Surfulater got to a point where it was working pretty well and did most things our users had requested and that I wanted of it. There are problems no doubt, such as the poor foreign language support, especially with search. This dates back to a poor implementation decision I made in the very beginning of Surfulater’s design, one which cannot be undone or easily fixed, otherwise it would have been long ago.

To resolve the foreign language support problem and address some other issues requires an extensive and expensive rewrite, which can’t be justified. Furthermore I was beginning to see huge changes in the direction certain types of applications were heading and in the technologies being used to develop them. So it was time to step back and rethink the entire way I develop software, the technologies I use where all this fits in with Surfulater.

The huge game changer in my opinion is the move to applications that run on multiple devices (Desktop PC’s, Tablet’s, Smart Phones) and enable you to access your information on any of these devices, from anywhere. Furthermore you can add and update your information and have the changes available on each device automatically and in real time. This is where I’ve wanted Surfulater to head for quite some time, however it will never happen using the current C++ Windows Desktop code base.

To move forward it was time for a major change, time to move out of my comfort zone of Microsoft Windows Desktop Software development in compiled C++ with all the tools I’ve been using for many, many years to the new world of applications that run on multiple devices, using dynamic languages, with user interfaces that are rendered in HTML, and have severely limited local file systems.  Hard to imagine a more different world, but that’s what I’ve been doing most of this year.

This new world revolves around developing in HTML5, Javascript and CSS and packaging that up into applications that will run on a variety of devices. It has and continues to be a huge learning curve, one that is taking a lot of time and resources.

There was no way I was going to jump into the deep end and try to redevelop Surfulater, as I had way, way to much to learn first. So after much prodding from an old friend I began work on a project with him to create a range of iPad (Tablet) applications. Apart from taking quite a long time the results so far are great, with the first app nearing completion.

In essence I’ve designed and built an application that my partner Stefan will use to generate applications.  So there are two actual applications: the Builder that he uses and the Client Apps that the builder creates and that we’ll sell.

Both of these are written in HTML5, CSS and Javascript. The builder is by far the most complex, using a client-side database, HTML5 templating, local file system access, remote server uploads and downloads etc. It uses jQuery, jQueryUI, Knockout.js and a range of other Javascript plugins and libraries. It is pretty slick and easy to use, enabling Stefan to produce iPad applications quickly.

The end-user client applications use jQuery Mobile and jQuery and are packaged using Phonegap and other tools.

All up I’ve written around 7,000 lines of Javascript so far and have learnt one heck of a lot along the way. And this time around I’ve designed everything to work in any language! There is still some way to go before we’ll be ready to start shipping the first apps, but we are making excellent progress. Stefan was only able to start using the first Alpha release of the Builder about 6 weeks ago and has already completed the first application, which happens to the biggest and most complex of the series of applications we’ll be producing.

On the side I’m am spending as much time as possible researching ways to accomplish my ideal Surfulater type app, with information replicated on all devices. To say this is complicated is an understatement. The research alone is very much one step forward, two steps back, however I’ve never been one to be easily deterred.

So that should give everyone a clearer picture of what is happening in my world at this time.

If I don’t post again before Xmas, and given my track record of late I probably won’t, I wish you and yours a very happy and safe xmas and all the best for 2012.

Neville

PS. It’s nice to have blogged again.

Q) To change your mind and continue using Surfulater we would have to?
For the price of this software the trial is extremely limiting for us to determine its true useability.
The standards nowadays for the retail software industry is to allow the prospective buyer to truely test drive a full product’s potential during the 21 day trial period; especially with the restrictive return policy of your company.

Here’s my problem. The one and only limitation in the Trial Version of Surfulater is that it doesn’t allow you to create new knowledge bases. It comes with a Knowledge Base which includes some sample content which you can delete if you want. There are no restrictions on the number of articles you can add to this Knowledge Base, the type of articles you can create, nor any other limitations of any kind. That said I agree it would be better if you could create new empty KB’s and we may well enable this at some point, but I hardly consider it’s a show stopper.

The other comment which really got to me is “with the restrictive return policy of your company” – huh! If you look at our ‘Buy Now‘ page you will see:

Return/Refund Policy

Please download and evaluate the Surfulater Free Trial before purchasing, to avoid unnecessary refunds. Our FAQ page has information on extending your free trial period. If for any reason you aren’t 100% satisfied with your purchase, contact us within 30 days for a full refund.

I must be missing something, but how on earth is this restrictive?

The Feedback Form ends as follows:

If you would like us to contact you please enter your E-mail address.

