DEVONthink Fourth Public Beta Released

DEVONtechnologies has released the fourth public beta of version 2.0 of all editions of its information manager DEVONthink as well as of the smart note-keeper DEVONnote. The fourth public beta of DEVONthink 2.0 and DEVONnote 2.0 brings lots of new and promised features as well as many detail enhancements and bug fixes.

In DEVONthink Pro and Pro Office, the global inbox is finally fully functional and a new preference option lets the user choose where new documents are saved to: the global inbox, a database's inbox, or a location of choice. The latter pops up a floating location selector whenever data is added through Services, bookmarklets, or scripts. Notes exported from EverNote can be imported using a new script, another new script moves all duplicates of a selected item to the trash. The Sorter panel has been vastly overhauled.

All editions of DEVONthink now come with a brand-new 'Clip to DEVONthink' bookmarklet that lets the user clip selected text or whole web pages as plain text, webarchive, PDF, or HTML using a convenient user interface embedded right into the web browser.


"With the new 'Clip to DEVONthink' bookmarklet DEVONthink users can now save interesting text passages or important pages to their database directly from their web browser. The convenient overlay shows directly on top of the web page and makes clipping a page or jotting down a note a no-brainer", so Eric Bohnisch-Volkmann, DEVONtechnologies' President.

A Dock icon badge displays the number of new items added to DEVONthink or DEVONnote. In addition, smart groups have been enhanced, a new 'Duplicates' smart group is automatically added to new databases and the ranking of search results has been improved. The RSS support has been extended and scripts and bookmarklets can create PDFs from web pages. Many more minor workflow, feature, and interface enhancements have been added, too.

Enhancements exclusive to DEVONthink Pro Office are an overhauled scan panel that allows to reverse the page order or shuffle batch-scanned pages (for duplex scanning using a flat-bed scanner) and much faster and more reliable email archiving creating groups from email threads.

The version 2.0 upgrade addresses a large number of feature requests from the active user community and modernizes almost every aspect of the applications. These public betas are still incomplete but the already existing functionality is stable enough for sharing with the public. Smart tags, a fully functional sidebar, PDF annotations, enhanced image editing as well as the ability to upload files through the web interface are not implemented yet but will be delivered one after the other with each subsequent update. The user interface of all editions will be further polished, too.


New features of version 2.0 include but are not limited to: the ability to open multiple databases simultaneously (DEVONthink Pro), all advanced Boolean and proximity operators (as known from DEVONagent), wildcards and unlimited complex search terms, smart groups, unlimited undo/redo, an inbox, a trash can, and the support for almost all common file formats. The new Finder-like sidebar facilitates working with multiple databases.

DEVONthink 2.0 imports and displays Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), OpenOffice and iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) files as well as Skim PDF packages and all other files that support or are supported by Mac OS X 10.5's QuickLook. Using Spotlight importers and plugins for indexing DEVONthink can also search files that it cannot display due to the lack of QuickLook support (Spotlight does not need to be active). Metadata, e.g. from PDF files, email messages, or Office documents is imported, indexed, displayed, and can be selectively searched, e.g. using smart groups.

DEVONthink 2.0 allows to create documents from templates and DEVONthink Pro Office 2.0 shares databases with other users on the local network or over the Internet via an interactive web interface based on the latest web technologies. RSS, RDF and Atom news feeds can be added as self-updating groups to any DEVONthink Pro database and so integrate live content with local documents. The independent 'Sorter' panel lets the user add data to your databases even when DEVONthink Pro is not open. Tabbed browsing and editing as well as Cover Flow simplifies working with large numbers of documents. A PDF sidebar allows rearranging and deleting pages.

The new database engine incorporated into DEVONthink 2.0 not only speeds up working with large databases but also stores all files in their original file format, e.g. Microsoft Word files and email messages. Files are no longer converted when imported and can be edited using external applications. In addition, all documents can be accessed from outside DEVONthink using a standard URL. This highly improves workflow integration with third-party solutions such as iCal, OmniFocus Daylite, Bookends, or Endnote.

DEVONthink Personal 2.0 and DEVONnote 2.0 inherit the three pane view formerly exclusive to the Pro editions as well as separate document windows and the full screen mode. In addition DEVONthink Personal is no longer limited to 10,000 images.

Pricing and Availability:
The public beta releases of DEVONthink Pro and Pro Office 2.0, DEVONthink Personal 2.0, and DEVONnote 2.0 require Mac OS X 10.5 or later and can be downloaded from their website. DEVONthink and DEVONnote can be test-driven for free for 150 hours of non-continuous runtime until they need to be properly licensed. The public beta releases run without registration until May 31, 2009, before they need to be replaced by new betas or the final 2.0 releases.


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