The first beta version of the next release is now available for download. Over the coming weeks, a series of betas will be released as changes are made. This is to allow enough time for feedback, and for any corrections that need to be made prior to the official release.

We’re not planning any major new features for the next version. Instead, the plan is to strengthen the current version by making some of the more complicated elements of PageFour easier to understand, and to work on areas of the software that are weak and need improving.

PageFour 1.67 can be downloaded here.

This first beta concentrates on improving the Import dialog which allows you to import MS Word documents into PageFour. It includes the following:

1. Full handling of the new Word 2007 docx format.
2. Ability to import directly into a particular folder within a notebook.
3. Option to paste or type a folder location into the Import dialog, rather than browsing for the location in the file tree.

As with previous versions, the Word document importer relies on Word itself to handle the conversion process. This means you will still need to have Word installed on your PC if you wish to import Word documents, and to import Word 2007 documents you will need either that version of Word, or an updated version capable of recognizing the docx format.

As well as the Word changes, a small number of minor changes have been made to version 1.67:

1. A shortcut key combination of Shift+Ctrl+R has been added to switch subscript text on or off. This should work with all keyboard variations.
2. A Justify text button has been added to the format toolbar and menu, along with an appropriate shortcut.

Changes have also been made to the PageFour user license. Previously, a license was necessary for each computer the software was installed upon. This has now been changed to allow a license to apply to either a single PC with multiple users, or a single user working on multiple PCs, but not both. This means that single users can now install PageFour on their home PC, lap-top, and work PC without needing to buy extra licenses.

As this is a beta release, there may be undiscovered bugs. If you find any, or if you have any suggestions or comments to make about the changes, please let me know.

One final point: the PageFour help file has not yet been updated with these changes. This will be true until all changes have been made and the release version is made available.

I’d like to welcome all our German visitors who’ve dropped by today courtesy of PageFour’s brief mention on the Spiegel website. Thanks to Google’s language tools I was able to get the gist of the article quite quickly this morning. It’s always nice to get a mention in the main stream press, and it was interesting to see particular attention drawn to PageFour’s Smart-Edit feature.

Though there is no German language version of PageFour yet, there are some German dictionaries available which can be easily installed. These dictionaries enable the spell checker for use with German, as well as other languages. Details can be found here.

Version 1.65 of PageFour was released this afternoon. This version is an interim release and contains a small number of bug fixes, as well as some changes to the way the Notebook tree and the word processor pages interact.

• The selected page in the tree will now correspond to whichever page is open in the word processor. This means that as you navigate through tabbed pages, the selected page in the tree will change to correspond with the open tab. The only exception to this is if the open page does not belong to the current Notebook.
• As the current page will now be selected in the tree at all times, the New Page and New Folder buttons will be available, even when the Notebook tree is not selected.
• Minor bug fix whereby certain Quick-Insert shortcuts changed the line spacing settings in error.

The reason for these changes is to make it easier for new users to quickly understand how PageFour works. By keeping the open page and the open Notebook in synch, it should be far easier to understand where new pages and folders will be created. Clicking the New Page button (Ctrl+N) without first selecting a folder in the Notebook will immediately create that new page in the same folder as the current page.

The new release is available from the download page.

Outstanding Issues:
There is still an issue with smart quotes for those using PageFour where the Windows Input language is set to a language other than English. I’ll post a notification when this problem has been resolved.

The latest version of PageFour was released today. This release contains one new feature, as well as a number of small changes, improvements, and bug fixes. They include:

1. Overhaul of the way smart quotes work.
There were a number of inconsistencies in the implementation of smart quotes, particularly when editing existing work. These have all been corrected, and smart quotes should be working perfectly now.

2. Shortcut key combination (Shift+Ctrl+’) to switch smart quotes on and off.
Opening the Options dialog can be a little time consuming, particularly if you need to switch between smart and plain quotes on a regular basis, so the new short cut should help speed things up.

