Midnight Planets

Midnight Mars Browser's successor is Midnight Planets, a sort of next-generation Midnight Mars Browser for iPhone, iPad and Mac. I've put years of work into making Midnight Planets, and the work is continuing. Thank you for your interest over the years. If you have questions about Midnight Planets, most of them should be answered on the about page.

Version 2.1

Midnight Mars Browser version 2.1 is now available on the Google Code downloads page. I am sort of forced into doing this update since Apple's iDisk is being discontinued toward the end of June, 2012, and Midnight Mars Browser previously downloaded its metadata updates from iDisk. The packaged metadata I put on the web is what allows the MMB Panorama feature to work, amongst other things. To keep getting new metadata, you'll need this new version of the program.

Please note that the Software Update feature built into MMB won't work to download this update; you'll need to download the zip file for version 2.1, unzip it and put it wherever you're keeping the program now. It would be wise to keep your older version of MMB around until you're satisfied that this new version works. Rename your old MMB application folder to "MidnightMarsBrowser_old" or something like that.

Midnight Mars Browser is now over seven years old and written in a language and development environment I no longer use; I mainly write iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch/Mac apps now. I know MMB is not a user-friendly program by modern standards, but since I still use it myself, I keep updating the metadata. Spirit rover has passed away, but Opportunity is still alive and making perhaps her most important discoveries to date. Roll on! And of course, Curiosity is on the way...

Closed

Just a note to inform people that MMB 2.x is no longer a supported project. It's still working at the time of writing, but if Exploratorium goes away, or if someday JPL changes their image posting format, then it will stop working, and it's unlikely that I'll have time to update it. I'm keeping the binaries available because people still get some use out of it, but there will be no further updates to this incarnation of the project. I continue to regularly update the metadata that drives the 2.x panorama feature, which MMB automatically downloads, but that's it. Thank you for your support.

Big Crater!

WOO HOO! Big Crater Big Crater Big Crater!

Midnight Mars Browser 2.0.2

Another change to Exploratorium requires an update to Midnight Mars Version 2.0.2, which is now available.

Midnight Mars Browser 2.0.1 Available

A 2.0.1 update is now available through the update software feature. This fixes a new incompatibility with the Exploratorium site which suddenly appeared, which was preventing images from being downloaded.

I've updated Google Code with the 2.0.1 packages as well, but I've run out of space there, so only the Windows version and the Mac on Intel versions are posted; Mac on PowerPC is not. I'll have to either get more space there or (more likely) just start putting the files somewhere else. I don't think many people use the Mac on PowerPC version.

I hope we're good to go now, since Oppy is off to see new sites.

One last thing... Midnight Mars Browser 1.x will no longer work to download images from Exploratorium, and I don't have time to fix it. Please update to 2.0.1, or if you simply cannot for some reason, you will have to use the option to download from the JPL site in 1.x.

Phoenix!

As everyone already knows, Phoenix has landed and is currently busy kicking ass and taking names (scientifically speaking) on the northern tundra of Mars. I've added some basic image-downloading functionality to MMB2.0, described here.

In other news, I've been very busy trying to launch some other software projects. I may have to start a new blog to promote that work at some point. Space-related work might get absorbed into that new blog at some point. Who can say?

Adding: The new blog will be Midnight Martian. I needed a name, and I'm out of ideas.

2.0 Dev 14

A little fix: the processor usage was reading high, even when the program should have been idle. Thanks to Doug over at Unmanned Spaceflight for pointing it out. I think the fix even boosts the performance a bit, but it's hard to tell.