I’m going to go ahead and call this an awesome day.

The first big update to Illumination Software Creator (version 1.1) has shipped for Linux and Windows!

Lots of new features to help you build ever more powerful applications in a %100 visual way.

There are three big ones (in my opinion):

• There is now an official “loop” block, so you can easily have real “do while loops” in your applications.
• Full ability to handle text files (with proper open/save dialogs, etc.).
• And, of course, you can now run shell scripts directly from Illumination-built applications.  Which makes it super easy to build interfaces to automate command line tools.

And all of that power is still super easy to use even if you  have zero programming experience.

This is, of course, a free upgrade for existing users.  New users can try out the demo version and purchase a copy over at the store.

Here’s the big, beefy list of new features:

• New window control: Multi-line “TextField”
• New Variable Type: “Text File”
• New Block: “Do While” loop
• New Block: “Close Window”
• New Block: “Run Shell Script” (contained within the new “System” block section)
• New Block: “Open Text File Dialog”
• New Block: “Save Text File Dialog”
• New Block: “Read All Text From File”
• New Block: “Save All Text To File”
• New Block: Get and Set blocks for TextField control
• New Project Settings option in Project Menu
• Can now adjust the height and width of a project working area to any size (big or small) within the Project Settings

There are also some updated examples that show off some of these new features.

And, once again, a big thanks to the community for sending in their feedback and bug reports during beta!

Now that version 1.1 is out, the attention is turned to version 2.0 (which will also be a free upgrade) and bringing full Adobe Flash/Flex/AIR support (in addition to the existing Python/GTK support).