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Surfulater V2.00.20.0 Released – Balance is important

Developing a product of any sort revolves around many different inputs and ideas. One that is all important is listening carefully to customer feedback and doing your best to meet your customers needs. Balance is also important, you simply can’t go and add every feature that everyone suggests or you’d finish up with a product that no one would want to use and you’d probably be broke because you’d put way too many resources into its development. I mention this because the latest Surfulater release, V2.00.20.0 is all about meeting customer needs.

As products evolve and more people start using them, they may be put to use performing tasks the product designers hadn’t ever considered. This is certainly true of Surfulater. In fact I’m sure I don’t know the half of what people are using Surfulater for. This isn’t too good from my point of view, but it speaks well of Surfulater that so many people find it, not only capable, but well suited to handle a variety of tasks above and beyond its core competencies.

The prime enhancements in this release revolve around the ability to reorder content in the Knowledge Tree using a new Advanced Article Sort, along with the ability to change the Date Created for Articles. Advanced sort enables you to sort the entire Knowledge Tree, or a Folder and optionally its sub-folders. Sorting can be done by Article Title or Date Created, in either ascending or descending order.

To access Advanced Sort right click on a Folder in the Knowledge Tree and select it from the context menu as shown here.

Folder Context Menu  Advanced Sort Dialog

Select from the various Sort options and then click Sort.

To change the Date Created for an Article right click on it and choose Set Date created from the menu.

Set Date Created menu and Date Picker

Choose the new date from the date picker window or click on Today or None, the latter leaving the date as is. When the current date is selected the time is set to the current time, otherwise it is set to 12:00AM.

These new capabilities are useful when you use Surfulater as a Journal or simply wish to move articles in time.

While we are talking dates one thing I’ve personally wanted in Surfulater is to be able to set Reminder or Follow Up dates in articles. Sometimes when I capture content I know I don’t have the time to read it then and there. The ability to pop-up a reminder in a week or so would be very handy here. Alas no one else has requested this yet, so it sits on the sidelines awaiting.

For the other changes and bug fixes in this release see the Release Notes in the Help or on the Forum.

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New Surfulater release, V2.00.10.0 ready and waiting

A slower than I’d like start, release wise for the year, but there is lots happening behind the scenes. As I mentioned in my last blog post one of the most requested Surfulater capabilities has been the ability to select multiple articles in the Knowledge Tree. Well as they say, the wait is now over.

Multiple articles can now be selected and managed in the Knowledge Tree. This enables you to Copy/Cut and Paste multiple articles at once, Drag & drop them, Remove them, Add reciprocal ‘See Also’ references and use ‘Send To’ with them. This works both within and across Knowledge Bases making it easy to move or copy a selection of articles from one KB to another.

Harold Hauer has just posted on our Forums:

I couldn’t wait to try this feature –FANTASTIC!

And Perry Mowbray writes:

Hey 2.00.10 looks great!

Another common request has been to provide folks with a Free Surfulater Reader that anyone could use to view Surfulater Knowledge Bases. Well the good news is we’ve now delivered this with V2.00.10.0.

The plan was to actually create a new product which was just a Reader, much how Adobe Reader works. Ideally this would be a single .EXE file with no installation required. I’d still like to do this, down the track, but for now I’ve opted for a simpler solution. And that is folks download and install the Surfulater Free Trial, which reverts to a Free Reader at the end of the trial period. This gives them the extra benefit of being able to fully evaluate Surfulater, should they want to.

Another related and important change in this release is the ability open and view any Knowledge Base whilst Surfulater is in free trial mode, and not be restricted to just opening the MyKnowledge.Surfulater KB. This enables Surfulater to be used as Free Reader from day one, not just when the trial period is over. It also enables our users to get view access to their content on any PC they want to install Surfulater on, not just their licensed PC’s.

You can see the full release notes for V2.00.10.0 here.

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Surfulater, the next release …

One of the most requested Surfulater capabilities is the ability to select multiple articles in the Knowledge Tree. In hindsight it is clear that omitting this in the original design was a mistake. When you develop any type of product you have to work through an array of trade-offs, otherwise the product may never reach the market and will likely be cost to much. Opting not to include multiple selection was such a trade-off.

Leaving this out was a mistake for two reasons. First I didn’t realize how much our users would want to work with multiple articles and second it has turned out to be quite a chore to rework the code to implement multiple selection. It sounds simple enough on the surface, but it is quite complex once you dig down a bit.

