NEW - Avast! for Mac release candidate 3.11 pkg (9 Aug 2010)

[zilog]

Hallo, here's the very fresh build - release candidate 3.11 (all reported flaws fixed - Mail Scanner, auto-hiding, Top Level Exception, added localisation to the installer):

http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/avast.3.11.zip

I'll test it thoroughly tomorrow, but, if you want, it's here and you can try it now .

regards,
pc

[.: Mac :.]

Is the link active? I have tried on two different machines to download the setup file.

[zilog]

Is the link active? I have tried on two different machines to download the setup file.

Nope, just yesterday we moved to new public server, so i'll put the fixed version on the new one.
the culprit of bugs that we found so far was - new Xcode! which was modifying typeless resource binaries wilfully, stripping their ownership,
and doing nonsensual things .

the newer package will be generated using the old Xcode. wait a bit, please.

[zilog]

Updated. Testing right now.

[zilog]

No reaction? Everything OK? Can't believe, but OK...

[.: Mac :.]

So far so good. Have ran several scans including one on a Mac running Time Machine. Mail support seems to have improved as well, I am not having messages flagged with warnings like the old version.

[fabrini]

No reaction? Everything OK? Can't believe, but OK...

Hi!  I registered for the forums just to download this update.  I've been waiting for an update for the Mac version for some time.  I installed the latest version then ran a manual update.

Engine 0.0.90-x86
VPS 100209-1 of 09.02.2010
Running on Intel MBP w/ Snow Leopard.

So far so good.  I did have a couple of thoughts....

- Avast process and com.avast.MacAvast.MAD are NOT 64 bit. 
- A progress indicator during update would be nice
- Sounds.  Half the fun of the PC version are the voice messages "Virus definitions have been updated."
- Option to display icon in the system menu at the top of the screen instead of the dock.
- I'm having a hard time telling if it really is scanning my mail.
- Preferences: Generic: Tool tip for "Always Force Delete" displays the tooltip for After-Close Support

[.: Mac :.]

So far so good.  I did have a couple of thoughts....

- Avast process and com.avast.MacAvast.MAD are NOT 64 bit.  
- A progress indicator during update would be nice
- Sounds.  Half the fun of the PC version are the voice messages "Virus definitions have been updated."
- Option to display icon in the system menu at the top of the screen instead of the dock.
- I'm having a hard time telling if it really is scanning my mail.
- Preferences: Generic: Tool tip for "Always Force Delete" displays the tooltip for After-Close Support

-Do the Processes really need to be 64-bit?
-Progress indicator would be nice, but most users use the automatic update feature
-Sounds are not important to me
-I second having the icon in the menu instead of the Dock.
-Send yourself a test such as the EICAR Test File
-I can confirm the tool tip is incorrect

[zilog]

Hallo, thanks for your report. Here is the anwer to your notes:

- Avast process and com.avast.MacAvast.MAD are NOT 64 bit.

yes, that's true, at the moment there's no truly native 64-bit avast. yes, avast runs on 64bit systems (Windows, MacOS, Linuxes) without problems,
but there are some internal parts that are 32bit-tied, at the moment. but, on the other hand, such 32bit binary is smaller, faster - and there's, except some
core routines a mappings of very big file, no other benefit, to be 64bit. But (because of those two reasons), we'd like to have 64bit built in the near future too.

- A progress indicator during update would be nice

this was planned, but - the setup detects on the fly what should be done - there's no way how to get in advance how many update steps will be necessary. so it will be problem to get the proper dimension of the progress-bar. in most cases, it would jump forward wildly, or, when the update will be cummulative (more atomic subsequent steps), it will lag at some position for a while. the detailed textual info what's going on (accessible from menu, see "Update details..."), would be more helpful in case of any problem, i hope. the very last line of this info is visible in the gui, as some sort of activity indicator.

- Sounds.  Half the fun of the PC version are the voice messages "Virus definitions have been updated."

yes, for version 5 it will be fine. but, some people, on the other hand, are somehow irritated by such features .

- Option to display icon in the system menu at the top of the screen instead of the dock.

there's a problem with the progress/findings number. In the dock, it's pretty visible and fancy feature, in the upper dock, such indication would be too tiny/unreadable. so we decided for docking, with app-controlled hide-feature (the login-items/dock one isn't working, in general).

- I'm having a hard time telling if it really is scanning my mail.

we decided not to show the former annoying window for each bunch of fetched mails. mail with no color marker is just fine. in the case that the sdcan was not possible for some common reason (password protected attachment), it's yellow, and when there's some deeper problem (scanning daemon not working, license expired), it will be another color. infection stays "red".

- Preferences: Generic: Tool tip for "Always Force Delete" displays the tooltip for After-Close Support

true, will be fixed, thanks.

regards,
pc

[fabrini]

- regarding sounds

I understand some people don't like it, and it's probably not a priority item, but it would be nice. (and optional I'm sure).

- regarding 64 bit

Glad this is one this is planned. 

