Clibu

A new year, and a nice new release to get everyone off to a great start. There are two specific new capabilities in this release I’m very pleased about.

Earlier in the year my good friend, musician and software developer Russell Robinson mentioned he wanted a way to easily add more content from a Web page to an existing article. You can of course use Copy in the Browser and Paste in Surfulater, but this is a bit clumsy and takes more steps (and time) than one likes. Russell suggested adding a new item to the Browser context menu, something like “Surfulater: Append content to Article”. While I basically liked the idea there were two points against it. First Internet Explorer has a limit to the number of items that will fit on its context menu, and once you exceed this, items fall off the bottom and can’t be used. Next I feel there is a need to keep the decision making process within the Web Browser as simple as possible. The more “Surfulater: xxx” menu items we add, the more the user has to stop and think about which one to use, which gets in the way of what we are trying to do. In the end I added Russell’s request to the todo list to ponder on some more.

The next call to action came from John Rivera’s Forum post Adding web content to an existing article. My first reply was along the lines of what I said above, but fortunately for us all John persisted and suggested adding “Append clipboard contents here” within Surfulater itself. I really liked this, as it fits nicely with the new Clipboard Hotkey and “New Article from Clipboard” features and doesn’t add more clutter to the Web Browser context menu. Further it has an extra advantage in that you can append the contents of the clipboard to any field in an article.

 

 

The bottom line is you can now quickly and easily add more content from your Web Browser, a Word Document etc. to an existing Surfulater article. Thanks Russell and John.

The next new feature I want to mention is Attach File… which makes it easier to attach a file to a Surfulater article. Attach File uses a File|Open style dialog where you select the file you want, press OK and it gets added to your Surfulater knowledge base, appearing in the Attachments field. You can still use Windows Explorer + Paste to attach files, but the new method provides a quicker and easier way to permanently save files inside your Surfulater database.

 

 

Other changes in this release affect menus and toolbars, with new items added to both and a new toolbar layout.

The Article menu now includes Send To…, Go to the Search Results, plus the new Attach File…

 

 

If you’ve been following my writings you’ll know how much I’m trying to keep Surfulater as uncluttered as possible. Adding the Article menu to the main menu bar (in the last release) wasn’t an easy decision, as it only duplicates items already available elsewhere and I don’t much like duplication. In the end I decided it was worthwhile having, especially for new users, as it puts some commonly used commands where they can’t easily be missed.

The ability to add content from the Windows Clipboard has been on the todo list for some time, but I have to say I didn’t realise how important and truly useful this was and how pleased I am with Clipboard capabilities added in the last release and this one. These latest features expand Surfulater into new dimensions for saving content from most any application, beyond its main role of saving web content. Together with the ability to attach files, you can truly keep all of the information that’s important to you, in one easy to find spot.

I’m really pleased with this latest release of Surfulater. It includes several important new features that have been on the todo list for a while.

First up you can now highlight important fragments of text (think highlighter pen on paper), so they are easy to spot the next time you look at an article. I had a few problems coding this and went off down the wrong track, loosing several days in the process. It turned out to be quite easy in the end and I was able to build on some code I’d already written a while back.

Simply select the text you want to highlight (or markup) and click on the text highlighter toolbar button. You can also choose from a range of highlighter pen colors.

 

Highlighting can just as easily be removed by selecting the highlighted text, right clicking on the selection and choosing Remove Text Highlight from the context menu. You can also use the context menu to highlight the text. I was quite surprised that some other programs I looked at, didn’t have any way to remove highlighting.

 

See the Help topic Power Features|Highlighting text for more information.

The next important new feature is the ability to create new articles from content in other Windows Applications. For example lets say you have some information in a Microsoft Word document that you’d like placed in a Surfulater article. You can do this in a few simple steps. First in the Word document select the text and images you want in the Surfulater article, copy this to the Windows Clipboard and finally press the Surfulater Clipboard Hotkey or use Article|New Article from Clipboard from the main menu. You will now have a new Surfulater Article containing what you had selected in Word.

The ability to capture clipboard content considerably broadens Surfulater’s information gathering capabilities and opens the doors to a range of new uses and users. Just like Web capture, Clipboard gather can happen with Surfulater minimized to the Windows System Tray or hidden behind other programs, so that it doesn’t interrupt what you are doing. And of course the Clipboard Hotkey is customizable. See the Help topic Power Features|Creating New Articles from the Clipboard for more information.

The final main change in this release is the addition of the Article menu to the main menu bar. If you’ve been reading this blog or our support forums you will know that my goal is to keep Surfulater as uncluttered and simple to use as possible, while still being incredibly useful. So I had to toss and turn a bit before adding the Article menu, as it does add a bit of clutter. However I feel it is justified, as it directly exposes important Surfulater capabilities that may not be all that obvious, especially to first time users. It also includes functions that are not available elsewhere and is a placeholder for future features.

There are some other nice new touches in this release and a few bug fixes, all of which are described in the Release Notes in the Help and in the Download Forum.

As always please do let me know what you think about this release and Surfulater in general. I’m waiting for your call.