Sunday, July 30, 2006

What's going on?

I'm sure you have noticed that NoteMaster has been pretty much on hiatus for the last few months. I'm sorry for this, but I also want to make it clear that this is a hobby project that I take care of in my leisure time; and in the last few months, my "real life" has been quite demanding and taken precedence. I hope you'll understand that: I don't get any money out of NoteMaster, and the reason I'm keeping the project running is dedication.

But now that's out of the way - it doesn't mean NoteMaster 1.5 won't see release, not at all! I'm now getting back to working on it, and in addition to ironing out the few bugs that remain and polishing the new features, I'm looking into upping the editor features, which might mean soft word-wrap, more sophisticated syntax highlighting (like JavaScript highlighting inside of HTLM), code folding and other treats. I'll want to make sure 1.5, as the first final release after about 1.5 years of beta phase, is as perfect as possible!

So no, this project isn't dead at all. I just want to apologise for the long periods of waiting time, and then I'm back to work (hopefully with more frequent progress reports in the future!).

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Announcing NoteMaster 1.5

You know, when it comes to professionalism, I most of the time suck. How else would I now have to tell you that there's no final NoteMaster 1.5 ready for you to grab right now, although I proclaimed an April release? There you are.

Well, it might be a weak excuse, but the reason I broke this promise is actually that I'm committed to my promises very much (yeah, sure). There have been a lot - and I mean a lot - of feature requests in my mailbox. Turns out I shouldn't have said "yeah, I'll implement that for the final release" all the time in reply, because now I'm bound to hold these promises. But I hold them gladly, very gladly, as they were very valuable for NoteMaster. With NoteMaster, I had three things in mind:
  • A great user interface
  • A more refined editing experience that saves you time and work
  • Comprehensive editing features you've come to expect
And in NoteMaster 1.5, the first final release, I'm quite confident I've brought to life what I wanted. A lot has changed from previous releases, explaining the longer-than-usual development time. You'll get more on these new features later, and this site is getting a remake quite soon. But for now, just take a look at this NoteMaster 1.5 screenshot.



Stay tuned. NoteMaster 1.5 will be released on May 5th at 8:47 PM GMT (OK, I made this up, but it's close, I hope).

Saturday, April 01, 2006

NoteMaster: Happy Birthday!

It's NoteMaster first anniversary today - I published the first Beta on April 1st, 2005. And now, there's something waiting for you:

NoteMaster 1.5. Final. Coming in April.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Well, the first public Beta of NoteMaster has been made available on April 1st (I'm not kidding you!), a full nine months ago. As NoteMaster has evolved, it has found many satisfied (and some not-so-satisfied, but I'm working on that) users, a fact that I can't help but feel proud of. And I can guarantee you, I've got something more up my sleeves for future versions.

I'm off for enjoying the holidays, and I wish you the same: A Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

NoteMaster 1.3.4

Finally, 3 weeks late, I can present NoteMaster Beta 1.3.4 to you. You can get it right now on the Downloads page.

What's new?
Plenty. Of course, there are lots of bugfixes - including one that fixes a severe lag that occured while typing and selecting text - but there's new functionality as well. That includes the customizable hotkey system and an all-new scripting system which now does not only support VBScript and JScript, but also offers a well-documented and logical object model to scripts. Also, the much-requested "force single instance" and "notify on external changes" options have been included. Take a look at the Changelog for an overview.

Why didn't you upload it until now?
I know, I told you in the last post I'd have put it online by November 13. I'm sorry. I actually had it ready that Sunday, but I found a bug while testing in the last minute, and decided against releasing NoteMaster on time.

I installed NoteMaster 1.3.4 and now, when I try to launch it, it just crashes with an error message.
That actually is the bug I mentioned above. It occurs extremely seldom and I also believe it does so only on Win9x systems (not on 2000 and XP). Try to delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings\NoteMaster branch using regedit and it should work (which will delete all of your personal NoteMaster settings, unfortunately).
I will take effort to fix this for the final release.

I found this bug and this doesn't work and I think it'd be better to implement that and wouldn't it be nice to have feature X. Can I tell you about that?
Yes, please! I really need your feedback on NoteMaster and it does indeed help. In NoteMaster 1.3.3 and 1.3.4, there were many features and bugfixes that were actually requested by NoteMaster users.
NoteMaster has a feedback feature found in the Help menu. You can use that or just send an E-mail to notemaster@computrax.com.

Did you incorporate everything you wanted into this version?
No ;-) There's always that one feature you wanted but then have to dismiss to release on time. For example, I wanted to overhaul the project management, but just didn't have time. I hope I'll have done it in the final 1.3.5 (or 1.4), though.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

NoteMaster 1.3.4 Teaser

First off, I'm sorry for staying away from blogging for so long, I've been really busy. But in case you're wondering whether that means that NoteMaster has been neglected - it so doesn't.

There's a lot new in NoteMaster, not numerically, but regarding functionality:
  • Fully customizable hotkeys
    NoteMaster allows you to customize your hotkeys to fit your needs through a new Options page.

  • Much improved scriptability
    The totally overhauled scripting feature has been integrated into the main editing interface and now allows you to use JScript besides VBScript. In addition, a new and well-documented scripting object model makes scripting easier than ever.

  • "Force single instance" and "Notify on external changes" options
    Finally, you can have NoteMaster use only a single instance and notify you when external applications make changes to a file opened in NoteMaster.
Apart from that, there are bugfixes: command line parsing issues have been fixed and scripts executed through the Tools/Scripts menu finally always work (certainly that's been one of the more embarassing bugs...).

Expect the final version somewhen next week. Also, note that this will most likely be the last beta version, and 1.3.5 (or maybe 1.4) will be the first final version, so I need your feedback more than ever (you can still E-mail me at notemaster@computtrax.com, or use NoteMaster's built-in feedback feature).

Monday, September 26, 2005

NoteMaster 1.3.4 progress: Customizable hotkeys

I can now say I've finished a working customizable hotkeys implementation. This also fixes some issues with hotkeys that had to be pressed twice (like Ctrl+Home).

Hotkey customization was among the features most often requested, so it was one of the top things to implement for 1.3.4.



Currently, I'm implementing an Options front end to customize the hotkeys (depicted in the photo). After that, I'm planning on improving the macro/script feature, which I'm not exactly satisfied with yet. I expect NoteMaster 1.3.4 somewhen towards the end of October, so stay tuned.