GarageSale 7 Beta 40 Released

ilja · May 26, 2016, 4:08pm

Dear GarageSale Users,

Beta 40 of GarageSale 7 is available for you to download from this URL (or by using the built-in updater if you are already running an earlier beta version GS 7):

https://downloads.iwascoding.com/downloads/GarageSale_7.0b40.zip

In case you are planning to use this GarageSale Beta release in production, please make sure you have working have a backup system (e.g. Time Machine) in place.

What’s new since the last Beta release

added 4 new designs
fixed a bug where certain transactions weren’t included in a report, even though they occurred in the report’s time frame
fixed a performance bottleneck when updating smart groups after listing and order states were downloaded from eBay, that could cause GarageSale hang unexpectedly
when creating new listings form inventory items quantity, item cost, and price of the inventory item are copied into the listing
added additional commands to the ‘Orders’ menu that were only available from the toolbar before
added a separate preference for downloading eBay messages under Preferences > eBay > Advanced
improved profit calculation when insurance feature is used on eBay France or Italy
holding down the option key while choosing “Sort by title” from the listing section’s outline view context menu sorts listings in reverse order

What’s new in GarageSale 7

completely modernized interface with instant error reporting
can import listing drafts from the GarageSale Scout app on iPhone
a new custom database engine, which hopefully deals better with large amounts of data and allows us to adapt to eBay changes more quickly
GarageSale 7 does away with the template/auction differentiation - it only offers listings, which can either be running or not
a new Orders sections which shows information about purchased items and buyers
Reports can generate diagrams in addition to text tables
automatic update of eBay category information as needed
listing design are now optimized for mobile devices
local live validation of most eBay errors in new “Preflight” panel
listing images can be edit using image editing apps installed on your Mac and with image editing extensions
listing images can be copied and pasted between images
support for barcodes on the variation level
you can copy specific settings from one listing and paste them into other listings
added a preference setting ‘Load Flash’ to prevent Flash plugin crashes
inventory items can be exported and imported
you can now set the quantity of 'Good ‘til cancelled’ listings to zero to mark the item “out of stock” (you need to enable the ‘Out of Stock’ feature in your selling preferences on eBay’s website)
when selling cars on eBay Motors or eBay UK, there is no a dedicated field for the vehicle ID (VIM or VRM)
the ‘Import from My eBay’ command now downloads large images from existing eBay listings
can automatically generate SKU for your variations
added a “Reveal Original” command to the outline view context menu when a smart group item is selected. Using that command, you can easily jump to the original item of an item shown in the smart group, for instance to delete it or move it to a different folder
return policy, payment options, and tax settings can be specified in GarageSale’s XML import format
added support for specifying shipping insurance cost on eBay Italy and France
much more

System Requirements

GarageSale 7 requires OS X 10.10 or later

Upgrades and Pricing

GarageSale 7 is a paid upgrade from any previous version of GarageSale. The upgrade costs €/$ 19.99. During the public beta phase the GarageSale 7 upgrade is available for €/$ 16.99. Upgrade licenses are only available from within GarageSale 7.

If you purchased your GarageSale 6 license directly from iwascoding after August 1st 2015, you are eligible for a free upgrade to GarageSale 7. GarageSale 7 will offer you a free license once you start the purchase flow within the application. Unfortunately this free upgrade is not available for customers who bought GarageSale from the Mac App Store.

The full price for GarageSale 7 will be €/$ 39.99.

Migrating from GarageSale 6

GarageSale 7 has a new application identifier and uses its on database and 'Application Support folders, so you can run it along side GS 6 without side-effects
it should import your GS 6 library and your accounts (this process may take a while upon first launch)

How to import your GarageSale 6 library again

Sometimes there a bugs discovered and fixed in the component that migrates your GarageSale 6 library to GarageSale 7’s new format. If the bug effects you, here is how to run to import process again:

Export any listing you created in GarageSale 7 and want to keep
Quit GarageSale 7
Rename the folder at ‘Library/Containers/com.iwascoding.garagesale7’ in your home directory to something like ‘com.iwascoding.garagesale7-old’
Restart GarageSale 7
Import any listings you exported in step #1

What’s still missing

localized user interface for languages other than English and German
a user manual
fixes for yet undiscovered bugs

Thanks for using GarageSale,
Ilja on behalf of the iwascoding team

vintagecrave · May 27, 2016, 3:30am

@ilja what about giving users the option of enable/disable validating during garagesale 7 regular usage. It’s the background validation that triggers auto count on the calculator next to the launcher.

a lot of the beachball issues I notice are related to gs7 automatically validating listings for me, without any action I usually see the “calculator with the question mark ‘?’” running a count of usually the folder/group I’m simply looking or scrolling through.

