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Surfulater Version 1.99, B1.0 Release Notes - 7 October 2006

Most changes in this release are ongoing internal updates to pave the way for new and enhanced future capabilities. In particular the Style Sheets used to control the content window display can now be edited and new ones added. Color Themes have been removed from Knowledge Base files and all HTML Templates have been updated, and changed slightly. Some other changes include resolving issues when running Surfulater on a Non-Administrator Windows Account. A range of bugs have also been fixed.

What's New

Content Window templates have changed as follows:
- Collapsed Folders no longer include the "Folder" label.
- Expanded records with Labels and Pencils hidden, now display a narrow band down the left edge if the record.
- Collapsed Folders and Articles Titles now change color when you hover over them.
- Collapsed Articles no longer allow editing of their Titles, nor include the Creation Date. Instead they include the Reference field, along with the Title. This delivers more useful content when articles are collapsed.
- The "Note" template has changed. A column has been added down the left margin and the edit pencil has been moved there. This pencil is not hidden by the Content Elements|Show Edit Pencils filters. In fact Content Elements don't effect this template.
View|Style Sheet has been renamed to View|Content Color Theme and now places a tick besides the current theme. See: Content Styles & Color Themes
The Toolbar button used to select a Content Color Theme now uses a drop down menu for selection.
Color Themes now use a central file Color Themes.xml instead of being stored in each Knowledge Base. This file located in C:\Documents and Settings\[User Account]\Application Data\SAIG\Surfulater
View|Content Styles has been added. This lets you choose between various HTML Style Sheets which control the styles used in the content window. See: Content Styles & Color Themes
The Style Sheet used in the Content Window is no longer hard coded in Surfulater. New Content Style files are located in: C:\Documents and Settings\[User Account]\Application Data\SAIG\Surfulater\Content Styles Two styles are currently available. Classic, which is much the same as what has been available until now and Crisp, which uses thinner lines to separate HTML elements. All CSS styles have been updated, and many new ones added. New styles control things like the font used for Headings. This gives a more consistent look to captured Web content and helps to resolve problems where some content was displayed with fonts which were quite large. It also gives you complete control over the look of content, should you feel inclined to create your own Style Sheets. See: Content styling and templates for some background reading and Help Topic Content Styles & Color Themes
You are now prompted for confirmation when removing a folder. This was a Forum request by Varian Shepherd.
The Surfulater XML Clipboard Format (SXCF) now allows a folder to specified and optionally created. See this Forum post.
Various changes have been made to help prepare Surfulater to run on Microsoft Windows Vista.

What's Changed

Article|Send To now uses the new Content Style Sheets instead of its own Style Sheet, SurfulaterSendTo.css
Right click in the Content Window below the last article no longer displays the Color Themes context menu.
The Application folder is no longer used as a temporary folder for Thumbnail images when content is captured from your Web Browser. The Windows Temp folder is now used for this. SXCF developers need to change their code to match.
The Templates Patch file, Surfulater.SurfulaterPatch, New KB starter file EmptyKB.Surfulater and Master Messages file SurfulaterDNAA.master.xml have all been moved from the Application folder to C:\Documents and Settings\[User Account]\Application Data\SAIG\Surfulater
The Help file Help.Surfulater has been moved from the My Documents\My Surfulater folder to C:\Documents and Settings\[User Account]\Application Data\SAIG\Surfulater
Several files have been moved from the Installer Setup program and into Surfulater.EXE. This enables Surfulater to self heal when one of its files get accidently deleted and also helps pave the way for the Free Surfulater Reader program.
See also What's New and What's Fixed.

