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Surfulater Content Style Issues

A few people have mentioned that sometimes content they capture from Web pages into Surfulater doesn’t display using the same styles used on the originating Web page. I want to explain why this occurs.

First let me say that if you capture complete web pages, this isn’t an issue. It only occurs with content displayed in the Surfulater content window, and that’s the key.

All content in Surfulater uses HTML. HTML has default styles which can be overridden by Cascading Style Sheets or CSS as commonly referred to. By styles I’m referring to things such as font size, color, bold, italic etc.

As an example lets look at how a paragraph style works. Text inside a paragraph tag <p> will either use a default style dictated by your Web browser, a style embedded in the web page or and style in an external style sheet. The last two cases override the browsers default style and cause all paragraph text to be displayed in some other style, a larger bold font for example.

Surfulater enables you to view all of the articles in a folder at once, which is a great feature that many people want and one that sets Surfulater apart from the competition. What this means however is that you are most likely viewing HTML captured from a whole range of Web sites, each with its own Cascading Style Sheet. So paragraph’s on one Web site may well be displayed with quite different styles to its next door neighbour .

This mix of styles (CSS) from different Web sites basically makes it very difficult, if not impossible for us to use the same styles as the original site, simply because they will all conflict with each other. For this reason we don’t even bother bringing across external CSS information when we capture selected content.

The story is quit different when we save complete Web pages though. In that case we are only ever dealing with a single web site and only ever display a single page from the one site at a time. We capture all embedded and external CSS when we capture the web page and use that in turn when we display the page again.

Surfulater does use its own Cascading Style Sheets, so we can offer a good degree of control over the styles used in the content window. At present we have two CSS’s. One is used when E-Mailing content from Surfulater (surfulater.css) and the other is used for the Content window and is embedded inside Surfulater. I plan to pull this out and make it an external file in a future release. This will enable styles to be set for headings, paragraphs etc. In fact my example above which used paragraph’s, wasn’t a very good one as heading tags are the ones that show up worst.

So the bottom line is we can improve on the current situation and will, however it is unlikely we’ll see the exact same styles as on the original web page, unless of course you save and attach the entire page!

Update 26 Nov 2005 Putting ones thoughts in writing often helps you to see things that were hidden away before. And such is the case here. I can now see a way clear to get the styles to match up correctly. I just need to write the code and see if I’m right.

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Surfulater V1.92, B0.0 released

I wrote last week that Surfulater V1.92, B0.0 would be released this week and it has. It is great to see another new release hit the streets, especially one with new features you’ve been eager to get hold of. These include Printing, Print Preview and Page Setup, along with the ability to sort articles and folders, plus a few other bits and pieces. It is also great to be back coding again and to watch Surfulater take a few more important steps in its evolution.

As always please do tell us how we are going with Surfulater and what capabilities you’d like to see added to make it ever more useful to you.

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If your software was on a date…

Monday mornings can be a hard slog, especially when you’ve worked a bit on the weekend and it is hard to know where the working week starts and ends, sometimes. That said I’ve had quite a good morning this Monday morning and am that much closer to the next Surfulater release.

I did hit a small roadblock though, stopped for a Coffee and hit the Blogs and my day has well and truly been made by a post by Kathy Sierra over at Creating passionate users titled If your software was on a date….

Kathy asks

“How would your software (or product, service, book, cause, etc.) behave on a date?” 

and goes on to list her “Dating Rules For Software” which include:

  • Look your best
  • Be fun. Don’t be negative. Be the one others want to be around.
  • Be trustworthy and consistent.
  • Don’t be fake.
  • Be polite, be helpful.
  • Be forgiving.
  • Be sensitive, be a good listener.
  • Don’t assume I’m an expert.
  • Be fun.
  • Don’t assume there’s no competition.
  • Check your ego with the valet parking attendant.
  • Married people really DO have more sex.

