Want to know what has changed since a previous version? This page lists those changes. You can alter the range of release notes to display if you wish.

The latest release of Simon is version 5.1.1.

Monitor window:

• Changed the Monitor window to use a textured style (i.e. metal), and rearranged the layout to be more attractive, including using a different kind of control to switch log viewing modes.
• Moved the Statistics area into the paged area, allowing more space for the stats, and for the Checks, Changes, Failures and Notifications tables.
• Increased the font size and default column widths of those tables, to make them more readable.
• Increased the maximum length of text shown in the Changes: Difference column from 50 to 200 characters.
• Added a Service column to the tests table on the Monitor window, that lists the name of the Service for each test. The column preferences are reset so it shows up.
• Changed the images used for marking unviewed changes in the Monitor window, and renamed from Mark as Flagged to Mark as Unviewed, to make the function clearer.
• Added a Services toolbar button, and included the Mark Viewed toolbar button by default.
• Added a Mark All Viewed item to the Dock menu to quickly clear the new change indicators for all tests.
• Now shows the elapsed time next to the "now" when checking; useful for slower Services like Ping, and when a server is very slow in responding.
• Improved the appearance of the custom widget used in the Automatically Pause and Notifiers features.
• Added a search field, that allows searching for any values in the currently displayed log.
• Added a new Checks log, that lists each Test check that is performed, including how long the check took and what the result was.
• Significantly improved the efficiency of the log handling; Simon should now update faster when clicking on Tests and performing checks.
• Now uses a proper spinning progress indicator in the Status column while checking.
• The Monitor window can now be hidden via the Window ▸ Close command and the window's close widget. When hidden, Simon is deactivated, but remains running, and will use less processor time (as it won't bother updating the window contents). Re-activating Simon will re-show the Monitor window.
• Added a pie chart to the Statistics page, that shows the number of successes in green and the number of failures in red.
• Added a bar chart to the new Checks page, that shows bars for the recent checks (or topmost ones in the table, if viewing in a different sort order). The lengths of the bars represents the duration of each check, and the color corresponds with the status of each check. For example, a failure after 40 seconds would appear as a red 40-length bar, and a new change after 2 seconds would show as a bright green 2-length bar. The chart can be made larger by dragging the splitter bars to the left and above.
• Changed the splitter bars to use an enhanced edition, allowing more flexible control of them. You can double-click on them to collapse them.
• Added a new View menu, that includes commands to change between the various log (and statistics) pages, to show or hide the logs, and show or hide the Changes bar chart (when viewing that log).
• Implemented support for the Edit ▸ Copy command from all of the Monitor tables. You can now select any number of lines in the Tests, Checks, Changes, Failures, or Notifications tables and choose the Copy command to place them on the Clipboard as styled and plain text, so they can be pasted into e-mail messages, text documents, or other applications.
• The tables in the Monitor window now use an alternating background color, to help view across the columns.
• Changed the default toolbar configuration in the Monitor window.
• Each localization now remembers its own toolbar configuration, for people who use both localizations.
• Added horizontal scrollbars to the Changes and Failures pages on the Monitor window, since their text is often too long for the window width.
• Clarified the wording of the Checking Options in the Add/Alter Test window.
• Added ellipsis to the buttons in the Add/Alter Test window, to clarify that they open new windows.
• Also now removes the line under the toolbar in the Monitor window when running under Tiger.

Services & Notifiers:

• Added new Services and Add/Alter Service windows. A Service encapsulates a specific kind of check that can be performed, e.g. HTTP, Ping, DNS, etc. These windows allow adding new kinds of Services based on the available plug-in modules, and configuring options for existing ones. Several Services come built-in.
• Modified the Add/Alter Test window to use the new Services.
• Added a powerful new Port Service plug-in. This is a very flexible Service, supporting checking virtually any server type, e.g. POP, SMTP, DHCP, AFP, etc. It engages in a Telnet-like conversation, receiving text from the server and sending a response depending on the value received. This conversation can be configured in the Services window. It can even send usernames and passwords as needed. Simon comes pre-configured for several server types, and you can add others via a helpful Capture Session panel that records text received and sent in a telnet-like session. (We would like to hear of other Port Services that you think should be provided by default.)
• The Add/Alter Test and Notifier sheets are now independent windows. This means they can now be moved anywhere on screen, and you can open multiple windows at once, e.g. to copy some settings from one to another, or compare them.
• Added a Automatically Pause Notifier feature to the Add/Alter Notifier window, so notifiers can be paused just like tests. This is useful to avoid being interrupted (or woken up) by an unimportant notifier at an inconvenient time, while still performing the checks.
• Now uses the Pause sheet for services and notifiers too, so services and notifiers can be manually paused for a specified period of time, instead of just indefinitely.
• Rearranged the Add/Alter Notifier window to be more similar to the Add/Alter Test window, with disclosure triangles for the various sections.
• Generalized the timeout mechanism so it works for all Services, not just the HTTP and FTP ones.
• Updated the engine for the E-mail notifier (the Pantomime framework) to the latest version.
• Major reorganization of the plug-in modules to enhance their functionality.
• Changed the way the "Only notify if failure notified" recovery setting in the Notifiers works. It used to only use the recovery Notifier if that same Notifier was also used for a failure. But since a given Notifier is usually only used for failures or for recoveries, not both, it makes more sense to use the recovery Notifier if any failure Notifier was used, so that's what it now does.
• Removed double-encoding of complex URLs for the HTTP Service, to avoid issues where some complex URLs couldn't be monitored.
• Changed the Ping Service to use the average time rather than the maximum time to determine a failure, to even out transient delays that can lead to insignificant failure reports.

