Dream a little dream

It’s been exactly two years since thriftmac last looked at DreamDiary. I know this because when I fired up the just-released version 3, there were test entries in it from July 2006. How time flies. But it’s nice to see good freeware being maintained and updated.

To bring you up to date, DreamDiary is a small and simple program that allows you to keep a journal based on the date plus subjects of your choosing, with an instant search function. New for version 3 is encryption — good news for people wanting to keep their thoughts private. Also new is some extra polish for the interface.

The program was originally created as a way of keeping track of your dreams, which are so ephemeral that they can easily be forgotten. In fact, the app comes preloaded with a number of suggested “dream signs,” which are basically just subject categories.

But there is no need to limit yourself. DreamDiary could easily be adapted to any kind of journal. The categories and subcategories, which are listed in a popout drawer, can easily be deleted and replaced (or simply renamed) with categories that make sense to you.

Another drawer provides a monthly calendar that can be clicked on to give you the entry for the date you choose. Search results appear in a slide-up area in the main window. All in all, everything is nicely arranged.

I did find one difficulty when it came renaming a category. I expected to be able to just double-click to make the name changeable. Only by trial and error did I discover that you have to highlight it with a single click, wait for a few seconds, then click again.

I contacted the developer about this, and he told me the proper way to do it is with an option-click. For the most part, DreamDiary is intuitive enough that the instructions missing from the Help menu won’t be a problem. But this is one case where they would have been, ahem, helpful.

Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008 in Reviews