I loved reading this, the rules are down-to-earth, simple and sensible,yet so many software products would score poorly when judged against them. The explanations for each rule are a delight to read. It reminded me of “ABOUT FACE, THE ESSENTIALS OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN” by Alan Cooper which is a must read for all software developers. My approach to the design and implementation of the user interface for Surfulater was certainly influenced by Alan’s book.

I’d like to think Surfulater scores reasonably well against Kathy’s dating rules, but it is up to our users to pass judgment not me. I’d love to hear what you think.

Time to get back to working on my dating skills.

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New Surfulater Firefox Extension available

Unfortunately the Firefox Extension we wrote for Surfulater stopped working in Firefox V1.5. After a bit of digging around and head scratching it seems that the Firefox developers have changed some code in Firefox which broke our extension, and I imagine others as well.

I happened to mention this to Stephane Grenier and he replied about similar problems he’s had:

That’s actually one of the issues we’ve encountered too with LandlordMax with open source software, they have a tendency to make more drastic changes in their code base with less attention given to who may be using it.

I tend to steer away from using open source software for a range of reasons, and this will be just another one. Backwards compatibility is extremely important in software development, it is a burden we simply have to carry.

The good news is that I’ve been able to update the code to use alternate methods and now have a new release of the extension which works with the latest Firefox 1.5 RC1 release as well as earlier releases. I’ve also updated the Surfulater images the extension uses, to the latest ones.

To install the new Surfulater Firefox Extension go to the Download page and install the extension as per the instructions there. This will replace your current extension with the new one. Remember to restart Firefox after installing. The new Surfulater Extension is V1.5. You can check this using Tools|Extensions in Firefox.

Hopefully the extension will continue to work as future releases of Firefox come out.

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New Surfulater release imminent

Folks reading this blog will know we’ve recently returned from a great trip to Europe. Jet lag hit me worse than I can recall, but things are well and truly back in full swing now.

The good news is that I’ve implemented some of your most requested items of the past few months, namely Printing and Article Sorting.

I’ve been a bit surprised at the number of requests for printing so I’m sure those concerned will be anxiously awaiting the new release. As well as printing there is the usual Print Preview and Page Setup capabilities along with some other updates and additions.

If all goes to plan you will see a release next week, that being the week starting 7 Nov 2005.

If you haven’t visited the blog in a while you will see that I’m back into posting again, after a bit of a lull while we were away. I hope you find something of interest while browsing around.

As always comments most welcome, whether they be about Surfulater, the Blog, PKM or whatever takes your interest.

I just did a spell check before publishing this for the world to see and thought I share this with you:
imminent: hanging threateningly over one’s head. I certainly hope that’s not the case.

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I guess it had to happen

Back in June we put out a Press Release on Surfulater, which unfortunately didn’t get much coverage. I did however create a new opportunity for Spammers who must harvest e-mail addresses on Press Releases, but that’s another story for another day.

Over the weekend I was doing some Web searching and came across a mention of the press release and a link to it. The “I guess it had to happen” bit is the web site was all about surfing of the kind you do in the water, not on the web, and it was an Italian web site to boot. 🙂

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Google Base is coming

Google is trialling a new service named Google Base that allows people to post and make searchable any type of content. You can post events, housing, jobs, products, second-hand vehicles etc. This seems like yet another step in Google’s relentless march for domination of the Net.In a description on the Google Base site, the company described the service as

Google’s database into which you can add all types of content. We’ll host your content and make it searchable online for free. 

To quote Infoworld

The service could put Google in competition with online auctioneer EBay Inc., which recently bought a minority share of Craigslist Inc., a classified listings site, observers say. EBay, based in San Jose, Calif., bought a 25 percent stake in San Francisco-based Craigslist, which covers a wide range of categories from jobs and apartments to used cars and personals. 

Other comments mention the rumoured Google Office and how you’ll be able to use it to edit content you place in Google Base.Google wants your car listings, events, etc. at ZDNet covers some more ground. I’m sure we will all be hearing a lot more about this is the coming days and months and like everything Google does we’ll watch and wait with interest.

