BlueGriffon.org - Progress

One-click Template-based documents in BlueGriffon

BlueGriffon — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:31:00 +0100

You have no HTML+CSS knowlege or just not the will and energy to create a new document template yourself today? This add-on will be for you : create a document based on existing online free templates in one single click and start typing!

See the embedded video below for more details.

Preview of BlueGriffon 1.4

BlueGriffon — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:39:00 +0100

A preview of forthcoming BlueGriffon 1.4 is now available. We still miss some localization strings for 1.4 and if you think you can help, please take a look at this page.

Here's the changelog for 1.4 from 1.3.1, the important items show a disc instead of an empty circle:

hidden preference bluegriffon.defaults.forceLF to force saving documents into Unix mode (carriage returns are one LF). To enable that, open the Preferences, select the Advanced panel and open the configuration editor. Right-click in the main area and select New > Boolean. Enter the name of the new preference and set it to true. To revert to the original platform-dependant behaviour, reset the property or turn it to false. UI for this will be added for v1.5.
switching to MAR files for updates
Tip of the Day (the tips themselves are not ready yet)
use standard descriptors for ltr and rtl; b=287
automatic detection of changes in external files linked into documents edited by BlueGriffon; b=325
wrong mimetypes switching to source view
get rid of duplicate anchors in Link Insertion dialog
force reload stylesheets if they were edited
no check if ID already given in CSS Properties panel; b=194
Invalid class or ID in the CSS Properties panel freezes the app; b=167
Table properties dialog controls can show NaN; b=336
CSS Colors were always added as rgb() Values; b=97
Don't remove empty divs switching back from source to wysiwyg view; b=261
CodeMirror now used for all source views instead of Ace
Script Editor was always displayed in en-US
Insert > Stylesheets moved to Panels > Stylesheets.
Panels > Stylesheets now offers to edit embedded and local stylesheets through CodeMirror
folding and XML parsing error visibility added to Source View
folding and JS syntax error added to Script Editor (uses Reflect)
folding added to Stylesheets Editor
new table cells should not get vertical-align:top; b=314
class and aria role does not apply correctly to multiple td/th selection; b=329
don't use the width attribute on tables in html5; b=313
Format menu partially horked; b=312
cannot select/copy/paste select elements; b=331
Removing last class leaves an empty class attribute; b=320
impossible to create an attributeless hr element; b=322
a lot of minor fixes

Progress 20111223

BlueGriffon — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:35:00 +0100

no check if ID already given in CSS Properties panel; b=194
Invalid class or ID in the CSS Properties panel freezes the app; b=167
Table properties dialog controls can show NaN; b=336
CSS Colors are always added as rgb() Values; b=97
Don't remove empty divs switching back from source to wysiwyg view; b=261
CodeMirror now used for all source views instead of Ace
Script Editor was always displayed in en-US
Insert > Stylesheets moved to Panels > Stylesheets.
Panels > Stylesheets now offers to edit embedded and local stylesheets through CodeMirror
folding and XML parsing error visibility added to Source View
folding and JS syntax error added to Script Editor (uses Reflect)
folding added to Stylesheets Editor
a lot of minor fixes

Known issues:

when a stylesheet local to the hard disk is edited through Panels > Stylesheets, the Wysiwyg view is not updated yet; working on it.

Progress 20111215

BlueGriffon — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:43:00 +0100

new table cells should not get vertical-align:top; b=314
class and aria role does not apply correctly to multiple td/th selection; b=329
don't use the width attribute on tables in html5; b=313
Format menu partially horked; b=312
cannot select/copy/paste select elements; b=331
Removing last class leaves an empty class attribute; b=320
impossible to create an attributeless hr element; b=322

BlueGriffon updates, changes ahead

BlueGriffon — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:46:00 +0100

If everything goes well, BlueGriffon will use Mozilla's update system based on mar files starting with forthcoming version 1.4. I am currently ironing our release process for that but it already works in the test environments.

CSS Animations in BlueGriffon #2

BlueGriffon — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:16:00 +0100

I am making fast progress on my CSS 3 Animations Editor add-on for BlueGriffon. As I said, it will probably be the most powerful Animations editor on the market, allowing you to edit Animations wherever they come from. You can see a screenshot of what's currently on my screen, an early prototype. Don't focus too much on the UI, it's subject to major changes.

CSS Animations in BlueGriffon

BlueGriffon — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:16:00 +0100

I recently blogged a few thoughts about editing CSS Animations on my personal blog. I also started implementing these thoughts in a new add-on for BlueGriffon. As far as I know, there is no editor for Animations on the market able at this time to edit all CSS Animations, whatever the way they were created. My add-on will allow that, and just like our CSS Editor, will generate prefixed (-moz-, -webkit-, -ms-, -o- when they release it) Animations for all rendering engines. Stay tuned

Progress 20111118

BlueGriffon — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:59:00 +0100

BlueGriffon v1.3 will have a much nicer structure bar, something I have always wanted to do but never had time for in the past. Of course, it also works fine in right-to-left environments like Hebrew, Arabic or Farsi.

Progress 2011115

BlueGriffon — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:20:00 +0100

finally fixed the ooooold bug that plagued Netscape, Mozilla, Nvu and KompoZer and still plagues BlueGriffon and Seamonkey: more and more white lines inserted in the source view. Yay ! Will ship with v1.3. Patch (bug 97278, wow a <100k one) sent to Ehsan and Kaze.
bug fixed in JSCSSP that could make the parser choke on some CSS combinators
updated list of prefixed properties
wysiwyg/source buttons were not localized on windows and linux
Shortcut editing window has now persisting position, a tree splitted was inserted in the Shortcuts preference panel
Paste was largely horked in source view, triggering a large feedback from users. This is now fixed; b=291
PkgInfo changes on Mac; b=209
changes to make forthcoming Mobile Preview add-on happy
Customizable keyboard shortcuts; b=288
raise Prefs window if already visible but not on top
small fixes in HTML 5 Element insertion
pref to disable line wrapping (esp. for Asian languages); b=173
OS X dock integration not preserved across sessions; b= 272
remove useless xmlns declaration when copying content's markup; b=275

Mobile Preview add-on will ship with v1.3

Our next add-on...

