We are happy to announce the release of the final version of our free You Control: Tunes 1.5. This has a number of new features and enhancements based on requests from our users. We encourage all users of to upgrade to this version. You Control will be updated shortly to include these changes as well.

Here is what has been updated in this version:

New Features

• Compatibility with changes introduced in iTunes 7.1
• Improved Podcast support – Podcasts are now in their own submenu instead of in the Playlists menu
• Improved Radio Station support – Streamed stations now display current track and overlay information for each new track (assuming the station provides the information)
• Toggle Shuffle command – Added a menu item to toggle the shuffle mode on the current playlist. You can also set a hot key for this (like any other command)
• Ticker Duration – You can now specify for how long the ticker will display in the menu bar (including always on)
• Added French and German localizations
• Support for music libraries stored in custom locationS

Improvements

• Revised iTunes monitoring for faster and more accurate track information
• New Apple-standard Help system
• Better information now provided for non-local tracks (i.e. tracks from iPods, streamed Internet radio stations, or tracks shared from another computer)
• Improved handling on non-Latin characters
• Playing a track from a playlist will now play the track from within the playlist
• Added Disc Number to the track information displayed
• Added hidden preference for turning off library parsing (can be helpful for very large libraries)
• Cleaned up configuration application interface
• Added preferences pane with options for additional menu items and option to control launching on startup
• Removed extraneous “Menus…” menu item
• Menu Bar Right positioning should work correctly again
• Fixed a situation in which the hot key menu would not display in certain multi-monitor situations.
• Fixed issue that could cause the controls to not display in the menu bar
• Fixed issue that could cause multiple copies of the controls to display in the menu bar
• Fixed situation in which buttons did not work correctly in the Welcome dialog
• Assorted minor bug fixes

The third beta of You Control: Tunes 1.5 is now available. We are expecting this to be the last beta update in this release cycle, so if you are experiencing any problems, please report them. If you are interested, please download the beta software from the beta page. If you are having problems with the release or would like to request enhancements to the application, please do so via our beta email account.

Here’s what’s new in this release:

• iTunes:
• New feature – Improved Podcast support. Podcasts are now in their own submenu instead of in the Playlists menu
• New feature – Toggle Shuffle command. Added a menu item to toggle the shuffle mode on the current playlist. You can also set a hot key for this (like any other command)
• Fixed a bug from beta 2 in which the ticker duration slider did not update all the time
• General:
• Fixed situation in which buttons did not work correctly in the Welcome dialog
• Fixed bug from beta 2 that could cause the preferences to become corrupted in some situations

More information about the first beta release can be found in the Beta 2 post and the Beta 1 post.