3. New Quick-Insert shortcuts.
This option allows the user to set a series of shortcut keys for commonly used words, phrases or characters. It is especially useful for long names or unusual keyboard characters that require multiple key strokes to implement.



The keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, etc. have been adopted for use by this feature. Simply type the character, combination of characters, word, or phrase, into the edit box next to the control key combination of your choice, and from then on that key combination will insert the corresponding characters into your text. This dialog can be opened from the right click Insert menu in the word processor, or from the main Edit | Insert menu.

In order to locate an unusual character, click on the Insert Character button at the bottom of the dialog. This opens a second dialog listing every available character. Double Click on the character you wish to use before leaving the dialog, and it will be inserted into the Quick-Insert edit box.

A side effect of this new feature is that the shortcut keys for changing the color of text have been changed from Ctrl+1,2,3 to Shift+Ctrl+1,2,3, etc.

4. Insert Date shortcut.
This option works within the word processor, as well as in the edit box on the new page dialog and comes with an accompanying global date format setup on the Miscellaneous page of the Options dialog. Once you set up the date format you wish to use, the current date will be inserted into your text, or into a new page name by using the shortcut key Ctrl+D.

5. Background color extended to side windows.
A new checkbox has been added to the word processor page of the Options dialog called “Apply background color to side windows.” This will change the background colour of the Notebooks list, current Notebook tree, and Smart-Edit windows to correspond to the word processor.

6. Font Dialog Improvements.
The Font dialog has been improved to allow any color to be chosen and set as the default, rather than the limited selection of only 8 colors.

The early release of version 1.63, with only a limited selection of new features, is due to the importance of the smart quote corrections. As always, if anyone encounters any problems with the changes, please let me know.

Every now and then I get an email from an old-time user of PageFour where they suggest adding a feature that already exists. This is an easy mistake to make with software, especially if you’ve been using it for some time and grown accustomed to working with it in a certain way. I’m as guilty of this as the next person, and frequently stumble across features I never knew existed in other people’s software, despite being a regular user for months or even years.

With that in mind, I’d like to draw attention to a few PageFour features you may never have used, but might find interesting.

1. Lock and Unlock
Have you ever closed PageFour because you were leaving your seat for a short time? Maybe you were making a cup of coffee or putting the washing on, and didn’t want anyone to look through your work. The Lock/Unlock feature was designed for just this purpose. Accessible from the Tools menu, or by using the F4 and F5 shortcut keys, locking PageFour will disable access to all parts of the program apart from the currently open page. This means that no one will be able to browse through your folders, switch to other tabs, or open any of your notebooks.

When you return to your seat, you simply Unlock PageFour (F5) by entering your password.

To enable the feature, all you need to do is ensure that a password has been set within PageFour - Tools | Change Password menu. You may never use the password to encrypt any pages, but it can still to used to Lock and Unlock the software.

2. AutoCorrect Dictionaries
I’m not the greatest typist in the world, being in the habit of typing just a little too quickly and carelessly. My most common mistake is typing teh in place of the. As with other word processors such as MS Word, this is where the AutoCorrect feature comes in. This particular feature will be switched off the first time you use PageFour, but once you enable it, will run automatically from that point on.

From the Spelling menu, select Options, and ensure that Correct spelling errors as you type is checked. Click on the Dictionaries button, and check either the autocorrect.adu or autocorrect-british.adu dictionary. Both dictionaries are similar, the only difference being that one automatically converts US spellings to English, and vice versa. (color to colour, center to centre, etc.)

3. Global Font and Paragraph Settings
The default font used in the word processor is Verdana 10, and the default paragraph settings are single line spacing, with no spacing before or after lines or paragraphs. This can be changed for the current, and also for every subsequent page, by using the Font and Paragraph dialogs on the Format menu.

Simply set up the font and paragraph settings you require, and check the Make default for all new pages checkbox.

