The download is located here and is Version 3.42.10.0. Close all copies of Firefox and close Surfulater. Then start Surfulater, answer the prompt about installing a new Extension. Then start Firefox and accept the new Surfulater Extension when it prompts you. The FF Extension is also Version 3.42.10.0

-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

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

The new V3.31.0.0 release contains several nice new features along with the usual variety of bug fixes.  The first new feature is the ability to drag articles from the content window to either the Knowledge tree or to the ‘See Also’ field of another article in the content window.

When the mouse cursor is positioned over the Label column of an article it changes shape to a hand cursor, which indicates that a drag can be performed. This is available when the normal Knowledge Tree view is selected, as with other tree drag & drop operations.

Article drag can commence

When the left button is pressed and the mouse is moved a little, the cursor changes to a drag image showing the Title of the article as shown here.

Article drag commenced

This is the same as what you see when dragging an article in the Knowledge tree. The final step is to move the mouse to wherever you want the article to go and then release the left button to perform the drop operation. To cancel a drag & drop press Escape.

The next new feature is the ability to quickly Tag articles using selected text.

Tag articles from selected content

In this example we selected the word museum in an article, then right clicked on it to open the context menu and chose the new Add Tag from selection menu item. The article is then tagged with museum. The selected text can of course include multiple words. Note that this can be used in both both view and edit modes. A handy new feature I’m sure you will find useful.

For more details on this release see the V3 Release Notes topic in the Surfulater Help and the related Help topics, which have been updated accordingly.

That’s it for this post. We hope you find the new features in this release useful and look forward to your comments as always. You can head on over to the Surfulater Download page now.

Neville

I am well aware of certain areas I’d like to see more work done on, and some further pages I’d like to see included. That said the new site is now far enough advanced for it to go live and replace the original site, which is what we’ve done. It is also time to get back to work on Surfulater itself.

Seasoned Surfulater’ers will notice the new Surfulater Support Center, which will in time completely replace the existing support forums. (At least that’s the plan). You will also notice it is devoid of content, which will be addressed as you start new discussions and as we build up the Knowledge Base/FAQ area. I’ll write more about this shortly, suffice to say it was time for a new start with package that better met our collective needs.

Another new and noteworthy addition is our Surfulater Mailing List which we’ll use as yet another way to keep in touch with you. And as a special bonus we are offering subscribers an instant discount when they activate their subscription. This is a great opportunity for your friends and colleagues to start using Surfulater, so please do tell them about it.

As is often the case this turned out to be a bigger project than we envisaged, however I really couldn’t be happier with the final result and with knowing that the core we’ve put together will serve us all well into the future.

I mentioned in the last blog post that the new site would be built using a Content Management System or CMS. My original thoughts were to outsource the production of the new site using the CMS and I found someone who I feel would have done a very good job. However in the end I decided that I really needed a thorough understanding of the CMS in order to further develop the site and also to maintain it. And so outsourcing was scratched and the journey to learn the CMS was begun.

As often happens with new projects and new tools great progress is made early on and you are lulled into thinking that pace will continue, but this is not always so, as was the case here. I commented on the weekend that I feel like I am a hurdler at the moment, instead of a software developer. I run along smoothly for a bit and around the bend and out of sight a hurdle appears. With all my might I get over it, only for the pattern to repeat over and over again, or at least that’s how it seems.

However I do really feel that all of the hurdles are now behind me, no more issues to set me back, just producing the content, organizing it and testing everything works as it should. I have to say that even though my schedule has blown out and that I am behind on work on Surfulater it has been and continues to be a worthwhile exercise, and one I am glad I took on board and didn’t outsource. I’ve learned a lot, verified my choice of CMS was the correct one and have set up a system that will hold us in good stead for the foreseeable future.

And here is that glimpse I promised – it is today’s snapshot of the new home page.

Work continues apace and will hopefully see the light of day before too much longer. I really can’t wait to get back to work on Surfulater.

We will receive the final production ready material in the next few days, and then need to embark on first of all modifying it to work with our newly chosen content management system (CMS), finalizing the design for the new site structure and then writing new content and rewriting existing content for it. It is hard to say how long this will all take, however I would love to see the new site up by mid May.

In order to meet the requirements of the new CMS we’ve had to upgrade several of the major software packages on our Web Server. This is work I do not like doing as something always seems to break when big changes (or sometimes even small ones) are made to Web servers. So this time our Forums, Issue Tracking system and some other stuff broke. I started upgrading the Web server on Friday last and then spent most of the weekend trying to get everything working properly again. The Forums were off-line for a day and by far caused the biggest technical headache. The Issue Tracker is still not working, but I have yet to take a serious look at it.

Now that the Web Server has had its big update and appears to be running quicker and better than ever, I have decided to upgrade the Forum software, which is also overdue. You may therefore see the Forum closed again in the coming days, though hopefully for just a short period. E-Mail support is of course available as always. So that’s the second lot of good news.

And if that’s not enough I’d also like to update the blog software and want to look at a new theme for it, as it is also due for a makeover.

All of this is about helping us to deliver a better user experience for visitors to our site, especially for our Surfulater Customers.

Some people think a software product is just the application you run. To us is it much more. It is a complete package that encompasses the software, documentation, support (both pre and post sales), the web site and the blog. We continue to strive to deliver the best package we can so that our users have a great experience using Surfulater.

Knowledge Tree snapshots remember which folders are expanded and collapsed (ie. the shape of the tree) along with the current selection and Knowledge Tree Filter settings. They expand on a simpler notion of a bookmark and are far more useful.

Large knowledge bases with lots of folders and articles can become unwieldy to the point where you waist too much time opening and closing folders, as you work your way around the tree. Snapshots solve this issue by quickly restoring the tree to a previously saved state.

This screen shots show’s the “New Snapshot” dialog. Snapshots are kept in each Knowledge Base and you can create as many as you want.

You can restore any snapshot by selecting it from the Snapshots menu on the dropdown arrow on the Knowledge Tree toolbar Snapshots button.

And you can rename and delete snapshots using the “Manage Tree Snapshots” menu item shown above.

See the Help Topic: Power Features | Knowledge Tree Snapshots for more information.

Knowledge Tree Filtering has been updated to only include the folders that are expanded for the currently matching filter, when filtering is turned off. Previously all folders that matched as each letter was typed for the filter text were left expanded. Filtering has also been updated to restore the Tree to the original expanded/collapsed folders and selection when Backspace removes all characters in the filter string.

When I first implemented Tree Filters I thought these behaviours were quite reasonable, but after using it for a while and following on from comments on our support forum this clearly was not the case. These changes considerably improve the usability of Filters.

The new Tree Snapshots also work in conjunction with Tree Filters enabling you to save and restore filtered tree views.

For complete details of the new features and fixes in this release see the V3 Release Notes topic in the Surfulater Help.

Downloads are in the usual place on the Surfulater home and download pages.