Surfulater Version 1.96, B2.0 Release Notes - 24 April 2006

This release primarily addresses some issues which were uncovered in the last release, adds a few new features and fixes some bugs. Ensure that you read the V1.96.0.0 Release Notes below if you haven't already, as they include important information about upgrading from versions prior to V1.96.0.0

For even more information see the Blog post: Surfulater V1.96, B2.0 released - calm seas ahead

What's New

• When new content is captured a confirmation sound is now played.
• When you right click on a URL in the content window a new menu item Copy URL is now available. This copies the URL to the Windows Clipboard. It was added following a forum discussion with William LaValley.
• When Surfulater starts, it makes the Knowledge Base that was active when it was last closed, active again.
• The slide-up message window that is displayed when new content is captured and Surfulater is minimized, now closes approximately 3.0 seconds after the last message is displayed, instead of the previous 5 seconds. Note that you don't need to wait for this status window to close before capturing again. On Windows XP the message window now fades away, when it is closed. Capture is also slightly faster as Surfulater no longer needs to wait for the window to slide into view before continuing.
• Show Articles for this Folder Only has been added to the Tree Folder context menus for the 'New Articles', 'Search Results' and 'All Articles' folders.
• In Import, the Import File dialog has been updated to explicitly include Compas, Linkman and Powermarks in the 'Files of Type' drop down list. There is also a new message displayed with information on getting help with Importing files.
• The code that compacts long URL's for display purposes has been updated to display a portion of the end of the URL when possible. This follows from a Forum discussion with William LaValley.
• More updates to the Help.

What's Fixed

• A nasty bug that could prevent new articles from being captured when Surfulater was minimized to the System Tray has been fixed. This is related to a problem that some folks have reported where the slide-up message window that is displayed on capture, would not close for a long time. I hadn't been able to reproduce this until the V1.96.0.0 release was released.
• The slide-up message window that is displayed when new content is captured and Surfulater is minimized could cause the Web Browser to loose focus. This has been fixed with the assistance of Dan Lucas who reported it and was able to see this problem.
• The Enter and Delete keys work correctly again when you edit a field in the content window, and commence editing using the slow click method. This broke in the last release. Thanks to Dan Lucas for reporting it.
• Import of Firefox Bookmarks has been updated to fix a problem where the Bookmarks file wasn't being found on certain PC's. Thanks to Mark Vincenzes for reporting this.
• If 'Empty Search Results' was used and no search had been performed since Surfulater was started, it would crash. This has been fixed. Thanks to Michael B. Hansen and others for reporting this.
• When Surfulater starts, it didn't always restore correctly to the last article viewed in a Knowledge Base. This has been fixed.
• A problem to do with records sometimes not being added to the History list has been fixed.
• Copy & Paste of articles in the Tree now preserves the tree item image, instead of it changing to the default image. Thanks to William LaValley for reporting this.
• UnInstalling Surfulater removes Surfulater: Bookmark this Page from the IE Context Menu. Thanks to Perry Mowbray for reporting this.

Surfulater Version 1.96, B0.0 Release Notes - 14 April 2006

New features in this release include the ability to Import Bookmarks from a variety of applications, new Bookmark and Note templates, content editing improvements, more tree item images, improved searching, enhanced XML Clipboard capabilities and more. This is a big update, as you'll see below.



Important

Firefox users must download and install the new Surfulater Firefox Extension Version 1.5.3 before this release will capture content from their browser and display the new Surfulater: Bookmark this Page context menu item. IE users must close all copies of IE before this release will capture content from their browser and display the new Surfulater: Bookmark this Page context menu item.

