There is a lot to tell you about this latest MPD update. You will see the first and most obvious change as soon as you run this new version. The icon bar (the little tools just below the main menu at the top) has been revised to make it clearer what the options are and what they do. Most have a little down arrow to their right. Click on that to see a list of the options included. We hope that will make the choices clearer.

There were a few of these that nobody ever quite got and those are the most important of these changes. The search box, for instance was never very clear. It looked more like a window where the name of the current pattern was displayed. It did that, too. But, it was also a powerful search function and we hope more use of that will be made now. You can enter a pattern number and it will be displayed. Most people knew about that one.

But, you could also describe the pattern (type in "casual blouse" and you will get a blouse pattern with a casual neckline selected. You can then use the Revise button to see what other default menu choices were used and change those as you wish. The "search" was just to quickly get you in the ball park.

But, you could also type in special words that describe a pattern. Type in "jeans" or "camp shirt" and you get the MPD pattern that matches those terms. There are not yet enough of those terms, but we do have about 40 common ones in there and they are very helpful at finding how an MPD pattern number translates to some other named pattern.

More changes described in the next post....