Quirkos version 1.4 is here!

It’s been a long time coming, but the latest version of Quirkos is now available, and as always it’s a free update for everyone, released simultaneously on Mac, Windows and Linux with all the new goodies!

The focus of this update has been speed. You won’t see a lot of visible differences in the software, but behind the scenes we have rewritten a lot of Quirkos to make sure it copes better with large qualitative sources and projects, and is much more responsive to use. This has been a much requested improvement, and thanks to all our intrepid beta testers for ensuring it all works smoothly.

In the new version, long coded sources now load in around 1/10th of the time! Search results and hierarchy views load much quicker! Large canvas views display quicker! All this adds up to give a much more snappy and responsive experience, especially when working with large projects. This takes Quirkos to a new professional level, while retaining the engaging and addictive data coding interface.

In addition we have made a few small improvements suggested by users, including:

• Search criteria can be refined or expanded with AND/OR operands
• Reports now include a summary section of your Quirks/codes
• Ability to search source names to quickly find sources
• Searches now display the total number of results
• Direct link to the full manual

There are also many bug fixes! Including:
• Password protected files can now be opened across Windows, Mac and Linux
• Fix for importing PDFs which created broken Word exports
• Better and faster CSV import
• Faster Quirk merge operations
• Faster keyword search in password protected files

However, we have had to change the .qrk file format so that password protected files can open on any operating system. This means that projects opened or created in version 1.4 cannot be opened in older versions of Quirkos (v1.3.2 and earlier).

I know how annoying this is, but there should be no reason for people to keep using older versions: we make the updates free so that everyone is using the same version. Just make sure everyone in your team updates!

When you first open a project file from an older version of Quirkos in 1.4, it will automatically convert it to the new file format, and save a backup copy of the old file. Most users will not notice any difference, and you can obviously keep working with your existing project files. But if you want to share your files with other Quirkos users, make sure they also have upgraded to the latest version, or they will get an error message trying to open a file from version 1.4.

All you need to do to get the new version is download and install from our website (www.quirkos.com/get.html) and install to the same location as the old Quirkos. Get going, and let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback! You could see your requests appear in version 1.5!