What's New

• Web page Bookmark support has been implemented. This includes a new Bookmark template, the ability to Import Bookmarks from a variety of applications and Web Browsers and the ability to add Bookmarks from your Web Browser. Web Browser context menus now include Surfulater: Bookmark this Page. See: Importing Bookmarks
• A new Note Article Template has been added. It has a single full size field which is useful for for writing notes.
• Clicking in a field in the content window now displays a dotted rectangle to indicate the field has focus.
• When an article field has focus you can press F2 or left click to commence editing. When you click to move focus to a field you need to wait approx. 1/2 a second before clicking again to flip into edit mode. You can also press Tab or Back Tab to move to the next or previous field within the current article/folder. View|Preferences|Enable 2 click content editing can be turned off if you don't want this new feature. Note that clicking on a link won't switch to edit mode.
• The Tab key no longer positions to and sets focus on links in the content window.
• Pressing Escape when editing content now displays a confirmation window with options to Save or Discard changes or continue editing. Note that the confirmation window is only displayed if changes have been made. changes Thanks to Mark Vincenzes for the Save suggestion.
• URL's in the Reference field are now truncated if they are too long. Truncated Web addresses will end in ... and filenames will include ...'s in place of their full path. This prevents long URL's from making the article too wide thus requiring a horizontal scroll bar. To see the full URL hover the mouse over it.
• When the mouse hovers over a Web URL in the content window, a tooltip displays the full URL. This is in addition to being displayed on the status bar.
• Approximately 40 new images have been added to the Knowledge Tree image selection pallette. Some of the existing images have been replaced by similar, but better looking images. Note that some images had to be moved which may result in images in your tree being different to what you've set. Apologies for this, which hopefully won't happen again.
• The Tree image used for Web Articles has been changed from an "IE" image to a generic Web image.
• The image used in the Tree for "Todo List" articles has changed.
• Switching into edit mode is faster.
• Searching has been optimized further and is a bit faster.
• Search now matches words that include partial HTML markup. eg. search for "cat" will now match: "cat".
• Searching using the * wildcard character now highlights to the end of each matched word.
• Searching using the * wildcard character now checks that the * is the last character in a search term.
• The maximum size for an article has been increased from around 200,000 characters to 1 million. However I wouldn't recommend anyone creating such large articles. A message is displayed when you try to create an article that is to big. Previously Surfulater would crash if the captured content was too big. Thanks to Lars Paysen for reporting this.
• The Knowledge Base created using File|New has been updated.
• The Surfulater Firefox Extension has been updated to resolve a problem with images not being captured on certain sites and to add new features.
• Surfulater's XML Clipboard format has been updated to allow better integration with other applications. I'll publish a blog post on this shortly. This resulted from Forum discussions with Perry Mowbray.
• Files can now be attached to Articles using an enhancement to Surfulater's XML Clipboard Format. This enables Word Documents, Zip files etc. to be added to articles from other applications. Specify attach="true" in the <a ..> tag. eg. <a href="file://..." attach="true"> This resulted from Forum discussions with Perry Mowbray.
• "Vancouver" has been added to View|Style Sheet. Thanks to Michael O'Henly for this.
• More updates to the Help

