This is old news! Caffeine 1.0 has been released. Go check it out!

I know you have all been waiting impatiently for this ever since we released Caffeine 0.2, but now it is finally here - Caffeine 0.3!

For those of you with short memory, Caffeine is a coffee cup that sits in your system tray, waiting for you to click it. Once you do, it fills up with coffee and keeps your computer from going to sleep or activating the screensaver. This could be really useful for when you’re playing fullscreen games that don’t inhibit the screensaver, or when you’re watching a long flash video.

This has been in the making ever since we released 0.2. The biggest change for me is that we now have another - extremely productive and skilled - developer working with us. His name is Isaiah Heyer, and he has really been the driving force behind this release. Many, if not most, of the new features are written by him.

What’s new in Caffeine 0.3?

Our main goal with this release was to completely rewrite the code in a neater fashion - to make future development easier. Because of Isaiah’s work, this was completed rather quickly, and thus we decided to include some more features that we were originally planning to release in version 0.4.

Here is a somewhat complete list of changes:

• Complete object-oriented rewrite.
• Support for xscreensaver
• Support for DPMS
• Full support for internationalization
• Command-line interface
• Simplification of packaging

Go here to have a look at our roadmap.

Support for xscreensaver

Xscreensaver is used with many distributions, such as for example Xubuntu. We are very happy to announce that it should now be fully supported. Xscreensaver can also be used with MacOS, but at this time we have no way of testing whether or not it works. If you are running a newer version of Mac OS, please email me and let me know.

Support for DPMS

Some users prefer not to run any dedicated screensavers at all, but still want to be able to use all the various power saving modes available through DPMS. So for those who are running only DPMS, we now fully support that as well!

Internationalization

While Caffeine is a fairly quiet and non-verbose little applet, at times it does say things. When it does, it’s really nice if you can understand what it’s saying - even if you don’t speak English. Therefore we have made Caffeine completely translatable! At the time of writing, only the Swedish translation is complete. However, with your help, we should be able to support virtually any language.

Go here if you want to help us translate Caffeine.

Command-line interface

Some people have requested that we add a command-line interface to Caffeine, so that it could be used in scripts and such. Therefore, we have now added a command-line interface that allows you to do anything that you would normally be able to do - but without using a mouse.

For more information on the command-line interface, either go to our wiki or simply run:

man caffeine<br />
OR<br />
caffeine --help

How to install

Since the 0.2 release, we have set up a common ppa - as the last one belonged only to Brad. So if you installed Caffeine 0.2, we recommend that you first uninstall it, remove the old ppa, add the new one, and then reinstall Caffeine.

1. Open your list of software sources:

   gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Remove the line:

   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bnsmith/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

3. Follow the instructions found here to add the new ppa. Further instructions are available here. OR just run the following commands:

   sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bnsmith/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

Feedback

Getting feedback from our users is always great, and I urge you to please, please send feature requests and ideas to me or any of the other developers of Caffeine. Our contact information is available at the very bottom of our wiki. Bug reports are of course also more than welcome. Those are submitted in Launchpad’s built-in bug tracker.

And as always, if you like this project and think it deserves a little attention, please use one or more of the social media buttons below!