Source & Preview windows:

• Enhanced the Source window to show a transcript of the previous Port session, allowing text to be copied for the Smart Change Detection feature (yes, that works for Port Services too — e.g. so you can get Simon to tell you when new mail arrives in your POP mailbox).
• Added support for a Find panel in the Source and Preview windows.
• The Preview window now uses the Safari rendering engine for the web page preview; much better quality than the old preview.

Status menu:

• Added an optional status menu in the right-hand side of the menu bar, which remains visible in all applications. It contains the same commands as the Dock menu, plus lists all of the Tests. Choosing a Test does some operation, defined in the preferences: either a specific action, or displays a sub-menu listing several operations so you can choose at the time (this is the default). Hover over a Test item to see a tooltip with information about it (dates, etc).

Preferences:

• Reimplemented the Preferences window to simplify it. Removed the Show All, Prev and Next buttons, plus the Show All page. Also rearranged the page layout to move the Help button to the right, to conform with Apple's conventions. Plus many behind-the-scenes improvements.
• Added options to the General preferences pane to control whether or not to show the new status menu, and what to do when selecting a Test in that menu.
• Added a preference to automatically hide the Monitor window when Simon is deactivated. It will automatically re-appear when Simon is re-activated.
• Moved the logging preferences from the General preference pane to a new Logging preference pane.
• Merged the Cache and Frequencies preference pages into a new Advanced page.
• Renamed the Restore Factory Settings buttons on the Preferences pages to simply Restore Defaults.
• The default data location is now different: it is now within a Dejal sub-folder of the Application Support folder, instead of Preferences. The data will be read from the old location if not found in the new one. The data folder location can be changed via the new Advanced prefs, if desired.
• If there are no Tests, Services and/or Notifiers data files, default ones are used. The default files include a starter selection of each type of data to serve as examples and aid in evaluating the application.

Bug fixes:

• Now the startup splash window is displayed as a normal window, so doesn't cover other applications' windows if you launch multiple apps at the same time. Also, the Monitor window isn't displayed until after the splash has been removed.
• Fixed a minor layout issue with the E-mail Notifier plug-in.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent the steppers in the Auto-Pause area from working.
• Fixed a bug where the app could get into a strange state if two different tests have the same URL.
• Fixed a cosmetic issue in the Add/Alter Test window where the Notifier pop-up menu would be completely empty if there are no Notifiers of the appropriate kind.
• Fixed a minor bug with deleting a Notifier where it would still be listed in the pop-up menu in any open Add/Alter Test windows until the Notifier mode is changed.
• Fixed a bug where unexpected behavior could occur if an invalid URL scheme is used with the Basic Service plug-in.
• Fixed a bug where Simon could "hang" (infinite loop) when calculating the next due date for a Test.
• Fixed a cosmetic bug where the statistics area could display "NaN" for new or reset tests until the next app launch.
• Fixed an issue that could cause delays in accessing menus and some other operations.
• Fixed failure on startup if the TrebuchetMS font is missing (it is used in the splash window).
• Fixed a memory leak with the Notifications log.
• Fixed a bug where a Web Service would continue checking the old location after it is altered until Simon is relaunched.
• Fixed a bug where navigating around the Preview page would change the URL in the Test.
• Fixed a bug where canceling an edit of a Service or Notifier could result in some changes being stored anyway.
• Fixed a bug in the Ping Service where it sometimes wouldn't notice some of the fields in the Add/Alter Test window. If you use the Ping Service and it doesn't seem reliable, Alter each affected Test to make sure all values are up-to-date.

Other:

• Doubled the number of Tests allowed for each license level. Basic now allows up to 7 Tests (was 3), and Standard allows up to 20 (was 10). Enterprise of course remains unlimited. Also increased the limits during the evaluation period. Licensed version 1 users who haven't upgraded retain their old limits.
• Enhanced the Licenses window to include more information, support finding lost licenses, support the new upgrade licenses, and more.
• Added support for a crash reporter, so in the hopefully unlikely event that the app crashes, you can provide information that may be very helpful in tracing the cause. The information may be sent anonymously, and only if you choose to send it.
• Major upgrade of the User Guide for the 2.0 release.
• Updated the Guide buttons to the new style.
• Updated the help URLs throughout Simon.
• Upgraded to the latest development tools under Mac OS X Tiger, and many behind-the-scenes improvements.
• This is a paid upgrade from Simon 1.x.
• Now requires a minimum of Mac OS X version 10.3.9.