Selecting multiple items is reasonably straightforward, apart from Ctrl+click which toggles the selected item. However the user interaction that follows is complex and tends to vary for each type of action. For example if you select three articles, right click on one and choose Copy then right click on a Folder and choose Paste what should happen with the selection. In the version of Surfulater you have now the selection moves to the pasted article. In the next version it keeps the selection on the original three articles. This brings it in line with how other Windows programs, such as Explorer, behave. But what happens when the original three articles are no longer selected when Paste is used – does the newly pasted article get selected or does the selection stay wherever it was?  And Paste is just one of a range of actions and associated outcomes that can be performed on a multiply selected set of articles.

Working though the possible permutations for each command is tedious and deciding on what is the most desirable outcome isn’t necessarily straightforward. And what I think is desirable you may not!

I’ve also changed the behaviour of Right mouse click for the next release so that it no longer changes the current selection. These and other changes make it easier and more intuitive when working with selected items in the Knowledge Tree.

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Surfulater V2.00 Released. The 11th and final release for 2006.

Ok the dust has settled, and there have been no real problems to speak of, with the Surfulater V2.00 release, I’m very pleased to say. I want to briefly run through some of the new features in this release, so go and grab a cup of tea or coffee and read on.

Our first stop is the Knowledge Base (KB) Tab Bar which enables you to quickly switch from one knowledge base (database) to another.

Knowledge Base Tab Bar

This has been enhanced to include the drop down KB selection menu, shown above, a new IE7 style Close button on the active tab, the ability to rearrange tabs in whatever order you want by dragging them to the desired location, and a new right click context menu that lets you Close, Open and Create KBs, as shown below. The KB selection menu is handy when you have lots of KBs open, as it saves having to scroll the tabs to locate the KB you want.

Tab Bar Context Menu

If you haven’t ventured as far as using multiple knowledge base files, you should give it some thought. Don’t go overboard creating lots of KBs though. I’ve got 24 at last count, with a number past their use by date. For example I used three KBs when planning a trip to Europe last year, but these are of little use right now. They may be in the future though.

See the Help topic: Power Features|Knowledge Base Tab Bar for more information on the Tab Bar and The Basics|Working with Files (new/open/close) about creating new KBs etc. 

Next up is the new Add Links to Files… capability. Surfulater has had the ability to attach and permanently store external files in its knowledge bases for some time, but sometimes you simply want to store a link to a file and not store the file itself. You were able to do this, but it was cumbersome to say the least.

Add Links to Files works like adding Attachments with the only difference being the end result. You can select and add links to multiple files using a standard Windows File|Open style dialog. 

Another new way to add links as well as attachments is to drag files from Windows Explorer and drop them on the Attachments field of an Article or Folder.

 

Attachments & Links

 

When you drop the files (release the left mouse button) a menu lets you choose whether to add links to the files or attach them to the article. Also new in this release are the images shown in the screen shot above, which indicate whether a file is a link or an attachment. New CSS styles have also been added, so the mouse over hover color is different for links and attachments.

See the Help topics: Power Features|Attaching & Linking Files to Articles and the Release Notes for more on this.

Next is a most welcome new and quick way of appending content to existing articles without having to switch to Surfulater. For example let’s say you’ve just added a new article from your Web Browser and then want to add more content from the same web page or even a different page. To do this select the content you want to capture, copy it to the Windows Clipboard and then press the new Append Clipboard to Article Hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+. by default). Surfulater can then either stay hidden in the Windows System Tray or come to the foreground. You can of course append new content from any program, for example MS Word, Adobe Acrobat etc.

For more on the Append Clipboard to Article Hotkey see the Help topic: Power Features|Appending content to Articles.

Ok sit tight, just two more new features to go for this wrap up.

It has been brought to our attention that not everyone wants to use My Documents\My Surfulater as the default Surfulater data files folder, so we’ve added a new item to the Preferences dialog that lets you set the Data Folder as you desire.

 

Updated Preferences Dialog

 

See the Data Folder field at the bottom of the screen shot, well that’s where you set it. I personally use the Shared Documents folder, as you can see above (indicated by “All Users”). This screen shot also shows the new Append Clipboard to Article Hotkey setting.

