The fifth (and likely the final beta) build release (version 0.9.360) is now available for download. This release contains mostly bug fixes and a few enhancements.

• Added support for Flickr media storage (image upload).
• HTTP Proxy support. See Tools -> Preferences -> General -> Proxy. Note that the current implementation does not support Google ClientLogin (i.e. Blogger.com and Picasa). Updated July 24, 2008 - Version 0.9.363 supports Google ClientLogin via HTTP Proxy - please see this forum post.
• When image files are dropped into the editor, a dialog box is shown to allow you to choose the thumbnail size settings.
• Width and height attributes of <img> tags are automatically generated if they are not set (images without these attributes do not work on WordPress.com hosted site).
• The <img> tag ALT attribute is now automatically set (derived from the filename) when you drag and drop an image into the editor.
• When you drop attachments/files into the editor, the <a> tag TITLE attribute will be set with the file name and file size.
• The Src input field in the Image Properties dialog now supports paths that start with underscores as well as UNC paths.
• The XML-RPC layers uses local Date Time format (instead of UTC) for TextPattern. This is a work around until TextPattern's XML-RPC layer plugin supports UTC.
• The src attribute in <img> elements for Picasa urls contain the imgmax parameter. This parameter is now also applied to href attributes in <a> elements. E.g. link from a thumbnail image to larger image. (If the imgmax parameter is not added on to the URL, then Picasa server returns the large images as attachments which forces the browser to prompt the "Open With" or "Save As" dialog.)
• WordPress specific:
• • When you remove existing tags for a post and update the post, the tags are removed from the WP entry.
  • You can now set WP per-post password.
  • You can now change the WP post status such as Pending, Private etc.

WordPress 2.6 users should enable Remote Publishing on the WP server.

As usual, many thanks goes to all our users for taking the time to send us feedback as well as bug reports.

Labels: beta, download, portable, raven, raven2go, releaseNotes

Our fourth public beta build release (version 0.9.284) is now available for download. This build has most of the defects that were submitted during the last beta period fixed as well as the following enhancements and features:

• Designer
• • You can now select multiple paragraphs and press the bullet button to get multiple bullets.
  • Added a toolbar button for the <blockquote> (the indent button still inserts a <blockquote> tag).
  • Toolbar buttons to insert html tags such as <H1>, <H2>, <code> etc. Read more.
    
• XHTML Editor - lot of enhancements on this editor. See this post for more details.
• • The current row and column position is now displayed in the status bar.
  • Find and Replace functionality.
  • Paste as XHTML.
  • Toolbar button implementations for bold, italic and underline text formatting.
  • XHTML schema and CSS valid code completion and call tips.
  • XHTML validation.
  • Clean up and W3C Tidy.
    
• Templates
• • Javascript in the Preview page is now disabled.
  • Added BaseHref support when downloading Blog Templates.
    
• Publishing
• • You now have the option to remove newlines when publishing your posts. For those of you who use Blogger.com and have enabled their "Convert Line Breaks" option should check the "Remove Newlines" check box. This check box is available in the Account and Blog preferences UI. This option removes newlines (so that Blogger will not convert those to additional <br/> tags). Newlines in <pre> and <javascript> tags are not removed to observe the xml:space="preserve" option.
  • XML namespace prefixes (e.g. xml:space="preserve") are removed during publishing. This is mainly to avoid support some WordPress plug-ins that are not XML aware.
  • XML-RPC based file uploads for WP now also send the file MIME content-type. The content-type is needed by WordPress 2.5 to display thumbnails in its Media Library. Thanks to Kirk M. to reporting this defect (among others) and allowing us to use a test server hosted on his machine.
    
• Raven To Go (Portable Version) - When you drag and drop (or link to) image or files from the host machine's hard drive, these resources will be copied to the portable thumb drive when you save your post. Note that this process may take a few seconds (for moderate size resources) since the files need to be copied to a slower device (e.g thumb drive).
  
• Application UI
• • You can now delete only the local copy of a blog post without deleting it from the server.
  • Raven now remembers if the main app window was maximized, so it will start up maximized if it was maximized when it was shut down.
  • Added "Collapse All" button to the Account Navigator - this button will collapse all of the nodes in the tree.
  • Account Navigator now remembers which node was selected when Raven was closed.
  • Pressing the "Dashboard" button in the Account Navigator will now deselect any node that was previously selected.
  • Partial translation language bundles for Spanish (es_MX, about 60% done) and Chinese (zh_CN, about 25% done). Many thanks to Fëaluin (es_MX) and MaoMen (zh_CN) for getting the translations started. We also want to mention that Marcos Silva was one of the early testers to start on a Portuguese (Brazilian) translation, but unfortunately, most of the work he did was lost due to a defect in out translator tool.
    
• Framework - major changes to underlying background task support:
• • Improved synchronization to avoid errors, stack traces.
  • Background Task window should now update properly in all cases.
  • Standard Perspective views have been changed to better handle concurrency (better thread synchronization)
  • Added a section in the Main Application Window's status bar to indicate the current background task activity.
  • Canceling bg tasks should work better now.

Labels: beta, download, portable, raven, raven2go, releaseNotes

A question that we recently had asked on the forums was "How do I backup my Raven profile data?" This particular user was interested in doing this due to a needed re-install of Windows. I think it's a good question in general, so here's how you do it.

