Hot on the heals of the Christmas 1.9.8 release, an updated version of the Android client has been added to the android Market.

This release contains two updates:

• The ability to blank the screen to the theme or desktop as well as the screen.
  This change requires version 1.9.8 to function fully.
• A number of translations.

The next release should be available at the same time as 1.9.9 is release.

This weekend we were able to set up the necessary infrastructure for doing test builds for Mac OS X automatically.

Nightly builds are created every day around 10pm GMT. These builds are created on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and should also work on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). These builds include latest development changes in OpenLP. The latest test build is available on the download page.

I would like to encourage Mac OS X users and testers to test OpenLP builds and report bugs periodically since we do not have a lot of Mac OS X developers and the support for Mac platform is not perfect.

Happy testing and reporting!

Hello everyone! OpenLP's popularity is on the rise. We just hit 1,200 fans. That is a large accomplishment in itself for a project like OpenLP. With this rise in popularity we could use some help from the community. As you probably already know we have been hard at work on a manual and support is always available through chat, but OpenLP also has a YouTube channel. Many times a video is worth more than a thousand words when demonstrating a feature or helping out with a technical issue.

Looking back over the past year, OpenLP has had quite an eventful year. In 2011 we had the last two releases of openlp.org 1.2.x, had five releases of OpenLP 2.0 (1.9.x), we moved from alpha releases to beta releases, and we end-of-life'd openlp.org 1.x. Not only that, OpenLP even has an Android app!

Another release, another beta... As with most other open source projects, we don't want to release OpenLP until it is ready. So here's our Christmas present to you: another beta version. Don't worry, we are just as eager as you to get the final release out, but we also want to make sure the final release is the best it can be, so we'll continue to release beta versions and then release candidates until we're happy with what we've got.

PLEASE NOTE: ONCE YOU HAVE INSTALLED VERSION 1.9.8 YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RUN VERSION 1.9.7 AGAIN!

As of 1.9.7 we introduced an automatic database upgrade system, and song databases from the newer versions are not necessarily backwards compatible. From time to time we have to introduce changes to the songs database in order to add new features and enhance existing functionality. Because of these changes, you will not be able to run previous versions of OpenLP with your most recent database.

Last night I added Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin to our PPA, so from today or tomorrow all those early birds who like to run Ubuntu from the first alpha release should be able to download the daily build of OpenLP for 12.04. Unfortunately, OpenLP 1.9.7 will be not available for 12.04, but 1.9.8 and up will be.

Don't forget, we support all flavours of Ubuntu, including Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu. Mint Linux is also supported, as long as you are using the standard edition, not the Debian edition (the Debian edition should work too, but it doesn't work directly from the PPA). We also support all releases from 10.04 and up, so don't worry if you want to stick to the LTS releases of Ubuntu, we still support you!

To download OpenLP 1.9.7 for Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.10, go to our download page and add the PPA to your software sources. To download a nightly build (testers and adventurous users only!) of OpenLP, go to the download page and scroll down to the Developer Downloads section.

Changes have been made to the songs plugin to give users the ability to edit songs in a service when the "Add missing Songs when Opening Service" option is disabled. In the past, this was not possible.

This has meant that we needed to make a change to the songs database to protect the database. Thanks to the new internal upgrade system, you do not need to make the change yourself, OpenLP will do so automatically. In addition to this, the songs plugin will be disabled if the version of the database is newer than the version the code expects.

This will only impact people using nightly builds who have a number of copies of the code or who copy the database between different machines and the database has been updated. It will also impact anyone who tries to install an older version of OpenLP after using the latest nightly build.

It is recommended that you first backup your songs database if you think you may need to downgrade to 1.9.7 or an older nightly build after installing the latest nightly build.

Many thanks to Joseph Mulloy and Alexandre D. Rogoski who have worked hard to get OpenLP up and running on openSUSE!

A couple of developers have tried in the past, and run into various issues, but between Joseph and Alexandre, they have managed to overcome these issues, and give us a One-Click Install for openSUSE 12.1, 11.4 and 11.3.

You can download OpenLP for openSUSE by visiting the download page and clicking on the link for your version of openSUSE.

Please note that you will not be able to import songs or Bibles from openlp.org 1.x as dependencies for this functionality are not present within openSUSE. Should you need this, please e-mail your database to support[at]openlp.org and the support team will try to convert them for you.

Hi folks,

I've just committed one of our largest (if not the largest) chunks of code yet. It is a complete rewrite of the way media works in OpenLP. You should not see any noticeable difference from your perspective as the user at the moment, but this change gives us the ability to use various media "engines" to play videos and audio other than the ones built into your platform.

Hello folks,

Time for a new feature, time for a new blog post...

I just added special shortcut support to the Live Controller to OpenLP. This allows you to navigate through and jump between your slides in the Live Controller using only your keyboard. This works for any type of slide, e. g. songs, bible verses and images.