I am happy to announce the release of Home Cookin 6.45. Based on suggestions from users like you, this version retains the familiar ease of use, while offering many exciting improvements:

• New Meal Manager
  The new meals screen makes it easier than ever to plan your meals. You can now specify whether a meal is for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or any other hour of the day. You can plan meals as far in advance as you wish, and keep old meals indefinitely if you need to refer back to a later date (for example, to see what you made for Thanksgiving last year). You can print selected recipes right from the meals screen, or choose which meals show up on a printed meal listing. This is helpful if you plan meals weeks in advance, but only want to print this week's list. You can also delete multiple meals at once if you need to clean up your meal plan quickly. As with past versions, you can drag meals to new days if you didn't make them as planned, or copy them to additional days if you plan on having leftovers.
• New Recipe Editor
  The new recipe editor uses a larger font that is easier to read, and is sized to make better use of your screen. The old carriage return symbol (c/r) has been replaced with a new graphic, and the option to display it has been reworded to show line breaks. It's now easier to navigate text with the mouse wheel, and new on screen sliders help you see where you are in the document. Other minor changes include removing extra spaces from recipe titles and improvements to the resizing operations.
• Improved Recipe Viewer
  The recipe screen has been updated to provide a much cleaner display for your recipes. The font is more readable, recipe text is cleaned up automatically, ingredient measures are lined up, and word wrapping has been improved to make better use of the available screen space. Attached images are now outlined for a cleaner look, and the resizing feature can now make limited measurement adjustments (i.e. 3 teaspoons would now be displayed as 1 tablespoon).
• Automatic Update System
  Home Cookin will now check for new versions automatically and notify you when they are available. You will be able to upgrade right from the program, or access the change logs. Of course, if you do not have an internet connection you can still upgrade the traditional way.
• New Options Screen
  A new options screen replaces the old Help screen, and general program information has been moved to a new About button in the title bar. The tabs for the various screens have also been reordered for improved access. The options screen now lets you select the size of the screen font, transfer data from old versions, or set the default meal time when adding new meals.
• Minor Improvements and Bug Fixes
  The Index screen now uses check boxes for easier selection of multiple recipes for printing, exporting, deleting, etc. A number of user interface items have been updated, including new shading for screen buttons, and better window sizing for a variety of screen settings. Import formatting has been improved for Meal-Master and Mastercook recipes. A memory leak has been fixed that prevented some users from adding photos to recipes, and graphics to disappear for others. Old code that was no longer in use has been removed to minimize program bloat, the documentation has been revised, and additional security measures were implemented to reduce hacking.

For a complete list of changes and instructions on upgrading, please visit the upgrade page at:
www.mountain-software.com/homecook-upgrade.htm

Upgrade Notes: The automatic update feature will be used for future updates. You still need to upgrade manually from version 5.9 or earlier. Just install 6.45, then click the Transfer button on the new options screen. This will locate your old version and allow you to transfer your data into the new version. Your old version will remain unchanged until you are sure the new version is working well for you.

If you purchased Home Cookin within the last two years, this will be a free upgrade for you.
All others will need to pay the $19.95 upgrade fee on the web page above.

Version 6.45 requires Windows 7, Vista, XP, or 2000.
Windows ME, 98, and 95 are no longer supported.

Have you ever wanted to view the recipes on your desktop computer from your laptop in the kitchen? Or maybe you have wanted to work on a meal plan while watching TV in your living room. These days many homes have more than one computer, which are often interconnected with a wired or wireless home network. While Home Cookin was not designed for network use, it is possible to access Home Cookin remotely if you are aware of a few limitations.

1. On your desktop computer , navigate to the "C:\Program Files\" folder on your hard drive.

2. Locate and RIGHT click the "Home Cookin" folder.

3. If you are using Windows 7, select "Share" from the popup menu, then select your "Homegroup - read/write". Otherwise, you will probably have to select Properties, click the Sharing tab, and select your workgroup there (setting the access to read and write).

4. On your laptop (or other computer), click Windows Start button, then select "Network".

5. Open the icon that points to your desktop computer Home Cookin is installed on. You should see the Home Cookin folder you shared in step 3.

6. Open the Home Cookin folder, then drag the "Homecook.exe" program icon to your desktop using the right mouse button. Select "create shortcut" from the popup menu.

You should now be able to open the Home Cookin icon on your laptop, to access your recipes and other data that reside on your desktop PC.

Important: Do not attempt to access Home Cookin from both computers at the same time. This could corrupt your data and cause you to lose recipes.

These instructions assume an existing home network already in use, and the use of Windows 7 on both computers. The same technique should work with Windows Vista or XP, but you would need to work out the details on your own.

This is a minor maintenance update to repair a disk scanning issue on the Cleaning screen. A few minor bugs were also fixed.

Visit www.mountain-software.com to download the new version

Thank you to everyone who helped make the initial release of my Home Suite Information Manager a success! With your help, I hope to continue improving Home Suite as I have done with Home Cookin.

I also appreciate the suggestions, complaints, and words of encouragement from users of Home Cookin recipe software. Your ideas shaped many of the changes in the new update, and I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas for the future. I'm also grateful to the brave souls who took the time and risk to beta test the pre-release versions.

I invite all users to email me any time you have a question, discover a bug in one of my products, or just want to say hello. I hope you enjoy my software and have a great Spring and Summer 2010!

Thank You!

Anthony Watson
Mountain Software