BlueGriffon — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:35:00 +0100

Our next BlueGriffon add-on will be a Mobile Previewer... You'll be able to check if your layout (fluid, responsive or whatever) beautifully fits on a small screen, a medium screen or even a gigantic screen. CSS Media Queries and Meta Viewport supported.

Shortcut customization in BlueGriffon

BlueGriffon — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:18:00 +0200

This is a short html5 video (with sound) of me customizing one menubar and one toolbar shortcut in forthcoming BlueGriffon 1.3

A present for Charles McCathieNevile

BlueGriffon — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:33:00 +0200

Charles McCathieNevile (aka chaals, Chief Standards Officer of Opera) pinged me a while ago because he wanted to create his own keyboard shortcuts inside BlueGriffon. As far as I know, such a feature is extremely rare in the Mozilla xulrunner-based world. But I agreed it was a legitimate request in an editing environment...

I'm almost done. There will in version 1.3 of BlueGriffon a new preference panel allowing to tweak all keyboard shortcuts, add a shortcut to a menu item or toolbar item having no shortcut yet, delete an existing shortcut. On Mac, it's a bit more complex than on Windows and Linux because of the hidden window and the OS X-managed toolbar. But it already works.

I have to iron a bit things, handle persistency across sessions (a non issue, really), localize properly all strings and messages through entities and properties and it will hit a subversion repository near you. Possibly a first in the Mozilla world.

Now chaals, happy ?

BlueGriffon and Asian Text #2

BlueGriffon — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:39:00 +0200

BlueGriffon bug 173 is now fixed

BlueGriffon and Asian Text

BlueGriffon — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:23:00 +0200

I'm currently working on the content serializer of Gecko and the layer living above it in BlueGriffon to solve a big issue Asian text authors have with BlueGriffon: the current version wraps the contents of the source view by default, something that is not acceptable for some asian writing scripts. I'm almost done and it's about to land on the trunk. The new Preferences panel will show:

For the time being, the languages exclusion pref looks at the document's language. I am currently hacking the serializer to let it use that preference on a per-element basis, meaning you will be able to wrap the source of a document in english letting for instance the japanese prose (tagged as such with a lang or xml:lang attribute) unwrapped

1.2

BlueGriffon — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:28:00 +0200

ETA for BlueGriffon 1.2: before the end of this week

EyeDropper add-on

BlueGriffon — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:44:00 +0200

Web developers like ColorZilla. ColorZilla is great, really great. But it has one issue: it's able to pick a color only inside the browser window, not anywhere on the screen or even the multiple screens you have. Since designers work with multiple types of sources, it is often necessary to get a color from outside the browser window and in that case ColorZilla can't help...

I was not really fond of writing a ColorZilla-like add-on for BlueGriffon myself since Mac OS X has /Applications/Utilities/DigitalColor\ Meter.app and my primary platform is OS X... But then I got an interesting message from a BlueGriffon user containing good, even very good I must say, arguments in favor of such an add-on. So I spent a few hours (roughly three) on it and here is the result. Honestly I already like it. It's not ironed yet and works only on OS X for the time being but the screenshot below will show you the best part of it : it works anywhere on all screens attached to your computer (see the crosshair cursor in the BlueGriffonEpubEdition icon on OS X desktop) ...

I think I can also make it work on Windows and Linux. And of course, it will be well integrated with the colorpicker in BlueGriffon. Stay tuned

Update: the add-on now adds a new EyeDropper button to the color picker and is fully functional on OS X, Linux and Windows. Yay ! Will be released with forthcoming BlueGriffon 1.2.

Progress 20110802

BlueGriffon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:50:00 +0200

language setting in page properties dialog does not trigger a txn; b=197
support for Writing Direction context menu in the Structure Bar; b=254
CR/LF issues; b=248
target attribute in Link dialog; b=239
better reset of the transaction manager in Ace
autocompletion in source view for HTML tag names; b=263
pl locale by Stefan Plewako
don't close SVG Edit if transaction manager not empty; b=234
Table of Contents
Add support for text-overflow; b=240
missing localized strings in updater's alerts
remove a caption from languages.xul; b=170
implement amaya-style kbd shortcuts for element navigation; b=224
new content patch to allow F2/F4 in menu item accelerators on Mac OS X
List Properties dialog
changetag in structurebar horked; b=238
Structure toolbar puts a checked=true attribute on elements; b=237
show document's styles for links; b=236
Adding a new dictionary in the spell-checking-dialog doesn't work; b=173
new css files can live w/o a .css extension; b=193
ability to delete external browser settings in the prefs window; b=225
make the tree nice to OS/2; contribution by Dave Yeo; b=235

Autocompletion in Source View

BlueGriffon — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:50:00 +0200

Yay! BlueGriffon now has basic autocompletion for all HTML5 tag names in its Source View (revision 767). Click on the thumbnail below to see a larger image.

Autocompletion in source view

BlueGriffon — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:17:00 +0200

I am now working on basic autocompletion (tags only for the beginning) in BlueGriffon's source view. Should be in v1.2 if it's stable enough.

BlueGriffon EPUB Edition, progress

BlueGriffon — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:35:00 +0200

Just for your information, BlueGriffon EPUB Edition will create/edit/save not only EPUB 2 ebooks but also EPUB 3 ebooks...