Surfulater V1.96, B0.0 released – A Happy Easter

It’s here, and just in time for Easter. As I mentioned in my last blog post the latest Surfulater release somehow got away from me, delaying its release more than I like. I try to get a new release out about every 4-6 weeks and have been reasonably successful at that so far.

There are several reasons why this release took longer. First researching the requirements to import bookmarks from seven different sources was time consuming, as was testing. Next we’ve had some great new users come on board these past few months and this resulted in higher levels of forum activity and direct communications. All great stuff, but there are only so many hours in the day, so something has to give. Then there has been other diversions such as the great Tucows review and OnFolio being purchased by Microsoft, leaving some users contemplating its future, worrying about their data, and looking at alternatives like Surfulater. And finally the list of things I wanted to do for this release kept on growing, as you’ll see by the over 40 items in the release notes. The good news is that it is out and I can breath a sigh of relief and have a bit of an easter break.

But before I do, I’ll run through some of the new features in this release.

The ability to import bookmarks has been on the todo list for a quite some time. Many of you will have read of my reluctance to clutter Surfulater with hundreds or even thousands of bookmarks (one person told me he has over 10,000), but as you will see I finally relented. This is the new File|Import sub-menu:

From here you can import bookmarks from Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and any application that can Export bookmarks in either Netscape or XBEL Bookmark formats. For the latter I’ve specifically included support for Compass, Linkman and Powermarks programs. See the Help topic Power Features | Importing Bookmarks for more information.

The Web Browser context menu includes a new item to enable you to Bookmark web pages in Surfulater as shown here:

 

 

Next I spent quite a chunk of time improving the user interface for content editing and fixing related problems as reported by Mark Vincenzes and others.  Improvements include a dotted outline around the field that has focus as shown here:

When an article field has focus you can press F2 or left click to edit the field. If you left clicked to give the field focus in the first place, you need to wait about .5 of a second before clicking a second time. The behaviour of Tab and BackTab (Shift+Tab) have also been improved. They now move the focus to the next or previous field within an article. Finally if you’ve made editing changes and press Escape you are now given options to save the changes, discard them or continue editing. Further improvements are also slated. See the Release Notes for full details.

Briefly moving back to Bookmarks, you will see that they include a new Rating field. As you hover your mouse over the rating stars, they change color to indicate their potential new setting. The selected rating is also displayed in a popup tip and on the status bar.

To lock a rating in, click on a star and the colors of the selected stars change again to indicate their final setting.

I’ve only added the Rating field to the new Bookmark article template, however it is easily added to any template. You’ll be able to search Ratings when Advanced Search is implemented. 

The Bookmark template also includes Modified and Visited fields which can also be used in other templates. Also note that the collapsed Bookmark layout in the content window differs to the other article templates in that it includes the Web address and doesn’t allow editing. There is also a new Note article template with its own characteristics. All of this highlights the flexibility inherent in Surfulater’s design.

I want to touch on two final updates before I call it a day.

First approximately 40 new images have been added to the Knowledge Tree image selection palette. I’ve also updated a number of images with complimentary, but better looking images. Again see the release notes for full details.

 

And last but not least the XML Clipboard Format that Surfulater uses to capture content from other applications has been updated to enable better integration with applications other than Web Browsers. This is the result of lengthy Forum and private discussions between Perry Mowbray and myself. I intend to write a Blog post detailing the updated format in the next few days.

I’ve only covered the main updates in V1.96.0.0 here, so ensure you read the release notes in the Help (and in the Forums) to get the complete picture.

Happy Easter to all.

PS. Hi Kate if you are reading. :)