Unfortunately most people don’t afford us the opportunity to respond, so there’s nothing we can do other than write blog posts like this one. (:

-Neville

You can access the special here and click on “I Want This” to be notified when it goes live. You can also share this special with your friends and colleagues using the various “Share this deal” buttons – “Twitter, Facebook, E-Mail etc.” on the special page.

If you’ve been thinking about buying Surfulater, then this is a great opportunity to do so at a great discount price. Make sure you don’t miss out because you’ll be waiting for quite some time for a special as good as this one.

-Neville

V3.41.0.0 is an update to work with the latest Web Browsers from Mozilla and Microsoft, namely Firefox Version 4 and Internet Explorer Version 9. It will also work with older versions of these browsers and continues to work with Google Chrome.

My next blog post (out tomorrow) is titled “Why Google Chrome is my Web Browser of choice.”

Have a great week everyone.
Nevile

I used to be pretty sceptical about cloud computing and web applications, however I am slowly but surely changing my thinking and I am using some web applications on a very regular basis. The Web, its capabilities, development tools, languages and libraries have come an awfully long way in the past 5+ years, yet it still feels like we are just at the beginning of much bigger things.

To me the most important benefit of ‘the cloud’ is the ability to have access to ‘my information’ and applications on any PC that has a Web Browser and an Internet connection. Further this also encompasses use on my amazing new Android Smartphone.

Now as wonderful as this brave new world of cloud computing is, there are some show-stopping downsides. At least four come to mind:

1. When you don’t have an Internet connection, most likely all work stops.
2. When you have a slow Internet connection, productivity slows accordingly.
3. The company whose Web Application or Service you now rely on pulls the plug on it or they change it so much as it no longer meets your needs.
4. Same company goes out of business.

As an end user what concerns me most here is that I no longer have “my information” in my own hands (it is somewhere in the cloud) and I potentially have no way to move forward in the worst case scenarios of points 3 & 4. I might have many years worth of important information that I can no longer access or utilize. So to use ‘the cloud’ you must have absolute trust and faith in the companies or organizations providing you with whatever services you are consuming.

To my mind the ideal scenario is to have a combination of desktop software with “my information” on my PC that is synchronized to ‘the cloud’ and to other PC’s. Then take this one step further and have a Web Application that I can use in any Web Browser on any PC to gain access to “my information” for the times when I am not at “my PC”.

This gives me the best of both worlds – I can keep working whether I have an Internet connection or not, I get ownership back of “my information”, I can continue to use the desktop application no matter what happens to the company who provided it and I will have better prospects of migrating “my information” to a replacement application should the need arise. If the company does go out of business or kills the application I will loose the Web Application and probably the synchronization capabilities, however I still have the Desktop App and “my information” on my PC, so the situation is nowhere near as dire.

This is very much the direction I want to see Surfulater head in, allowing our users to access and utilize their information wherever they are, while keeping their own local databases and being able to access same regardless of whether they have an Internet connection or not. And of course having their local databases synchronized across the PC’s they have Surfulater installed on, work, home etc.

I’d been thinking about writing this blog post for some time and finally hit the tipping point when I read on the weekend that there is talk of Yahoo closing their Delicious bookmarking service down. This appears to have created a degree of panic amongst Delicious users who are now searching for a replacement service. Some have imported their Delicious data into Surfulater, however their Tags aren’t coming across because the XBEL format does not include Tags in its specification.  We should be able to update Surfulater to resolve this.

Merry Xmas to all and keep on Surfulater’n.

Neville

PS. We’ve got a great Xmas special running with a 50% discount on Surfulater – see image at top right of the Surfulater.com web pages. This is our very first Xmas special, I thought it was time we did. Do tell your friends, family and colleagues.

Google Chrome Context Menu

This works in the same way as our other Surfulater Extensions for Firefox and Internet Explorer, by adding Surfulater to the Chrome right click context menu. For some background on the Chrome Extension see my previous post.

The next important new feature in this release is the ability to remove HTML markup from article content. There are times when captured web page content includes styles and formatting etc. which simply add clutter and we don’t want. Remove HTML Markup comes in handy here and lets you choose various types of markup to remove, including all HTML markup.

The menu shown below is available whenever content is being edited.

Editing context menu showing: Remove HTML Markup.

I suggest you try each of the menu options to see the result. You can always press Escape to Cancel the changes and keep the original content.