4. Shortcuts you may not know about
Most shortcuts appear next to whichever menu option they relate to, but not every feature of PageFour has a corresponding menu item. To move between open tabs in the word processor, use the Ctrl+Alt+ Left or Right arrow keys. This is a very quick method of flicking backwards and forwards between open pages without using the mouse.

Other shortcuts you may not be familiar with include Ctrl+J to shift focus between the word processor and the notebook tree, the left and right arrow keys to open and close the currently selected folder, and F12 to take a snapshot of the current page.

The font colour drop down list on the format toolbar has a series of shortcut keys (Ctrl+1 - Ctrl+8) to change the current font colour to any one of 8 preset colours - very useful for greying out text or highlighting in red.

5. Cut / Copy / Paste across Folders and Notebooks
Most people will have found the drag and drop feature within the notebook tree, possibly by mistake when they moved the mouse too suddenly, but not everyone is aware of the short cut keys that do much the same. Cut, Copy, and Paste is fully implemented across pages, folders, and notebooks, and can be accessed either from the Edit menu, or the almost universal shortcut keys of Ctrl+X (Cut), Ctrl+C (Copy), and Ctrl+V (Paste).

This allows you to easily move or copy pages and folders between other folders or notebooks. The icon of the cut or copied pages and folders will appear slightly different depending on which operation you are carrying out. As with most cut and copy operations, the Ctrl+Z (Undo) shortcut will undo a cut or copy, returning the notebook to its previous state.

6. Export Notebooks
Saving a file out of PageFour is a straight forward process, one that I’m sure most people have done at some point, but exporting an entire notebook, or all notebooks within PageFour, may not be an everyday occurrence. There are two ways to do this: either select an individual notebook or folder (Ctrl+X) and use the Tools | Export Selected menu, or simply click on the Tools | Export Notebooks menu to export everything.

Both of these options allow you to select a destination folder, and immediately make a copy of your notebooks. I use this particular feature to backup to an external hard drive every couple of days, rather than opening Windows Explorer and copying the relevant folders myself. As well as providing a simple method of backing up, the Export feature works in conjunction with the Import Notebooks feature, also on the Tools menu, allowing you to synchronize between two installations of PageFour on different machines.

All of these features are explained in detail in the PageFour help (F1), or in the manual on the website.

PageFour Version 1.61 was released today. This is an interim release consisting of fixes for two bugs reported by users. The first corrects inconsistencies in the background colour of the word processor when the chosen colour is not white, and the second corrects an error in screen position when PageFour is used on a PC with dual monitors.

Existing users should be aware that if neither of these scenarios are relevant to the way they use PageFour, there is no reason to download or install the interim release.

Download instructions can be found on the download page.

The first batch of PageFour reviews have been added to the new Reviews and Testimonials page. Each review is either quoted in full, or contains a link to the complete review hosted on another web-site or blog. In all cases, the reviewer is either named, or a link provided back to their blog.

Hopefully, these reviews will help those who are not familiar with PageFour to decide whether to download or not. No anonymous comments or reviews have been used - ‘Steve form London‘ for example - as my feeling is that these sorts of comments, with no way to verify them or identify the person behind them, add nothing and only serve to cast doubt on the authenticity of all comments.

More reviews will be added over time, so if anyone would like to post comments or opinions about PageFour, please contact me.

I’m in the process of gathering up reviews and testimonials for PageFour. As it stands, there are quite a few reviews out there, scattered across download sites, forums, and various personal and writing blogs. It’s always useful for people to hear what others have to say before trying out new software, but at the moment these reviews are a little hard to find.

In the past, I linked directly to PageFour’s review page on Download.com, but this is no longer possible. Due to a recent site redesign, only 1 of the 9 PageFour reviews can now be read. On querying this with their helpful support staff, I was informed that such deep-linking is not allowed on Download.com. I was then threatened with the removal of PageFour should I ever again carry out such a diabolical act as linking to a web page.

