I'm off to Portugal! I'm planning to spend a few days in the Douro Valley, seeing antiquities and tasting everything in sight, and then on to WikiSym and WikiWalk.

I'm hoping for updates here along the way. But connectivity might be spotty; if you have urgent Tinderbox questions, you might try the Wiki or the Forum.

We've just finished a tuneup release of Tinderbox 4.5, addressing a few rough edges. Nothing earthshaking, but it's recommended for everyone.

There's also a lot of interesting discussion over on the Tinderbox Forum. One of the weaknesses of threaded discussions is very much on view there, too: it seems that one thread wanders off-topic into talking about the terrific new in-place editing in outlines, while an adjacent thread wanders off-topic into worries that the in-place editing actually interferes with things people want to do. (Fortunately, there's a preference setting: everyone can be happy!) It's a good lesson to keep in mind, though: the consensus on a threaded discussion is not necessarily a consensus at all. (This partly explains why VersionTracker and MacUpdate are so often so wrong.)

Coming back to it after a few months of trying to use ‘standard tools’, I see immediately what I’ve been missing. I’ve been spending 80% of my time doing the formatting and 20% getting the ideas down. Tinderbox inverts this; I spend 80% on the ideas and 20% on arranging and organizing them.

I probably only use 10% of Tinderbox, yet even that sliver of the product has given me the mental focus and agility to work through so many aspects of my life - large events like moving house, to small activities like baking a decent loaf of bread.

Software designers — especially those whose starting point is UI/User Experience — often argue that the user's needs are mostly simple. It’s just not true.

But don’t miss Michael Bywater’s rollicking appreciation of Tinderbox 4.5, which Gordon Meyer (on Twitter) called “as good as it gets for describing the product.”

Update: Jack Baty twitters:

Tinderbox 4.5's TableExpression and the Plot() pattern are just awesome. Change my DaylogContainer prototype once and Poof! every day now shows a nice grid of notes, hours, issue, etc. I just giggled a little.

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New shapes, sparklines, drop shadows, multi-line outlines — it might all seem like eye-candy, dross to impress bored managers. But it's not. All the new graphic features are tied to showing you more of your data, and helping you to see connections you might otherwise miss.

Tinderbox has crossed a wonderful new tipping point of power and usability. — Russ Lipton

First, you can scroll inside a container. It’s easy: you just drag the background of the interior, and drag it where you like. Of course, you can zoom in whenever you want.

Second, the title bar itself is now draggable. You can even pull down a text excerpt, or have your agent or container build a summary table to your order. (Here, I've got a list of early modern architects; the table is sorted alphabetically and computers how old they’d have been at the World’s Fair of 1893.