What's Fixed

The message complaining that there is no Knowledge Base open when you capture content and Surfulater isn't running has been fixed. This issue was introduced in the last release.
Collapsed Folders in the content window no longer disappear when Labels and Pencils are hidden.
The default images used for Folders in the Knowledge Tree can now be set. See this Forum post for details.
Article|Send To now uses the selected Color Theme. Previously it always used the Default theme (style).
Adding new content from your Web Browser or the Windows Clipboard now works correctly, if an Article is being edited at the time.
Use Help|View ... then closing Surfulater before the Web Browser displays the page no longer causes Surfulater to crash. Thanks for Brigg Thorpe for reporting this.
Deleting a Folder now correctly updates the Content window.
Fixed a problem with History List usage.
Fixed a problem where deleting a 'See Also' link appeared to delete it, but didn't. Thanks to Varian Shepherd for reporting this.
Using Cut and Paste across Knowledge Bases would leave Surfulater in a state where subsequent actions could cause it to crash. Thanks to Varian Shepherd for his help with this.
Copying Unicode text from PDF Documents et al. now works correctly. Thanks to Sidney Whitehead for raising this.
The file that Surfulater uses to log any errors is now located in the C:\Documents and Settings\[User Account]\Application Data\SAIG\Surfulater\Logs folder. This resolves a problem for folks who use Surfulater from a Non-Administrator Windows Account. Crash Report files are now also placed in this folder. Thanks to Jørgen Ibsen for raising this.
A problem with the Surfulater Error Log file not always being included in Crash Reports has hopefully been fixed.

Surfulater Version 1.98, B4.0 Release Notes - 1 August 2006

This release includes more responsive content display, updates to content element filter handling, bug fixes to search and various other updates.

What's New

The code that displays all articles in a Folder has been rewritten to make it considerably faster. This makes Surfulater start much quicker when a Folder is selected, and also much faster to navigate the Knowledge Tree. For complete details see Improving performance with Multi-threading
When new articles are added, empty rows are now shown when Content Elements|Show Empty Rows is Off. This enables you to add content to any empty fields.
When invalid search text is entered, focus is now returned to the search combobox.
A warning is now displayed when you add content from your Web Browser and there are no Knowledge Bases open.
Ctrl+F4 closes the current Knowledge Base. This is in addition to Alt+F C
Started making some updates in preparation for new article template capabilities and to fix a problem with collapsed folders and content filters. See: Content styling and templates for details.
More updates to the Help. Keyboard shortcuts etc.

What's Fixed

A part of the Search code has been rewritten to try and resolve a problem which caused Surfulater to crash when doing a search. Thanks to Varian Shepherd for his assistance with this.
Closing a Knowledge Base with the Chronological Tree View active no longer crashes Surfulater. This problem was introduced in the last release.
File|Close is now disabled when no Knowledge Bases are open.
When the last Knowledge Base is closed, the vertical scroll bar in the Knowledge Tree is now hidden.
A problem which prevented Crash Reports from being e-mailed from Microsoft Outlook and possibly other E-mail programs has been fixed. Thanks to Varian Shepherd for his assistance with this.
Fixed duplicate short-cut keys on various menus.

Surfulater Version 1.98, B3.0 Release Notes - 7 July 2006

This release includes new functionality, faster performance and a range of bug fixes. Some of the main new features include the ability to use 'Send-To' to e-mail or export all articles in a Folder, the ability hide various elements in the content window, collapse or expand all articles in the content window, and lots more.

Important Notes:

Before using this or any new version of Surfulater, you should backup all Knowledge Base files.

This release updates Style information in your Knowledge Bases. These changes mean that updated Knowledge Bases won't display properly in earlier versions of Surfulater.

What's New

Send To now works with Folders, enabling you to e-mail or save all articles in a folder. "Send To" has also been added to the Knowledge Tree's Folder context menu.
View|Contents Elements|... enables you to control which elements are displayed in the content window. You can hide: Field Labels, Edit Pencils and Rows where all fields are empty. View|Content Elements|Enable Filters toggles between normal view with everything displayed and the filtered view with only selected items displayed. There is also a new Toolbar button on the "Standard Toolbar" for this. It is the third button from the left. Article Template such as Notes, which only have one field, are treated as a special case for 'Show Empty Rows'. When you edit an article any hidden rows are displayed.
Printing now has the Pencil cell removed.
You can now Expand and Collapse the Folder and all Articles in the content window. To do this use Shift+Click on [+] or [-] button images, or Keypad + and Keypad - or use "Expand All Records" and "Collapse All Records" on the content window context menu.
Ctrl+Keypad + and - now only collapse the entire tree when the tree has focus. Previously these worked when the content window had focus.
Articles are displayed in the content window much faster now. Several important changes were made to the code that displays content, to achieve this welcome outcome.
Other performance improvements have been made across the board, including reduced CPU use when Surfulater is idle.
The main Style Sheet that specifies the HTML styles used in the Content Window is now accessible and can be changed. These styles control default fonts, table borders, background colors etc. More information soon.
The layout in the content window has been updated to reduce the gaps between and around records.
Content editing no longer scrolls the field to the top of the window, for content longer than a screen. This was always very annoying and has been very difficult to resolve.
The behaviour used to commence editing of tree items has been changed to match Windows Explorer. Thanks to whoever set me straight on this.
Surfulater will now start Minimized (optionally to the System Tray) if its Windows Short-Cut Properties is set to Run: Minimized. Requested by David Wengier and others.
Pressing Escape during content editing now only prompts for confirmation if changes have been made.
The SMTP E-mail code used by 'Send To' has gone though a major update to add some new functionality and resolve some problems.
File|Convert Tree to Unicode has been added. This enables the items which are displayed in the Knowledge Tree to be converted to Unicode. It is only relevant for people who have content added prior to Surfulater V1.97.0.20 and where that content contains non-English text. Ensure any Knowledge Bases you want to convert are backed up before using this.
The "To Do" and "Contacts" articles now expand and collapse like the other article types.
All Article Templates have been updated in this release. If you have created your own templates or modified any of the ones we supply, then see the comments in Surfulater.SurfulaterPatch for details.
Code updates in this release lay the foundations for multi-threaded content window updates. This enables Surfulater to be far more responsive when displaying folders with lots of large articles. Expect to see this in the next release.