What I would like to do, is publish user reviews and testimonials myself on the PageFour website. Now, I freely admit that this opens me up to the charge of censorship and of cherry picking favourable reviews, and I would be lying if I said I’d post every comment, but I am prepared to commit to the following:

• Published reviews and comments would not be edited. They would appear in their entirety, complete with spelling mistakes, poor grammar, and any criticisms of PageFour the writer should wish to raise.
• The author would be credited in any way they choose, preferably with a full name, though this would not be necessary.
• A link back to the authors website or blog would be added next to their name.
• If the review already exists on a blog or website, this review would be linked to directly.

If anyone has a review they would not object to having publishing or linked to, please contact me. And if you have any comments you would like to make about PageFour that you would be happy to see quoted, do drop me an email.

I’d like to encourage people to offer honest feedback - warts and all. Testimonial pages that do nothing but sing the praises of a product without mentioning its faults or possible areas for improvement, always read a little false.

And unlike Download.com, I have no objection to anyone linking to the new reviews page after it goes live.

PageFour has been around for a while now, and the user base is growing daily. Every week, I’m contacted by users or potential users who have questions about the product or simply wish to tell me what they think. But one thing that seems to be missing are reports of bugs, unexpected behaviour, or problems.

I could say this is because there are no bugs, but I don’t believe that for a moment. All software has bugs, especially after new releases. A few weeks ago, prior to the release of version 1.60, a bug WAS reported. It was in an obscure part of the software, and only occurred when a page was being saved out of PageFour as plain text. On investigation, it turned out this bug had been there for about a year, and no one had reported it.

The fix took all of 3 minutes.

I’d like to encourage anyone who encounters a problem, firstly not to assume that it is the way the software works, and secondly to drop me an email or use the contact form on the website with details. If something in PageFour is behaving in an unexpected way, or even if the behaviour simply appears unintuitive, chances are it’s a bug, or at the very least, an area that can be improved.

The same goes for new feature requests. These do come in, and in many cases my answer is that such a feature would not suit the product, but they don’t come that often. For example, I implemented the Merge Pages feature of version 1.60 after reviewing a request from only one user, and it seemed to me that it would benefit most, if not all users. I hadn’t thought of it before, because I personally did not see a use for it. After releasing the first beta of the new feature I received a number of emails from users explaining how this was the one thing missing from PageFour, the lack of which caused them all sorts of problems when it came to exporting completed works.

If I’d known this, I probably would have implemented the feature some time ago. So once again, I’d like to encourage anyone who finds important features to be missing to contact me. The more people tell me about something, and the more interest there is in a particular feature, the more likely I am to implement it.

This is not to say that all new features requests will be worked on. I’m still committed to not over burdening PageFour with feature after feature, but where the product as a whole has a shortcoming, then this is an area that should and will be addressed.

Most PageFour users never saw the early versions of the product, and if they had, might not have been too impressed. Version 1 consisted of a single Notebook, no importing of Word or RTF files, a proprietary file format, no print templates or Smart-Edit, and lots of unusual and annoyingly quirky behaviour. Every change since then has been in response to feedback and requests from users, even though that feedback was a long time coming.

So to reiterate what I said earlier: don’t be shy about reporting problems or making suggestions where you feel the product could be improved. The worst that could happen is I’ll say no.

On Wednesday, 20th June, PageFour will be offered at a 50% discount on the Bits du Jour website. This is a one day offer, and only available from Bits du Jour.

So, if you were considering buying a PageFour license, but were put off because you only had $15 to your name, this is your big opportunity. Or maybe you’re an existing PageFour user who has been trying to convince friends and fellow writers to make the move - now might be a good time to try again.

The offer kicks off at 6am GMT on Wednesday morning, which translates as midnight somewhere in the US, and runs for 24 hours. A buy button with the special offer price will be available on the Bits du Jour website as soon as the offer begins, so you should only use our own buy page on Wednesday if you’re feeling very generous.