For more on Data Folders see the Help topic, Power Features|Preferences.

And to conclude there are six new UI (User Interface) Themes, which include various Office 2007 themes and a new UI Theme Toolbar.

Surfulater Screen Shot with new Office 2007 Theme

This screen shot shows the Office 2007 Obsidian Theme, along with the new UI Theme Toolbar.

And for anyone interested that’s the mATX Case I’ve just bought for a new mini PC I’m going to build over Christmas. I’ve never built modern day PC before and am looking forward to this, albeit with some trepidation.

There are a more things in this release, including all important bug fixes, which you need to go and read about in the Release Notes in the Help or on our Support Forums.

It has been a great year, made all the more so by your support, feedback and words of encouragement. There is still plenty of important and interesting work yet to be done and I look forward to watching this unfold in 2007, as no doubt you do. I also look forward to continued growth of our customer base in the year ahead.

If I don’t post again before Christmas thanks again to everyone, have a great Xmas and a very Happy New Year.

Neville Franks 

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It’s the 13th, but not Friday and Version Two-dot-oh has been released

A short and sweet post to let everyone know that Surfulater Version 2.00 has been released and is available for download.

With some releases everything just falls nicely into place and away you go. This one was just a bit on the troublesome side. Some problems were of my own making and others were in the latest release of a 3rd party code library that Surfulater uses. Together they conspired against me and delayed the release by at least a week.

But the good news is a new release is out and better still we’ve progressed to Version 2 which I’m very pleased about and is a great way to end the year. This is the eleventh release for 2006, each one building on the last and moving Surfulater further along the path to world net to knowledge domination. Whoops, sorry. I meant it is continuing its journey to meet your needs and wishes, to make it the absolute best program of its type out there.

On a more serious note I plan to write about the new features and enhancements in Version 2 shortly. In the meantime you can jump on over and read the release notes.

Now I just have to hope that the 13th (not Friday) is reasonably uneventful. I nearly waited another day to put the release out, true dinks.

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Two in one – Surfulater V1.99, Build 2.0 Released

Two releases in the one week, we must be getting close to Christmas. This release will make our bleeding edge users happy, as Surfulater now works with IE7 RC1 and also with Firefox Version 2.0, RC2.  Note that neither IE7, nor FF2 have actually been released yet.

There was a problem with Attachments not opening if IE7 was installed, along with a more pressing problem which came out in this weeks V1.99.1.0 release. The latter prevented expandable fields from appearing at their full height and was caused by all of the CSS changes which have recently been made. Both of these have been fixed and Surfulater now behaves itself, if either IE6 or IE7 is installed. Hopefully no further problems will show up when IE7 is finally released.

For Firefox Version 2, RC2 I’m pleased to say all that was required was a simple update to the Surfulater Firefox Extension. In earlier days the Firefox folks make a number of changes which broke lots of Extensions. I was dreading that being the case again, which it wasn’t. If you are using FF V2 you need to download and install the new extension.

I’d not seen either IE7 or Firefox V2 until yesterday and without wanting to stir up any debates I have to say I really do like what I’ve seen so far in IE7. It looks good, seems smooth and fast and works well. Unfortunately I can’t quiet say the same for Firefox V2. However neither product has been released yet, so it is premature to make any final judgments.

Downloads are in the usual place, so go for it. Oh and release notes are over here.

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Surfulater V1.99, Build 1.0 out now

Just a quick note to let everyone know that the latest release of Surfulater is now available for download. I would have posted earlier but there have been a few hiccups and we’ve got workmen here making lots of noise, which is a tad distracting.

If you have Internet Explorer Version 7 (Beta? or RC1) installed I suggest you stick with V1.98.4.0 for now as Texas Tomato has reported a problem which is caused by IE7. I’ll be looking at the IE7 issues shortly and hope they’ll be easy enough to resolve.

Two other problems showed up today. One by Perry Mowbray that turns out isn’t new, and another by David Wengier that sort of is. The good news is I’ve already fixed them both, and neither should prevent you from using this new release.

You’ll find the nitty-gritty details about this release in the Surfulater Help and also on our Forums. Make sure you backup your Knowledge Bases before installing any new release, as well as on a regular basis.

I’ll write in more detail about the latest release once the hammering stops, if not   sooner. In the mean time have a great week.

PS. Please excuse the MojoPac distractions.

