Version 2.7.2.9a of screen-scraper available

Pfew. Well, sorry it’s been so long. We’ve been swamped with work lately, but I’m happy to report that we’ve recently carved out enough time to get a new alpha version of screen-scraper out the door. For the impatient, here are some quick install instructions (which differ from the usual):

  1. Back up your scraping sessions (check here for help on that).
  2. Ensure screen-scraper isn’t currently running (close the workbench and server, if running).
  3. Download this file, and unzip it.
  4. Copy the contents of the zip file on top of your existing files in the screen-scraper install folder. For example, the zip file contains a “screen-scraper.jar” file which should be copied on top of your existing “screen-scraper.jar” file.
  5. Edit your “resource\conf\screen-scraper.properties” file in a text editor. Change the “Version” property to “2.7.2.9a”.
  6. Launch the screen-scraper workbench.
  7. If all of your scraping sessions have disappeared, don’t panic!
  8. Close the screen-scraper workbench.
  9. Re-open the screen-scraper workbench.

At this point everything should be hunky-dory and you should see a few new features (such as folders).

As to why you need to update screen-scraper in this odd way, we discovered a bug in the updater. It’s surprising that it’s never surfaced before, but hopefully we’ve permanently squashed it so that you can easily update via the standard “Check for updates” menu item in the future.

As always, feel free to send along any feedback. You can post a comment to this blog posting, a message to our forum, or send us a support request.