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Personal Knowledge Management

I’ve stumbled across several interesting articles on Personal Knowledge Management recently. The first is by Steve Barth entitled The Power of One and was published in Knowledge Management Magazine. Steve’s article discusses the importance of implementing knowledge management systems within an organization and includes information I’m sure will be of interest to all Surfulater users.

Personal knowledge management (PKM) involves a range of relatively simple and inexpensive techniques and tools that anyone can use to acquire, create and share knowledge, extend personal networks and collaborate with colleagues without having to rely on the technical or financial resources of the employer. Implemented from the bottom up by one knowledge worker at a time, these techniques can increase productivity and enthusiasm and help to build momentum that can overcome the technological and social barriers to top-down, enterprise-wide KM initiatives.

….

Information overload is a fact, not a theory, and there is evidence that most people lack the skills or tools to keep up in the Knowledge Age.

Steve talks about Personal intellectual capital and how employees can increase their value both within an organization and in a broader sense by using PKM techniques.

Getting a grip on the shifting mass of information is an important tactic, but using PKM techniques and tools, individuals can go farther, to enhance their abilities and career potential. Effectively managed personal knowledge assets become the currency of personal intellectual capital.

Surfulater is being used by a diverse group of people to collect and manage all sorts of information and of course build and retain knowledge. This article should be of interest to all Surfulater users, especially those using it within an organization.

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Web 2.0 Conference 2005

If you are involved or have an interest in software or web development you have most likely heard mention of Web 2.0. I started hearing about Web 2.0 earlier in the year and to be honest I don’t have much of a feel for what it is about just yet, apart from it being the next big thing happening to the Web.

Earlier this month the Web 2.0 Conference 2005 was held in San Francisco and from what I’ve read so far it would have been a great conference to attend. I’ve just finished reading a brief wrap up of the conference titled The Future Of The Web over at Information Week. Here are a few quotes I found interesting.

Jeff Weiner, senior VP of search and marketplace at Yahoo acknowledges that the Web 2.0 concept, much discussed of late, has been overhyped. But, he adds, there’s something to it.

If you take O’Reilly’s analysis at face value, the “Web 2.0” is about lots of things that client-server computing, or even the Internet, for the most part, hasn’t been. Instead of pages that load, it’s about sites that feel like software. Instead of software that runs in a browser or on a cell phone, it’s about apps that span devices. Instead of being all about content from Web producers, it’s about content being produced by people everywhere: blogs, wikis, digital photos. Web 2.0 is about viral marketing instead of advertising, though that sounds suspiciously like 1999. And it’s about the power of networks and the ability to deliver better results as more people use a service (think Google’s search, Amazon .com’s ratings, or Technorati’s blog commons).

Aaron Ricadela’s take on a 12-page treatise by Tim O’Reilly on what version 2.0 of the Web really means.

It’s either the start of something cool–or Internet Bubble 2.0. Maybe it’s a bit of both. Thomas Claburn

The article is well worth reading. It will be interesting to follow Web 2.0’s progress and see where Surfulater fits into it.

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We’re back from abroad

We are back from our big trip to Europe and getting back into the normal swing of full time work again. We did have a fantastic time and were fortunate to visit a treasure trove of amazing places. A very few highlights include Pont du Gard where Cherryl said I had an epiphany and she was right, Provence in general, Cinque Terre, Chianti, Florence and especially Venice. When you go to Venice make sure you visit Palazzo Ducale and grab an audio player. We visited many fine Churches, Cathedrals, Galleries and the like but Palazzo Ducale really stands out for me. The Borghese Gallery comes in a very close second though.

Our Notebook PC’s and other technology behaved well while we were on the road and we were able to provide near our usual high level of support, keep all the wheels in motion and our customers satisfied. This was a worry before we left and I’m reassured now that we are back that all of our planning and preparation paid off.

We are certainly rested, refreshed and enlightened and looking forward to getting back to work on the next release of Surfulater. Customer feedback is very good with so many of you telling us what a great program Surfulater is. A heartfelt personal thank you to you all. And please do keep the comments coming.

Finally a quick hello to everyone we met on our travels. Lets hope we catch up again some day somewhere.