What's Fixed

The Tree item editor now works correctly with non-Ascii Unicode characters. To support the latest versions of Windows as well as Windows 98, this proved to be a very difficult task.
Ctrl+V and Shift+Insert now work when editing items in the Knowledge Tree.
Using F2 in the Content Window after using Tab or Back+Tab to move to a different field, now commences editing in the correct field. Thanks to Dan Lucas for reporting this.
Selecting an article in the tree now now scrolls the content window to the top, for the newly displayed article. Previously it would leave it scrolled to where it was previously.
When the "Empty Trash" confirmation dialog is used and "No" is chosen the "Do not ask again" option is ignored, ensuring "Empty Trash" continues to function sensibly. Thanks to Brigg Thorpe for his assistance with this.
Fixed a bug that could prevent new content from the Clipboard from being added to Surfulater.
Removing the first Article in a Folder now correctly updates the content window. Previously, the removed article would continue to be displayed, causing grief if you right clicked etc. on it.
Expand Folders and Collapse Folder have been added to the context menu's for the various Knowledge Tree system folders. ie. "New Articles", "Trash" etc.
The word "File" has been removed from the first three items on the "File" menu.
The optional sound that is played when new content is captured now plays asynchronously. Previously Surfulater would wait for the sound to finish playing, before it continued.
Pressing Escape during content editing no longer saves the field when no changes have been made.
The output of 'Send To' could have images that originated from dynamically created web pages missing. This has been fixed.
'Send To' now shows the Ratings Stars correctly for Bookmark Articles. E-Mail clients with sub-standard HTML viewers may not show the rating stars however. The Bat V2.11 doesn't work.
The code that displays records in the content window has been rewritten. This is aimed at resolving a problem where certain captured content could cause errors to occur in the content window, and to further improve the display update speed and to resolve problems with content layout.
The Article and Folder Styles specified in the <CSSTemplates> section of the xxx.Surfulater Knowledge Base files has been updated to explicitly set the background color for text to black, where no color setting was previously defined. This ensures the text color is correct when you switch between Style Sheets. Previously if a Style specified white text and you changed to a Style that by default used black text, it would be appear in white. This addresses that issue. These changes are in the EmptyKB. Surfulater file and will only affect KB's created from now on. Existing KB's can be updated if needed by replacing their <CSSTemplates> </CSSTemplates> section with that from EmptyKB.Surfulater.
When you start Surfulater too quickly after it has just closed, it no longer crashes. Thanks to Stephane Grenier for his help with this.

Other

The Folder and Article Templates have all been updated in this release. Changes will be applied to your Knowledge base files as required.
The CSS Styles have all been updated in this release. Changes will be applied to your Knowledge base files as required.
The changes outlined above mean that Knowledge Bases used with this or later releases won't display correctly on Surfulater versions prior to this release.

Surfulater Version 1.98, B0.0 Release Notes - 26 June 2006

These release notes have been merged into the V1.98.3.0 release notes. V1.98, B0.0 was a Customer only pre-release.

Older releases notes are available in the Surfulater Help, Release Notes section.