A perennial problem that a very small number of people have is the inability to add new articles from their Web Browser and see images in existing articles. This is typically caused by either Firewall or Anti Virus software blocking access to Surfulater’s built-in Web Server. I’ve written about this issue before here and here. Well it happened again recently to a new user and this time I decided it was time to write some code to check access was working and notify the user if not, preempting some frustration on their part and support requests on ours. I’ve also added a new Troubleshooting section to the Surfulater Help which provides assistance with this issue.

A nasty bug which was introduced in the last release has also been fixed. It was related to the new capability added in that release to enable articles to be dragged from the content window to the knowledge tree. The result was a random, very difficult to reproduce crash. An big thanks to the various folks that sent in the crash reports.

A variety of other issues have been addressed including some Unicode issues with Knowledge Tree Filters. They are all outlined in the V3 Release Notes in the Help.

As always we trust you benefit from the work we’ve done in this release and look forward to your feedback and suggestions. The Surfulater Download page is where it’s been for a while now.

-Neville

Time has passed and Chrome’s popularity continues to rise (I can now see why). For us software developers the good news is the Google team behind Chrome keep working on its Extension programming interface, recently adding the missing features we need for the Surfulater Extension.

What all of this means, is that I am pleased to report, we now have a Surfulater Chrome Extension that is 86% complete and in testing so far, is working very well indeed.

In fact I’d have to say this would be the best extension we’ve developed so far, largely due to the great job the folks at Google have done in designing Chrome’s Extension interface and the way Chrome extensions work.  Also Chrome’s debugging capabilities seem smoother than other browsers. Overall it has been a pleasure developing the Surfulater Chrome Extension and Plugin, which isn’t something I can say for the other Web Browsers.

Google Chrome is a very interesting product, which along with important new functionality in HTML5 and future developments that Google is working on, opens the doors to new and interesting ways for folks like us to create and develop products. I understand the folks at Mozilla are making fairly major changes to Extensions in Firefox V4, however I’ve not yet had time to look into this. There is no doubt in my mind that they have quite some catching up to do, compared with Google Chrome. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off.

Neville

• Does it solve my particular problem.
• Is it easy to use.
• Does it have the set of features and capabilities that I need.
• Will it continue to meet my needs as I become more adept.
• Does it include good documentation.
• Will it save me time (will I be more productive).
• Is it worth the cost (both financial and time to learn & use).
• Is it robust and well supported.
• Also see: Before purchasing software

Software developers must take all of these issues and more into account when we design our products. I’ve specifically not used the term software or program here as a product is a lot more than just the software. Unfortunately there are quite a few software developers that don’t realize this.

Basically we perform a juggling act, continually weighing up the pros and cons of everything we do. New feature requests must be assessed on the value they add to the product, how broad the interest for our users might be, the impact they have on usability and added complexity, extra documentation and additional support (costs).  See my Creeping Featuritis post for more on this.

So developing a product that ticks all of the right boxes  is always challenging. Exposure to customer needs, our overall depth of experience and an affinity with the product all help.

Let me finish by telling you that this was not a post that I had intended to write. Instead I was going to write about a review of Surfulater that has recently been published. The review was undertaken by three different people responding to the same set of questions. The outcome is quite interesting and clearly shows how various people can view the same product so differently. It also demonstrates the difficulty there is in ticking all the right boxes.  I’ll hold over linking to the review for another post.

Neville

We receive customer feedback on a regular basis and it is usually very positive, however we rarely receive critical comments from people who have tried Surfulater and found it wanting, or simply doesn’t meet their needs. These critical comments are just as, if not even more important to us, ensuring we are doing the best we can to evolve Surfulater to satisfy broader community needs.  I am hopeful this new uninstall feedback form will give us some new found insights.

Flipping back to positive feedback, Jason Ebaugh, Founder of APIS Scientific sent me the following e-mail last week, which I am reproducing here in full with his permission.

I found out about surfulater on http://www.outlinersoftware.com/

I have been using it less than 24 hours, but have done a lot of research on the web in that time (as is typical for me).  Even in this short amount of time, it is obvious that Surfulator is a lot slicker than my previous method. I have found myself looking back thinking how much faster things could have gone if I would have been using it all along.

So, so far, so good!
JasonE

I have to say that feedback such as this is great to receive and helps reinforce that we have developed a good product that people find truly useful. Thanks again Jason.

The Outliner Software web site focuses on discussing Outlining software, however it also ventures into Information Management software and related areas. A number of the regulars there are Surfulater users, so you will see it mentioned from time to time. I also make the occasional appearance.

All feedback is important to us, whether you are new to Surfulater, just checking it out or have been using it for ages, we do want to hear from you. Our new Support Center has a Suggestions Category which is a good place to start.

Neville