Mariner Software on Tuesday announced the immediate availability of Montage 1.5. The new version of the Mac-only screenwriting software adds a completely rewritten styles system, scene navigation via arrow keys from Outline, Characters and Locations views to Scenes view and more.

In addition, changes in the new version include:

• Added Comic Book format support and Comic Book (color-coded) templates
• Added contextual menus to Outline, Characters, Locations and most other views to allow assignment of keywords, status and other attributes to multiple items via contextual menus
• Added Menu options and buttons for converting text to upper case, lower case and sentence case
• Rewrote the entire "styles system," which controls how styles are applied to text in the script, resulting in greater overall stability of text editing and styling
• Fixed a few different causes of a problem that would cause Montage to hang on Print
• Fixed a problem that prevented notes for Scenes (in Outline view), Characters and Locations from not getting saved
• Fixed a problem where exporting a file would incorrectly save with a .RTF extension regardless of the export format

"In its 11th update in under two years, Montage continues delivering the best screenwriting experience on Mac OS X, said Corey Johnson, Director of Product Development for Mariner Software. "This free update adds iTunes-like navigation between outline and scene view, more export options, comic book templates, an element picker, more industry contacts, and lots of little improvements. It is proof positive of Mariner Softwareis commitment to making the best screenwriting software in the industry."

Montage 1.5 is a Universal Application and requires OS X Tiger or later. It is priced at US$139.95, and the 1.5 upgrade is free for 1.0 customers.