What's Fixed

• Web page images that use relative URL's and specify HTML BASE tag on the page, are now captured and displayed correctly. Thanks to Mark Vincenzes for reporting this.
• Pressing Tab to end editing now works properly. Thanks to Mark Vincenzes for reporting this.
• Content editing no longer ends during text selection when the left mouse button is released and the mouse cursor is outside of the field being edited. Thanks to David Wengier and others for reporting this.
• Search using the ? wildcard character 'within' a search string now works. eg. c?t
• Search using a string like b* and b? no longer crashes Surfulater.
• Search using a strings with ?'s now highlight the characters that match the ?'s.
• Search no longer incorrectly treats digits as the first character of a word. This means search for 'cat' no longer matches '65cat'.
• Search now excludes certain fields such as Created, Modified and Rating, which would produce incorrect results. These fields will be searchable when Advanced Search is implemented.
• Matching search text is no longer highlighted within Folder records, as these do not participate in the search.
• There have been two reports of Surfulater crashes related to using "Empty Search Results". I have been unable to duplicate this, but have hopefully fixed it.
• Fixed a problem related to the Code Snippet Article Template not displaying formatted code correctly after editing.
• Fixed a bug where the background color for some text would be the color used during editing, instead of white.
• Fixed a bug in the code which E-Mails articles which could crash Surfulater.
• When switching into content edit mode it was possible for the text cursor to be invisible, on faster PC's. This showed up with the improvements in this release to toggle into edit mode faster. Note that this had never been reported as a problem.
• Adding very large articles or clipboard content no longer raises errors. Thanks to Lars Paysen for reporting this.
• Inserting an Ordered or Unorderded List at the end of the last field in an article or folder could prevent the field from being saved. This has been fixed.
• A problem that prevented Surfulater's XML Clipboard format from using attributes such as template= has been fixed.
• The XML attributes used by the Chronological Folder have been changed to make them valid UTF-8 and therefore correct when parsed by a validating XML parser such as MSXML. Further the Chronological Folder is now removed when a Surfulater KB is closed as it isn't needed outside of Surfulater. Thanks to Perry Mowbray for reporting this.
• The .Surfulater XML File <CSSTemplates> section has been updated so that it won't fail when opened in a validating XML parser such as MSXML. New KB's will be correct, but existing KB's will need to be updated by hand, if you need this capability. Contact us for details. Thanks to Perry Mowbray for reporting this.
• Opening a Knowledge Base which is already open and has an Auto-Save file, no longer raises errors.

Surfulater Version 1.95, B0.10 Release Notes - 8 February 2006 New features in this release include the ability to copy or move folders and articles across Knowledge Bases, Expand and Collapse the entire tree or just a branch, only show Articles for the current Folder and more.

What's New

• Folders and Articles can now be copied and moved across Knowledge Bases using Cut/Copy and Paste. See: Copy/Move content across Knowledge Bases
• Folder Cut/Copy & Paste within a Knowledge Base has been implemented.
• You can now Expand and Collapse the entire tree or a selected tree branch. Use Keypad+ and Keypad- to expand and collapse the current folder and Ctrl+Keypad+ or - for the entire tree. These are also on the Folder and View context menus. See: Expand and Collapse Tree Branches
• To make it easier to move articles around the knowledge tree you can now hide all articles in all folders except a selected folder. Use Shift+F9 or View | Show Articles for this Folder Only or Folder context menu | Show Articles for this Folder Only. Thanks to Geoff Caplan for suggesting this. See: Showing articles in the Knowledge Tree
• Articles created from the Windows Clipboard now use a more sensible algorithm for creating the Article Title. This means long titles are a thing of the past.
• The Search Results folder context menu item "Empty Search Results", now removes the search result highlighting in the content window. Reported by Pavel Agurov.
• The Help has been rearranged with a new section The Basics added. Some content from the Power Features section has been moved here. New articles have been added and others updated.
• Progress information is now displayed on the status bar, when removing folders and articles.
• New tips are displayed when you right click on an Article or Folder name in the Tree or on a Tree item image.
• Performance has been improved when removing articles and folders and in other areas.
• Various help tips have been updated.

What's Fixed

• When you Copy a Folder any images and attachments in the folder are now copied as well. Previously these used the images etc. back in the original folder which presented a problem if that was ever deleted.
• When a New Knowledge Base is created the Date and Time created in the various pre-defined system folders is now set to the current date and time. Thanks to Jason Ross for reporting this.
• When an Article is deleted from a Knowledge Base any attachments are now deleted from the database.
• When a Folder is deleted from a Knowledge Base any images and attachments are now deleted from the database.
• After editing a newly captured Web article for the first time, advertisements included in the captured content could pop up in your Web Browser. This has been fixed. Thanks to Paul Pucket for reporting this.
• Surfulater no longer crashes if you try to copy the KnowledgeBase folder using drag & drop.
• Files attached to an Articles 'See Also' field no longer loose their filename when you edit the 'See Also' field.
• Fixed problems with Remove Folder not correctly removing 'Content History' items.
• Tree item Image context menus show the correct text again.
• Article Cut/Copy/Paste broke in V1.95.0.0.