Raven stores all user data in your profile. You may have as many profiles as you want, but most users will likely have only one. You use the Zoundry Profile Manager to add, import, create new profiles. For backup purposes, simply backup the entire profile directory (or directories). By default, the profiles are located in your Application Data directory, for example:

C:\Documents and Settings\ZoundryMan\Application Data\Zoundry\Zoundry Raven

Of course, unless you log in as "ZoundryMan", that part of the path will be different (your username). For the record, I don't mind if you use "ZoundryMan" as the username for your computer. :)

If you are using Raven2Go, then your profiles will be in a "profiles" directory within the Zoundry Raven installation directory, for example:

E:\Portable Apps\Zoundry Raven\profiles

When restoring from your backup, all you need to do is copy those profile directories back to your computer. Feel free to put them wherever you want, although in most cases putting them back where they were before is best. Once you have done that (and presumably re-installed Raven) it is a simple matter to add them back in. Run Raven, and choose New in the Profile Manager. You will see the Create New Profile dialog. In that dialog, name your profile whatever you want, and point the path to one of your newly restored profiles.

That's all there is to it.

Labels: backup, beta, how-to, raven, zoundry

Our third public beta build release (version 0.9.250) is now available for download. This build has most of the defects that were submitted during the last beta period fixed as well as the following enhancements and features:

• Translation Tool - made some improvements to the Translation Tool, since some of our translators were experiencing crashes and losing all their data! I can't guarantee that this build fixes the crash problems (we hope so), but we added "journaling" to the UI so we can recover any data lost. If you are translating Raven, and you experience a crash, contact us and we can help you recover anything you may have lost.
• Raven2Go - when you install Raven, you now have the option to install it as a Portable Application.
• • When you install, you will notice that there is a new installer page. Use it if you want to install to a portable drive (or if you just want us to stay out of your registry).
  • If you copy/paste an image (e.g. via Photoshop or Gimp) into Raven, we will create a local image resource in your profile directory.
  • If you want to make sure any other images are available wherever you go, you will need to copy them to your portable drive prior to linking to them in your blog post(s). We will be fixing that in a future release.
• Fixed Picasa hot linking issue. Images uploaded to Picasa Web should display correctly. Raven will choose the appropriate image url on Picasa based on your image width and height properties.
• Paste images from Windows clipboard. For example, copy and paste images or a selection within an image from Photoshop, Gimp etc. to Raven.
• Fixed image and link unicode issues. All img src and anchor href values are now in IDNA (Punycode) format. This is mainly to support older browsers such as IE6. The values within the designer (e.g. Image Properties dialog) will still be in unicode.
• Fixed WordPress delete post issue where the post was first deleted directly from WordPress and was not able to remove it from Raven.
• Canceling background tasks (publish, template download, etc) should now work better.

Labels: beta, download, portable, raven, raven2go, releaseNotes

The next beta release of Zoundry Raven will support the ability to install as a portable application (e.g. onto a flash or other portable drive). This is a feature that was requested by many users, and I'm happy to say that we have finally finished the initial support for it. In fact, I am composing this post using Raven2Go installed on a Memorex TravelDrive. It's a bit slow when compared to running off a hard drive (obviously) but it works pretty darn well!

The changes to Raven to support Raven2Go are, for the most part, hidden from users. There are a couple of things that I should mention, however. First, there is a new page in the Raven Installer. This custom installer page simply has a checkbox that can be checked if the user wants to install Raven as a portable application. If the checkbox is checked, then no application information will be saved to the registry. In addition, when Raven is run after being installed in this way, it will run in "Portable" mode.

The other relevant change for users when Raven is in "Portable" mode is where profiles are stored by default (and where the profiles.xml registry file is located). When in portable mode, Raven looks for a "profiles" directory in the install location. For instance, if you install Raven2Go to E:\TravelApps\Raven, then the profiles.xml file and the default location for newly created profiles will be E:\TravelApps\Raven\profiles.

Everything else that's different between Raven2Go and Raven is under the covers, so users shouldn't have to worry about it. For the most part, it simply means that where we used to refer to files in your profile using absolute paths, we will now use relative paths. This should allow you to take your portable drive to different machines (where the drive letter might be different) and everything should still work.

One thing to note for existing users - I would recommend doing a clean uninstall/install of Raven2Go if you have previously been using Raven on a portable device. The uninstall step will remove all of the stuff from the registry that Raven put in there (not much, but you clearly don't want it in there). Then the re-install will be clean (little/no registry entries).

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Labels: beta, command line options, development, portable, raven, raven2go, zoundry, zoundry raven raven2go portable

Our second public beta build release (version 0.9.223) is now available for download. This build has most of the defects that were submitted during the last beta period fixed as well as the following enhancements and features:

• Translation Tool - a new UI to help in translating Raven to other languages. If you would like to contribute, please let us know - directly from the Raven.
• No More Technorati Tags - well, unless you want it. You now have the option of selecting Technorati or other tag sites. Read more.
• Blog This - command line options to allow external programs launch Raven. Read more.
• Editor Font - you can now chang the working font name and size of the Designer editor. Read more.
• Trackback - you can now send trackbacks. Enter the trackback URLs in the blog post settings user interface.
• File Attachment Upload - upload non-image files by simply dragging and dropping them into the designer. Read more.
• Bug/defect fixes.

Labels: beta, download, releaseNotes, zoundry raven