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Monday, April 21, 2008
The XHTML code editor in Raven (version 0.9.279) is almost feature complete with following enhancements.
- Find and Replace.
- Zoom.
- Paste as XHTML.
- Text Formatting.
- Brace (< and >) matching and XHTML tag and attribute name highlighting (syntax color coding).
- XHTML schema valid code completion.
- XHTML validation.
- XHTML code cleanup and Tidy services.
When using the code editor, note that the content of the editor should content of a XHTML <body> tag. Do not enter <xhtml>, <head> and <body> tags. Use only child tags of the <body> tag such as <p>.
Find and Replace:
The Find/Replace dialog is exactly the same dialog used in WYSIWYG Designer. Press Ctrl+F (or EditMenu->Find) to bring up the dialog.
Zoom Controls:
Press ctrl and + (plus) or ctrl and - (minus) to increase or decrease the XHTML editor font size.
Paste as XHTML (Ctrl + Shift + V):
This is similar to functionality found in the Designer. The difference between Paste (Ctrl + V) and Paste as XHTML (Ctrl + Shift + V) is that the latter will convert the content into a xhtml code fragment before pasting the content into the editor. For example if you copied the following plain text content to the clipboard:
This is the first paragraph
Second line.
Second paragraph
2nd line
3rd line
then pasting as xhtml insert the following formatted code:
<p>
This is the first paragraph
<br/>
Second line.
</p>
<p>
Second paragraph
<br/>
2nd line
<br/>
3rd line
</p>
Text Formatting:
Text formatting toolbar buttons and keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Bold or Ctrl+B, etc.) are available in XHTML editor. To use it, simply select the text and press the toolbar button (such as Bold). The appropriate markup is then wrapped around your text selection. For example, if the text selection is
Hello World
then the final markup would be
<strong>Hello World</strong>
If you do not have any text selected when you invoke one of operations (e.g. Bold or Ctrl+B), then the relevant markup is inserted with the cursor positioned between the open and close tag. For example, the Bold button would insert
<strong>[cursor]</strong>
where [cursor] indicates the cursor.
Note: Be careful when you apply markup on selected text as the markup is applied to the whole selection even if the selected text had partial markup. For example if the selected text is
em>[cursor]</em>
(i.e. includes partial text for <em> open tag), then after applying Bold, the final markup would look like
<strong>em>[cursor]</em></strong>
Notice that the <strong> tag was applied over the partial <em> tag since it was part of the selection.
Code Completion:
The auto complete list is a list of schema valid xhtml and css keywords that can be inserted at current document (cursor) position. The list is automatically shown when you type in a start tag "<" or an end tag "</" character sequence. This list will also automatically hide if any of the characters you typed did not match a tag in the list shown.You can also display the list by pressing Ctrl + Space (e.g. after the < character).
Below is a screen shot showing the tag list at the top (root) level:
Once you are inside a tag, Ctrl+Space will show the list of available attribute names for the current element.
If you are in a style attribute, Ctrl+Space will show the list of available CSS style names and or values depending on the context. Similarly, attribute value options for href, class attributes are shown when available.
The list for class attribute values shown are based on what you have already used in the current document (post). The href values are also based on list of links you have in the current working document. For example, soon after typing http:// you should see a list of possible matches links based on other links in the document. Screen shot below shows the auto complete on font-family CSS style attribute:
The auto-completion on a close tag character sequence </ will show the matching closing tag (when possible i.e. as long as your content is well formed).
XHTML Validation:
This version of Raven also allows you to validate your post entry using XHTML 1.0 Strict or Transitional by pressing the Validate button on the tool bar. The validation messages with warning/error line numbers are shown in the message list below the editor along with corresponding "markers" (icons) on the editor margin.
Note: validation is performed against your post - and not against your Blog site. You should make sure that your Blog site is XHTML compliant (most are based on templates).
XHTML Clean up and Tidy:
This tool bar option allows you to manually run a basic code clean up process (e.g. convert plain text to xhtml, clean up MS Word tags etc.) followed by a call to W3C Tidy. Note that is also automatically performed when you save or switch to the Designer.
Labels: editor, how-to
Monday, November 19, 2007
Alpha version 0.8.143 is ready!
Link: http://www.zoundry.com/raven/builds/zRaven-0.8.143.exe
Release Notes
Enhancements
- All New Template Manager - allows you to add and remove templates and associate them with your blog or account
Bug Fixes
- Fixed error: 'local variable 'idx' referenced before assignment' in Links view
Known Bugs
- Standard Perspective - Blog Post preview sometimes steals the focus from other controls
----
Ok guys - we finally have the template manager to a point where we'd like you guys to test it out. It's still not 100% there, and the UI for the manager is a little rought yet, but it should be functional and therefore testable. Please have a go at it and let us know what you think (and if there are any problems).
There are several parts to the new template handling:
1) The template manager dialog - lets you add and remove templates
2) Blog Post Editor - Preview panel now lets you choose between your templates (it pre-selects one when applicable)
3) Standard Perspective - Blog Post Preview should use the right template, where applicable
4) Account/Blog Prefs - there is a new section that will let you change which template is the default to use for a particular account or blog
Please note: templates downloaded using previous builds will no longer work. I apologize for this - I just didn't do it right the first time around.
