Yesterday during the Keynote presentation of Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC), CEO Steve Jobs announced a new line of flat panel displays. The new displays sport a redesigned aluminum enclosure to match current PowerMac G5 and PowerBook systems and feature a one-piece stand and narrower bezel. Each model also has two built-in USB2 and Firewire ports on the back and use industry-standard DVI connectors. A single cable coming from the back of the panel forks off into power, USB2, Firewire, and DVI connectors.

Along side new versions of the 20-inch Cinema Display (1680x1050 pixels) and the 23-inch Cinema HD Display, Apple launched a new 30-inch widescreen panel running at 2560x1600, or 4.1 million pixels.

InterfaceLIFT is now taking wallpaper submissions at 2560x1600 pixel resolution for use with Apple's 30-inch Cinema HD Display. In connection with this, we will be launching a new section which allows you to browse wallpaper by resolution to make it easier to find the resolution you are looking for.

Arlo Rose and Perry Clark have released Konfabulator 1.7, a free update to their popular graphically-oriented JavaScript runtime engine for Mac OS X.

Major enhancements include the addition of "Konsposé" which brings all Konfabulator widgets into view at the press of a key (F8 by default) and support for Unicode text. Version 1.7 also includes several bug fixes. Please read the version history for more information on what is new in this release.

Konfabulator is $25.00 shareware.

Matrin Wengenmayer has released Cheeta3D 1.6 for Mac OS X. Cheetah3D is a 3D modeler written entirely in Cocoa. Version 1.6 is the first version to support direct export to the Mac OS X '.icns' icon file format, making it a great way to generate 3D icons. Cheeta3D is available for $59.00.

Unsanity has written an article attempting to debunk some of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt being spread around the Internet about its Application Enhancer framework. Rosyna explaines what APE is, how it works, and why it is not to blame for instability issues being attributed to it by end users.

The latest release of Konfabulator brings the following small enhancements and bug fixes.

• Improved look of scrolling text.
• Fixed some problems with runCommand().
• Fixed problem with playing sounds causing some Widgets to disappear.
• Fixed issue with "Hide" option of "Startup Items" control panel making Konfabulator menu inoperable.
• Fixed several issues with proxy servers and Keychain storage of passwords.
• Various enhancements to convertPathToHFS().
• Fixed problems with certain Contextual Menu plugins.
• Improved behavior of Widget buttons.
• Many other fixes and improvements.

Konfabulator is a $25.00 shareware Javascript runtime engine for Mac OS X. Learn more or visit the Widget Gallery.

Iconfactory artist, Dave Brasgalla, unveils his latest freeware icon collection today - Rev 2 Folders. This set of smooth and elegant folder replacement icons families perfectly with Dave's earlier release of Rev 2 Drives and will help give your desktop a clean and hi-tech appearance. For Mac OS X users, all of the folders contain special open/drop states that display when files or other folders are dragged onto them. Revision 2 Folders are available today from The Iconfactory as either Mac or Windows icons as well as a Pixadex iContainer.

ArsTechnica has posted detailed instructions for converting Mac OS X icons to PNG format for use under Linux in its latest installment of Linux.Ars. As always, be mindful of the artists' copyright. Generally it is alright to convert icons for personal use, but you may not redistribute them (in any format) without the author's consent.

Many users experienced errors while attempting to access or purchase from the iTunes Music Store after ugrading to iTunes 4.5 for Mac OS X. While most of these errors were due to the store being overloaded by millions of concurrent users, some continue to experience difficulty.

A possible culprit seems to be Unsanity's Application Enhancer, installed with haxies such as ShapeShifter. ShapeShifter is a utility used to install and manage Mac OS X themes and includes support for skinning applications such as iTunes. The main symptoms seem to be errors of type -206 when attempting to download music and a glitch with the small icon for the new PartyShuffle feature.

Disabling Application Enhancer via its System Preferences pane, or adding iTunes to the exclusion list of any haxie which uses APE apparently resolves the issue. Jason Harris, the author of ShapeShifter, is looking into the issue but claims that his software is not to the culprit.

No further information is available from Unsanity's or Apple's web site reguarding the issue at this time.

The Iconfactory is proud to announce the official winners of this year's annual icon design contest, Pixelpalooza! The 2004 edition of the contest drew 100 entries from around the globe, but in the end, only nine were selected as the Grand Prize, Runner-Up and and People's Choice Winners.

The winning entries were judged to be the greatest artistically, most original, or most popular of the icons entered in each category.

Konfabulator has been updated to version 1.6. The new version brings numerous enhancements and bug fixes including the following:

• Added animated GIF support.
• Images now only react to clicks on non-transparent areas (i.e. if a click is on an area of an image that is transparent, it passes through).
• Improved integration with Expose.
• Better font name parsing.
• Improved efficiency of AirPort code.
• Fixed a crash when a Widget with no object was run.
• Fixed bug that caused objects which were set to empty strings never to display again.
• Fixed the "zOrder glitch" (which was actually an issue with changing opacity on images below other images).
• Incorporated latest version of cURL to address some user reported problems.
• Updated JavaScript engine to latest version.

Konfabulator is $25 shareware and is available for Mac OS X 10.2 and greater.

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