

Typecast is a new application designed to surface the television programs that you want to watch. Conventional TV listings applications display a huge grid of programs and forces you to scroll through it, searching for something you might be interested in. Typecast allows you to create custom searches that find what you want and only what you want without displaying a lot of garbage.

In order to get television listings for your area, you need to subscribe to Schedules Direct. Schedules Direct has a rich history of providing quality television listings for personal use. They offer a free one-week trial, so you can try out Schedules Direct and Typecast to see if they’re useful for you. They also offer a low-cost two-month subscription if you want to try it out for a bit longer before getting a full one-year subscription.

This is only an alpha release of Typecast, so it’s in the early stages of development. There might be crashes or hangs, but since I use it myself, it’s in active development, and I’m improving it frequently. It’s also possible that it might lose data such as lineup information or the searches you’ve configured. However, since I’m using it, I do my best to make sure none of that happens.