PPS. Perry reckons the new release is snazzy.

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Getting close now

The next Surfulater release is coming along very nicely. The main new feature is the ability to control and create your own style sheets. These are used to control the look of information in the content window. Color Themes (previously color styles) have been removed from the Knowledge Base file and are now in a stand alone XML file, making it easier to add new themes and share them around. These changes lay the groundwork for enhancements to the way article templates work and to make it easier to create new ones or modify existing ones. You can refer back to the article Content styling and templates for more on this.

Other changes are enhancements to the Surfulater SXCF format (see Pushing content into Surfulater from other Programs – Part 1 and Pushing content into Surfulater from other Programs – Part 2) to enable the Folder for the content to be specified, as well as allowing new folders to be created. Also issues with using Surfulater under a Non-Administrator account have been addressed. And the bug mentioned the last blog post has of course been fixed along with a variety of other odds and sods.

It will be nice to let this release see the light of day. A bit more code to write yet and lots of testing to be done to ensure all the changes don’t cause any problems.

I’ll have extremely limited Internet access until later on the 25th of Sep, so you won’t see any comments from me, to your comments, for a few days.

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Not Happy!

For the past week and a bit I’ve been doing a lot of research into synchronization techniques, client/server technology, tcp/ip, Windows and Unix sockets and the like. This is all related to the work I’m doing to enable Surfulater databases to be synchronized, either locally across a LAN or across the globe via the Internet.

Synchronization enables you to use the same Knowledge Bases on say your Work and Home PC and have them automatically kept in sync, so you don’t have to manually copy them back and forth. I use Surfulater on a Desktop and Notebook PC and regularly switch between the two, but first I have to copy all of my Knowledge Base files across, some of which are quite large. Then when I’m finished I have to ensure I copy them back. KB synchronization will do all of this for me, without me lifting a finger. The good news is I’ve got a proof of concept implementation working.

So you must be wondering what’s with the Not Happy! Well during my research I came across a particularly interesting article which I only had time to glance at, and put it aside to read in full later on. Well later on arrived last night and for the life of me I can’t find the slightest hint that the aforesaid article ever existed. I’ve searched my Surfulater Knowledge Bases, looked at the last few weeks articles in the Chronological History, searched my Web Browser Favorites and History on my Desktop and Notebook PC’s and I’ve come up completely empty. In complete exasperation I used Google to search for the terms that I thought should locate the Web page for me, worked through pages and pages of results, tried other search terms and after 2 hours gave up.

There is a lesson to be learnt here, and I for one should know it better than anyone. That’s why I’m not happy!

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Surfulater V1.98, B4.0 released – Being more responsive

I’m very pleased that we are keeping up the pace of frequent new releases. So often in the software world this isn’t the case, with new releases being few and far between and the poor old customers becoming more and more dissatisfied. Of course you have to be wary of putting out new releases just for the sake of it, as some do. And some companies put out new releases without even telling you what’s in them! This must be a trick to make people think they are doing something, when they really aren’t.

The major enhancement in this release was to make the content window display update far more responsive when displaying all articles in a folder. With lots of large articles this used to be quite sluggish to say the least, but not any more. For example previously you may have had to wait 20 seconds after clicking on a folder in the Knowledge Tree before you could do anything else. Now that’s more likely less than a second. I’ve covered this in detail in Improving performance with Multi-threading 

I’m also in the midst of making changes to enable you to use different article templates for each template category. For example you could choose from a selection of three different templates for displaying content captured from the Web. These templates could have different, or more or less fields, and completely different layouts. Surfulater has been designed to separate presentation of information from the actual stored information. This means you can display the exact same information in different ways, which is where the new templates come into play. This is part of ongoing work to make templates more useful and easier to create and change. See my last article Content styling and templates for more on this. These new template capabilities are more involved than I’d envisaged and are taking a bit longer to finalize than planned. The focus is to get this wrapped up for the next release.

The Release Notes in the Surfulater Help and in the Support Forums cover the other changes in this release. I’m particularly hopeful that I’ve fixed a problem with Search that a user was having, but am unable to reproduce myself.

Finally for the folks who’ve been asking about Synchronizing Knowledge Bases across different PC’s, possibly in different locations, I can tell you that I’m quietly working on this as well and making very good progress. In fact I’m quiet excited about this new capability and very much looking forward to using it myself.