I learned to stop this by selecting like 5 listings and then making a listing attempt with them, it somehow pleases the validator and it goes away for a bit until another unknown actions causes to start again.

Just a thought.

Thank you.

ilja · May 27, 2016, 9:03am

We noticed that, too. That’s why we changed the auto-validation so it only validates the first listing if you select a folder in the outline view on the right side of the window.

If you want to auto-validate several listings together , you specifically need to select in the middle part of the window (overview).

Validating a single should put a lot of pressure on your computer. Most of the time it is just idling waiting for the eBay server to return a response. So I assume, the beach balling you are seeing is caused by something else.

In Beta 40 we fixed a performance bottleneck when smart groups were updated after new listings states were downloaded from eBay. Maybe this already helps?

vintagecrave · May 27, 2016, 7:06pm

@ilja

But why the validation at all?
GarageSale main goal is to create multiple listings and upload them all at once.
In my opinion; validating should be an action that happens only during uploads to the ebay server.

I understand that validating helps new garagesale users, but to the veteran user like myself it just seems like it gets on the way.

I think that if we had an option to disable it would speed up the application a lot.

I will be finally upgrading from 7 beta 17 to beta 40 to see how things have change, so far every single time that I attempted to upgrade I found multiple issues that kept me from moving forward, I will report my findings once I’m done trying it.

vintagecrave · May 28, 2016, 2:44pm

@ilja @kristian

So I upgraded to GS 7 beta 40.
it validates the first item on every single Group selection and then it runs the loading spinner (also known as beach ball).
I believe this should be optional or should be enable by default but disable if one doesn’t have the need for it.

The spinner lasts anywhere from 8-15 seconds or longer sometimes, that’s a lot when all I’m doing is browsing, creating, editing, or simply looking for items that sold, etc.

GarageSale 6 never did this, and as of your Garage Sale 7 beta 17, this beach-balls didn’t happen as much.

It honestly makes almost impossible to work within the application

I notice that going in and out of folders/groups without items is a non-issue. Then added 62 listings to that blank folder and it was still not an issue, the I added a category to all of them and then I started see the beach-ball. I’m guessing that category validation against the eBay servers could be issue here… ummm … ummm

Can you please just make it an option that can be disable on the user’s preference menu?

In the meantime I’m heading back to GarageSale 7 beta 17, I make a backup folder before any upgrade attempt.

Thank you.

ilja · May 30, 2016, 7:32pm

Thanks for sending in a detailed report of the problem you encounter.

I tried the very same thing and created a folder with 64 listings and bulk changed the category for all of them. On my Mac the change was instant and the beachball wasn’t visible.

I then changed the listing so I would pass all local validation checks to make sure it would verify the listing with eBay, created 60+ duplicates and bulk changed the category on all of them. Again, no noticeable delay.

Luckily there is way for us to find out what your Mac is busy with when showing the beachball. If you have 5 minutes to spare, please follow these instructions using the latest beta version:

Launch GarageSale 7 if you don’t have it already running
Open the Terminal utiliy (under /Application/Utilities)
paste the following line into the Terminal window and press return:

sudo spindump GarageSale 120 -file ~/GarageSale-spindump.txt
Enter your account’s password so spin dump can connect to the GarageSale process
You now have 2 minutes to work with GarageSale and trigger a beach ball
After this period, you should see something like this in the Terminal:

    Sampling completed, processing symbols...
    Spindump analysis written to file /Users/<your username>/GarageSale-spindump.txt

Please send us the file GarageSale-spindump.txt from your account’s home directory

What this does:

Every time you see the beachball cursor, what methods GarageSale spends its time in is written to the GarageSale-spindump.txt file. With that log we can figure out if its indeed the database that slowing GarageSale done, or something else like Thumbnail generation, Category data parsing, inserting new eBay orders or messages into the database.