Note: Database compaction which is coming soon, will remove stray attachments and images.





Surfulater Version 1.94, B0.0 Release Notes - 2 January 2006 This release enables you to append content to existing articles, more easily attach files to articles, access functions with extra menu items, as well as including various other updates.

What's New

• Append Clipboard to Field has been added to the content window context menu. This enables you to quickly append content to any field in an article. For example you can add more content from a Web page to an article by selecting the text + images in your Web Browser, Copying it to the Windows Clipboard, and then using "Append Clipboard to Field". You can also Attach files and append images from Windows Explorer. This a great new feature, one that I've been mulling over for some time. Thanks to John Rivera for suggesting this specific implementation.
• Attach File... makes it easier to attach a file to a Surfulater article. You no longer have to go to Windows Explorer and then use Edit|Paste, although that is still available. "Attach File..." is on the Article Menu, as well as the main context menus, and on the Standard Toolbar.
• Two new Toolbar buttons have been added to the Standard Toolbar. The first lets you add a Hyperlink to selected text (the same as Ctrl+K), and the second removes the Hyperlink at the cursor position. These commands have also been added to the content window edit mode context editor. ie. Add a Link and Remove this Link.
• When you Attach a Web page to an article the current date and time is included, so you know when it was added.
• New Article from Clipboard has been added to the Folder and Article Knowledge Tree context menus. Suggested by Leigh Wardle.
• Article|New Article from Clipboard is now available on the Standard Toolbar and it now has a menu image.
• Article|Send To|... has been added. This performs the same functions as "Send To" on the Tree and Content window context menus.
• Article|Go to the Search Results has been added, along with a new button on the Search Toolbar. These move the tree selection to the Search Results folder.
• Toolbars are now displayed in two rows and the Knowledge Base Toolbar is now on by default.
• The Search Toolbar Search combobox is wider and deeper.
• The View menu has been changed to move all toolbars on to a Toolbars sub-menu. This new menu also includes "Customize...". The View menu has also been rearranged slightly.
• Further updates to the Help, including new articles.

What's Fixed

• A problem where Images which come from a database on a Web site, weren't showing the correct images, has been fixed. Thanks to David Britton for reporting this.
• Attaching a Web Page no longer stops any images which are in the Attachments field, from from being displayed correctly.
• Articles created from content in the Windows Clipboard, now handle Unicode UTF-8 character encodings correctly.
• The Content window context menu no longer includes "Select All" when the mouse click is not over an editable area. This fixes a problem raised by Arlene Shipley.
• A problem introduced in the last release, where the area behind pop-up tip windows wasn't always restored has been fixed.
• Article|New Article and Article|New Article from Clipboard are now disabled if the current Folder is not appropriate for adding new articles.
• Article|New Article has been removed from the 'All Articles' folders context menu.
• A problem with Surfulater crashing when the Free Trial had ended, has been fixed.

Surfulater Version 1.93, B0.0 Release Notes - 13 December 2005

This release includes Text highlighting, Creation of articles from the Clipboard, a new Article menu and various other updates.

