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TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 18 April 2011

Adobe Flash Player 10.2.159.1 — After reports of a critical security vulnerability appearing in the wild and affecting Windows users via a Flash file embedded in Word or Excel documents, Adobe has released Flash Player 10.2.159.1. Although only Windows systems were targeted in the attacks, Adobe recommends that all Macintosh, Windows, Linux, and Solaris users of previous versions of Flash update to Flash Player 10.2.159.1 right away. Google Chrome builds Flash Player in; if you’re using Google Chrome, make sure to
update to version 10.0.648.205 or later (choose Chrome > About Google Chrome to check the version number and update if necessary). Also affected is Adobe AIR; update to version 2.6.0.19140 or later if you’re using any Adobe AIR-based applications. (Free updates, download sizes vary.)

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Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 SP1 (14.1) — Microsoft has released Office 2011 SP 1 (14.1). The update fixes various vulnerabilities and security issues, boosts overall stability, eliminates a crash when using multiple Office 2011 applications, and enables Alt Text authoring.

Improvements to Excel include the addition of the Solver add-in, better reliability when read-only options are enabled, more stability when pasting large datasets, a fix for an issue saving documents with comments, better conditional formatting, and printing bug fixes.

New to PowerPoint is the capability to password-protect your presentations. Other PowerPoint fixes include improvements to Print Preview, better Save as Pictures functionality, and fixes for playback of recorded narration.

Outlook 2011 scores updates to its synchronization functionality, along with Resend and Redirect commands.

Word gets some love, too. The update eliminates a crash when opening files with non-alphanumeric characters in their names, fixes an issue with Spell Check error messaging, improves Draft View, makes Find and Replace easier, improves Full Screen view, and resolves an issue with printing pictures.

Detailed release notes are available directly from Microsoft. (Free update, 246 MB)

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PDFpen and PDFpenPro 5.2.4 — Smile has released PDFpen and PDFpenPro 5.2.4, which come very hot on the virtual heels of 5.2.3. New in 5.2.3 was AppleScript support for creating PDFs from HTML (available only in the PDFpenPro edition), as well as a fix for an issue with performing Correct Text after saving a document. The subsequent 5.2.4 release corrected scripting functionality unintentionally broken with 5.2.3. ($59.95/$99.95 new, free update, 41 MB)

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PopChar X 5.2 — Many of us know how to type a few special characters on our Macs, but who among us can claim to know how to type all of them? Thanks to Ergonis’s release of PopChar X 5.2, typing special characters is now a bit easier. New in this edition of PopChar is a font size slider, which makes it easier to adjust the window’s display — whether you’d prefer to see more characters at once, or finer detail for fewer characters. Even better, PopChar X 5.2 includes built-in hints for more than 70 fonts, so the slider is automatically adjusted for optimal display whenever possible. The new version
also improves background memory usage, and resolves issues with Sigil, FocusWriter, TeXworks, and FileMaker Pro. (€29.99 new, free update, 2.3 MB)

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