- regarding progress indicator

I don't think its necessary for a progress indicator that shows the complete update from start to finish.  Perhaps what I mean is a "download progress indicator".  The text messages are great.  But the VPS download took some time, and if there was a progress indicator for the download it would assure users that nothing is broken.

- regarding email scanning indicator

I'm confused by your response.  Where can I see the color-coded status indicators you are talking about?  Is anything recorded in the activity log when mail is scanned?

- Preferences: Update automatically:

I believe proper wording for this pulldown should be "every six hours"  "every 12 hours" etc.  not "each six hours"

- "Last successful update attempt" status

The dates are in European format.... which is confusing to us dumb americans.  Can you make these dates reflect the localization settings in mac os, and display proper date format?

- Icon in Dock

I understand the issue here.  Don't forget you can make menu icons animate when there is activity, and have a dropdown display on mouseover.  How slick would that be?  Pretty slick.  :-)  I think "Dropbox" has one of the best menuicons and pulldowns.  It provides access to options, and displays status.  It also animates during activity. 

[zilog]

- regarding progress indicator
I don't think its necessary for a progress indicator that shows the complete update from start to finish.  Perhaps what I mean is a "download progress indicator".  The text messages are great.  But the VPS download took some time, and if there was a progress indicator for the download it would assure users that nothing is broken.

Hallo, with incremental update mechanism, the download takes quite little time, because the incremental updates are few tens of kilobytes only. Usually, substantially longer time takes the algorithm itself, which applies them. There's one very dirty trick, how to fake progress-bars in such cases - simply, measure how long it took last time, and take this as a "dimension" for the next run. MacOS's startup progress indicator works in the same manner, but - it's a pure Potemkin's village, basically.

Verbose outout (Update Details) is more valuable for us (troubleshooting, debug, support), and i hope that for more advanced users too.

- regarding email scanning indicator
I'm confused by your response.  Where can I see the color-coded status indicators you are talking about?  Is anything recorded in the activity log when mail is scanned?

e-mails are colored, red, yellow, depends on their content. just try to send eicar (preferably packed with some old packer, like zoo or diet, to be able to pass through e-mail gateways and their weak AVs) to yourself .

- Preferences: Update automatically:
I believe proper wording for this pulldown should be "every six hours"  "every 12 hours" etc.  not "each six hours"

Thanks, will be changed.

- "Last successful update attempt" status

The dates are in European format.... which is confusing to us dumb americans.  Can you make these dates reflect the localization settings in mac os, and display proper date format?

I think that there are two formats, in the fact: DD.MM.YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY, so it shouldn't be confusing this way, or is it?

- Icon in Dock
I understand the issue here.  Don't forget you can make menu icons animate when there is activity, and have a dropdown display on mouseover.  How slick would that be?  Pretty slick.  :-)  I think "Dropbox" has one of the best menuicons and pulldowns.  It provides access to options, and displays status.  It also animates during activity. 


Yes, quite nice, but we need, for example, to show the progress bar of scan in the icon - so that user can simply look at the dock, without clicking for drop-downs or other activity. But, for Avast5, some auxiliary indication for the upper menubar will be considered.

regards
pc

[zilog]

Hallo, please, have a look here:

http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/strings/

We'd like to tidy all english text to a form that would be short, unambiguous and easy to understand for everyone - here are all the texts, relevant for the upcoming Avast3.03 version. Please, review them and feel free to e-mail me your suggestions/corrections. You can obtain the relevant beta-package here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=54952.0 (link updated since it has been initially posted).

Thanks in advance,
PC

... and yes, we'll appreciate this effort by a special license (for free) for those, who helped us here

[fabrini]

Hi zilog,

I just emailed you updated strings.
Happy to help a great product get better.

[zilog]

Hi zilog,

I just emailed you updated strings.
Happy to help a great product get better.

thanks, i'll check the mailbox .

regards,
pc

[kigi]

Hi! I'm very new to Mac (and not so good at English as well as computer).
I purchased 2 years license for avast! Mac edition and updated it to the new beta
version(3.03). My Mac is OS X 10.6.2 with Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I have a
couple of questions.

-I didn't uninstall the older version avast before updating it to the new version.
Is it OK?

-I'm using Thunderbird(3.0.1) as a mailer. Having sent the eicar testfile to myself,
I've come to understand avast does not scan my email automatically on Thunderbird.
(My understanding is correct?) Is there any way to have emails scanned automatically
on Thunderbird ?

-After I got avast Mac updated to 3.03, the following things are happening.
1)Every time I try to shut down the system, the application "Mail" starts and
pops up the window that says something like this : "The application "Mail"  
canceled the shut down. Finish "Mail" before shutting down." So I finish it and
try to shut down. Then the same thing happens. It goes on and on.  I've
noticed I need to leave "Mail Support" in Preferences of avast unchecked to
shut down the system.
2)When I boot the system, it sometimes happens that two icons of avast appear
on the Dock and two main windows of avast pop up. Each of them is a new
version(3.03).
Do you have any advice or suggestion about these 1) & 2)?

Thank you!