From now until we release into beta, we will be focusing on bug fixes. There won't be any new features until we are in beta. Labels: editor, raven, templates, zoundry
Monday, August 27, 2007
Zoundry Raven Alpha version 0.8.88 is now ready:
http://www.zoundry.com/raven/builds/zRaven-0.8.88.exe
Give it a try and let us know what you think. Any and all feedback is welcome.
Release Notes
Enhancements
- Added spell-check UI (simple/standard spell-check dialog)
- Added find/replace UI support (basic dialog)
- Added an editor toolbar button for "Extended Entry" marker
- Added a right-click context menu that appears when right-clicking on an image in the editor
- Context menu item for copy link/copy image location in UI
- Context menu option for removing TextMore marker
- Download main toolbar button is now a drop-down, offering various download options
- Created a new Progress Dialog that is shown when publishing/downloading tasks
- Added new main toolbar button: "View (on-line)" that is enabled for Blogs and Documents
- Added new main toolbar button: "Add Blog Account"
- Added new main toolbar button: "Add Media Storage"
- UI now supports publishing to multiple blogs! (well, up to 3).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a problem downloading templates for Typepad blogs
- Editor toolbar buttons (cut, paste, undo, etc) are now disabled when in preview tab
- Fixed a unicode error that was happening when publishing to Blogger
- Main toolbar buttons now become active when selecting a Post in the "Where Found" list
- Temp files are now cleaned up when the app starts
Other
- Renamed "Media Store" to "Media Storage" to avoid confusion
Labels: editor, media store, multiple blogs, raven, toolbar, zoundry
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
 Today I have a couple of screenshots that I would like to show. My intention was to write up just a quick post about a new UI feature that is minor but often requested. Just to show you that we really do value our user feedback, the screenshot to the right shows off two things. First of all, it shows a still early capture of the new blog post editor. We're not done with it yet, but hopefully you will agree that it's looking good. Secondly, two more screenshots below show how the toolbars in Raven can be easily customized. Many of our users have complained that our toolbars are too small, particularly in the editor. To address this, we have made it so the user can easily change the size of the toolbars. To do this, simply right-click on the toolbar and choose from the handy context menu. Note that this also reinforces something I talked about in an earlier post: simplifying the UI by relying more on context. In this case, rather than clutter the UI with a variety of menu items in the main menu or user preferences, the user's toolbar size preference is decided via a context menu on the toolbar itself.
Screenshot of the toolbar menu:
How the toolbar looks after choosing "32x32" and "Show Text":
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Labels: editor, raven, toolbar, zoundry
Friday, February 9, 2007
One of the challenges we face when designing Raven is how we satisfactorily handle posting to multiple blogs. One of the features of Raven (and Zoundry Blog Writer as well) is the ability to publish the same blog entry to multiple blogs. Our internal data model supports this, but we have struggled to come up with a user interface design that really works. At the same time, we recognize that most of our users will never use this feature. So the challenge becomes designing a user interface that elegantly allows the user to publish to multiple blogs, but doesn't clutter up the interface when not being used.
With Zoundry Raven I think we have started to make some good strides in this direction. When a blog post is being composed, Raven allows the user to configure the publishing settings. The idea is to treat the publishing settings as more tightly coupled with the blog post than it was in Zoundry Blog Writer 1.0. The internal data model hasn't really changed much, only the user interface. I think some screen shots are in order.
 First, the user must choose a blog. The combo box that pops up makes it easy to find the blog in question. It even includes filtering capabilities for those users with a lot of blogs/accounts (again, we are trying to build a UI that works for light users and power users). Once the blog is selected, the user can configure the publishing meta data by clicking on the associated "Configure..." drop-down. What this screen shot does not show, but I think you can easily imagine, is what happens when the user wants to publish to multiple blogs. We will be adding some sort of little + or "more" button that will add an additional blog drop down. The user will be able to add as many blogs as necessary.
 For each blog selected, the user must configure the publishing information. As mentioned, this is done by clicking the "Configure..." drop-down associated with each Blog drop-down. The "Configure..." drop-down will let the user configure various publishing meta information, such as the post date, draft, categories, trackbacks, etc. It's still a bit unclear exactly what data will go in here, but I think it gives you a pretty good idea of where we are headed. Publishing meta information can actually get pretty complex, but I think this is a pretty decent way of getting all of that information out of the way. The idea being that, when editing a blog post, the user is primarily concerned with editing the actual content. To that end, we have tried to minimize the vertical space take up by the blog post's meta data (blogs, title, tagwords, etc).
There are a couple other things to note. First, when authoring a new post, the default settings for the publishing information will be inherited based on account and/or blog specific settings. For instance, the user will be able to set a default value for the "Upload only thumbnail images" option which can be configured at the Blog level or at the Account level. That way, frequent publishing options can be configured once rather than having to specify them for each new post.
Second, any changes made to publishing options will be saved with the blog post even if the post is not yet published. It would really be a pain if that information was lost just because the user wanted to work on the post later.
If anyone has any thoughts on what other ways we could improve the UI, we are more than happy to hear from you. Just comment here on the blog or post to the forum.
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Labels: editor, multiple blogs, raven, zoundry
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