What's New

• Text can now be highlighted to make important fragments easy to find. A new toolbar button immediately to the left of the 'Text format Styles' dropdown list, sets the background color for the selected text and also lets you choose a different color. Selected text can be highlighted without having to switch to edit mode. Ctrl+T also highlights the selected text. To remove text highlighting, select the highlighted text, then right click in the selection and choose "Remove Highlight Color" from the menu. You can select more text than is highlighted and this will still work properly. See the Help topic Power Features|Highlighting text
• You can now create new articles from content in other Windows Applications besides your Web Browser. For example you can create a new article containing text and images from an MS Word document or a PDF file. This new feature works via. the Windows Clipboard. Copy what you want to be in the new article to the Clipboard then press the Surfulater Clipboard Capture Hotkey, and a new article is created with whatever is in the Clipboard. See the Help topic Power Features|Creating New Articles from the Clipboard for more information.
• You can now Paste text plus images from MS Word Documents into Surfulater.
• A new Article menu lets you create new articles, access search, use the history list etc.
• View|Hide Search Highlights has moved to Article|Hide Search Highlights.
• The New Article submenu now uses the images for the matching article template.
• Alt+Left moves back in the Article History list and Alt+Right moves foward.
• Surfulater has been updated to the latest version of the 3rd party User Interface Library that it uses. Any menu or toolbar customizations you may have made, will need to be redone because of this update.
• The Knowledge Tree image used by "Code Snippet" articles has been updated.
• Various error messages have been updated.
• The Help has been updated.

What's Fixed

• Content can now be captured from CHM files using: Surfulater: Add New Article from the CHM Viewer right click context menu. At present CHM file images can't be captured. We hope to address this in a future release. Complete CHM Pages cannot be attached to articles. Instead use Edit|Select All then right click and choose Surfulater: Add New Article. Thanks to Jørgen Ibsen for reporting this.
• When you switch Knowledge Bases (KB) and one KB has the All Folders view and the another has the Normal view, the normal view tree now displays the folder +/- buttons.

Surfulater Version 1.92, B0.0 Release Notes - 10 November 2005 This release includes Printing, Articles Sorting and various other updates.

What's New

• Printing has been implemented. The File menu now includes Page Setup, Print and Print Preview. Buttons for Print and Print Preview have been added to the Knowledge Base Toolbar. Read the Help topic Power Features|Printing for important information on printing.
• Articles can now be sorted by their Title. The Knowledge Tree right click context menu for Folders now includes "Sort Articles". All folders except the "All Records" folder can be sorted. See: Sorting Articles
• The Knowledge Tree context menu item "New Article" now uses a sub-menu for the article templates menu, instead of a separate pop-up menu. And the template names are now sorted alphabetically.
• The context menu for the "New Articles" folder now includes "Move new Browser Article here".
• Some main menu items have been updated.
• "Visit our What's New Blog" has been added to the Help menu. This opens the "What's New in Surfulater" web page on our Blog.
• Various Help topics have been updated and new topics have been added.
• Code which helps us isolate bugs has been updated.
• The Surfulater Firefox Extension has been updated to work with Firefox 1.5 RC1. The Surfulater images used by the extension have also been updated. The Extension is now at Version 1.5

What's Fixed

• Paste can now be used in the Help|Activate License dialog.

Surfulater Version 1.90, B0.0 Release Notes 16 August 2005 This release includes standard File|Open, New & Close commands, making it much easier to work with multiple Knowledge Bases. Yes I've relented.

What's New

• New commands to Create, Open and Close Knowledge Bases have been added. These are File|New, File|Open and File|Close. A new Toolbar has also been added for these commands. It can be activated using View|Knowledge Base Toolbar. When Surfulater starts it will open the Knowledge Base files which were open the last time it was used, unless a KB file is specified on the Surfulater command line or you open a Surfulater file via. Windows Explorer, in which case only that file is opened.
• The File menu now includes a History of the last six Knowledge Base files opened. Selecting one of these either opens the Knowledge Base if it is not already open, otherwise it becomes the current Knowledge Base.
• Help|Help Topics now opens the Help file if it has been closed.
• File|Set As Default has been removed.
• The Status Bar displays the full Knowledge Base filename when you switch to a different Knowledge Base.
• The Help has been further updated, including a new topic "Backing up my Knowledge Base".
• The "New Surfulater Release Available" dialog has been updated.
• Some more debugging code has been added to assist with problems should they arise.

What's Fixed

• Fixed various spelling mistakes in the Help. Thanks to Chris Kinata.

Note: Older Release notes can be found here in this Forum and in the Help.

__________________
Neville Franks,
Author of ED for Windows and Surfulater