The first beta release of MaxTo 2.0.0.
What's new
Brand new bugs!
Let's just be honest here: this is a beta release. That's right, we've fixed a lot of bugs, and probably introduced a lot of new ones. Don't expect anything to work well in the early alpha releases.
We've basically rewritten everything from scratch, so expect some crashes.
Brand new user interface
We've separated the user interface from the underlying functionality in MaxTo, and re-implemented it completely.
This means that everything should feel a lot nicer and fresher; and it should look a lot better on Windows 10!
It also means that we now have full, complete mixed-DPI support! Finally!
Recipes
Recipes are a powerful new feature of MaxTo, that replaces the previous keyboard shortcut functionality. A recipe is a set of commands assigned to a keyboard shortcut; which means that you can run a lot of commands using one keystroke.
Commands that are ready now include:
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Move a window into a region
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Focus on a window in a given direction
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Center a window on a given monitor
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Load preset on a specific monitor
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Highlight regions on a given monitor (or on all monitors)
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Launch a program
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Maximize to screen
You can mix and match these commands as you see fit; and we have nice editors for their arguments in the user interface.
Open source documentation
We've started writing proper documentation. Obviously it is not finished as of now, but we have published what we have.
Also, if you have suggestions, you can edit the documentation directly. We will include any approved changes on the website as it is updated.
Virtual desktop support
You can now have different regions on each virtual desktop. Or you can have the same regions on all virtual desktops. It's a setting.
Automatically updated compatibility shims
We can now update the compatibility shims (that ensure MaxTo is compatible with other programs) without releasing a new version of MaxTo. You can selectively disable the shims on your machine if desired.
Monitors are identified by serial number by default
This is a bigger deal than it seems. Previously MaxTo used the monitor number as reported by Windows. That meant that if you had two monitors, MaxTo would only know of them as monitor 1 and monitor 2. If you detached monitor 1, its regions would be applied to the second monitor, as that monitor got renamed "monitor 2", and the settings for the second monitor would be forgotten.
Now MaxTo knows the serial number of each monitor, and will remember the settings for that monitor forever.
New settings system
We've introduced a new, JSON-based, settings system that automatically reloads any changes to the configuration file immediately. You can find MaxTo's settings in %AppData%\MaxTo% (by default, you can change this to e.g. store them in your Dropbox).
New installer
Our new installer is based on Squirrel, which means we get automatic updates and delta packages "for free". So that's good.
What's planned?
Command line support
The recipes and commands are designed to work well with a command line interface, so expect to see this to pop up shortly. You'll be able to do things like (syntax may not be final):
C:\> maxto window move -Window "Untitled - Notepad" -Position 0,0 -VirtualDesktop 3
C:\> maxto recipe "Notepad on the left"
C:\> maxto preset load "4x4" -Monitor "Dell U3011 (DP)"
Translations
All the translation options are missing in this initial alpha release, but it is coming back.
What was removed?
Quite a few things from previous versions of MaxTo where removed, and will not be re-introduced:
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Self-test is gone forever, as it frequently produced false positives.
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Alternate regions will not be coming back. It is now extremely simple to load presets by assigning them to hotkeys. The additional complexity of having multiple regions applied at once made this one an easy choice to remove.
Why 2.0.0?
We are jumping on the semantic versioning bandwagon. Basically this means that you should be able to tell if there are breaking changes in the version that you are updating to just from the version number.
Since we had previously used <year>.<month> to identify releases, we chose to start at version 2.0 for semantic versioning purposes. Version 2.0.0 nicely reflects what we intended; namely that this is a major upgrade for MaxTo.
What happened to the pricing?
As you can probably see from the website, we've changed our prices. The new prices are differentiated between personal and business licenses.
Personal licenses
These licenses work as they always have, buy it and you have a lifetime license for anyone in your household.
The price will be $29, which is a price hike from the previous $19. We still think this is quite cheap for a tool such as MaxTo, that you can use for the rest of your life without purchasing another license.
Business licenses
Business licenses are new in that they require renewal every year. The price starts at $19/user/year, and we give significant discounts for purchasing more than one year at a time, as well as volume discounts.
Site licenses are of course still available.
Previous licenses
All licenses that are purchased under the old system will continue to be valid going forward.
Note that to use version 2.0.0 or later (including the preview releases), you will need to convert your old license key for a new one.