Many recent PageFour users come from countries where English is not the first language, making it impossible for them to use the spell-checker when writing in their native tongue. The current version is heavily biased towards the English speaking world: all the menus and documentation are in English, as is this web-site, and it ships with only three dictionaries pre-installed - all English.

As a first step to rectifying this, I’m making a series of dictionaries in different languages available for download. These dictionaries cover most major Western languages - I’m afraid accommodating the East is a little beyond the scope of the product at this stage. The quality of these dictionaries may vary, as many different people were involved in their development.

Full details, as well as installation instructions can be found on the new Dictionaries page.

Though I would like to add these dictionaries to the PageFour installation, I’m afraid it would increase the download size substantially, so for the time being they will have to be downloaded manually where required. In the future, I may look into making PageFour more international - possibly allowing the menus to be localised using external files, but that’s some time away.

Sales of PageFour have been encouraging over the past few months. It seems that word is slowly spreading as more and more people try it out. In the early days, soon after version 1 was released, people tended to stumble across the product through Google search strings relating to writing, or via software download sites. The numbers were never great, and sales slow to come.

Over the past six months, a large proportion of visitors who reached the site, did so through typing ‘PageFour‘ into Google - not blind searches, but specifically looking for the product. The release of the FREE EDITION and the removal of the 30 day trial limit back in September may also have contributed. As for the download sites, they still play their part, but only in a small way - providing incoming links which help with Google Page Ranking. In terms of numbers of downloads, they account for very few.

So where in the world are the buyers coming from?

As expected when it comes to buying downloadable software, the largest proportion is from the US. The figures that have surprised me over the past year are the comparatively high number of sales to Australia, as well as some of the ‘other‘ countries that pop up.

PageFour is not friendly to languages other than English, either in terms of menus and documentation, or dictionaries and spell-checkers - which is why for a product aimed at creative writers, sales to non-English speaking countries always come as a bit of a surprise.

These countries include Sweden and Norway, Mexico and Brazil, Germany, Spain and India. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be looking into providing friendlier options for those writing in other languages.

Beta version 1.53 of PageFour was released this morning. Download instructions can be found on the beta page.

As well as the vastly improved Searching capabilities outlined below, this version contains two new features and a number of minor changes and bug fixes. The new features are an expanded word counter and a new ‘Open in Tabs’ option.

Up to now, the word count has been limited to the single open Page, making it a difficult and time consuming process to build a combined total for all Pages of your current work. A new option called Folder Word Count has been added to the Tools menu and to the right click menu for the current Notebook. It is only enabled when you select a folder containing one or more pages.

On selecting this option you may be asked for your password, but only when the folder you are counting contains Pages that are password protected. If you choose to cancel out of the password dialog, the count will proceed, excluding any password protected Pages.

The word count button and short cut (Ctrl+Shift+W) will continue to function as they do now - working on the current Page. Performing the more extensive Folder count can only be done by using the menu options.

The second new feature in this release allows every Page in a folder to be opened into a new tab simultaneously. It’s an advanced feature which may not be to everybody’s taste, but cost nothing in terms of extra screen space or software complexity. Right click on any folder in the currently open Notebook and the first menu option will show Open in Tabs.

This replaces the previous ‘Open‘ feature which did nothing more than expand a folder to show any Pages and sub-folders it might contain - a feature that still exists through using the plus and minus keys when a folder has been selected.

An upper limit of 20 Pages has been set, though this may change if it proves insufficient. The reason this limit has been put in place is because a folder may easily contain hundreds of Pages, and opening such a great number, though possible, would serve little purpose but to add confusion.

The feature works best when you have structured your work across many folders. For example, your current novel, along with notes, character summaries etc., all in the same folder, or within sub-folders of the same folder.

Every software product has shortcut keys for the most common actions. If you’re like me, then these shortcuts will be the LAST thing you learn rather than the first. We all know that Ctrl+S will perform a save action in anything from MS Word to Firefox, and that Ctrl+P will print something or other. PageFour follows these conventions where possible - or more to the point, where I had previous knowledge of what they were.

I use a very popular text editor called Textpad for viewing large, text based, data files. It’s a great program, and its popularity amongst techies is well earned. But every time I use it I fall foul of their unconventional shortcuts. For reasons known only to them, Ctrl+F will NOT open the find dialog - you have to press the F5 key. I use this program every day, and every day I stumble. It’s frustrating and it’s annoying. It’s so annoying I’ve just mentioned it in a blog post that was supposed to be about PageFour.

Rather than discuss all of PageFour’s shortcuts in detail, I’m going to highlight just four of the most powerful. Knowing these few simple key combinations will make navigating between Pages, Folders, and Notebooks a quick and easy process.

The Jump Command (Ctrl+J): The main PageFour window consists of 3 panes - the list of Notebooks, the Folders and Pages of the currently open Notebook, and the word processor. The Jump command can be found on the right click menus of each of these 3 panes, and each time it has the same function and the same shortcut (Ctrl+J). As the name suggests, it ‘Jumps‘ the focus from the current pane to the next.

Jumping from the word processor will immediately shift focus to the current Page’s location in the open Notebook, allowing you easy access to its sister Pages and Folders. Jumping from the current Notebook will move focus to the Notebooks list, giving you the opportunity to open another Notebook. And jumping from the Notebooks list will shift focus back to the word processor.

The Jump mechanism means you can access almost every function and every location in PageFour without ever needing to use the mouse. It’s a quick method of adding a new Page next to the current one: Ctrl+J followed by Ctrl+N (New Page), as well as a simple way of seeing where the current Page fits in relation to the Pages and Folders around it.

Tab Navigation: It’s very common to have a number of Pages open in different tabs at the same time, many of them related to each other. You might have a number of different chapters open, or Pages of character and plot notes.

Moving up and down the list of open tabs is simply a case of using the Ctrl+Shift+Left Ctrl+Alt+Left or Right arrow keys. Once you remember this shortcut, moving between Pages is a much faster process.

Left and right arrows - how hard could it be?.

The next release of PageFour will contain a new ‘Open in Tabs‘ feature, which will allow you to open all the Pages in a folder simultaneously into different tabs, making this shortcut even more powerful. A beta containing this feature will be available shortly.

Screen Size: PageFour does not yet have a full screen capability, but there is a simple method of switching the Notebook section off - the F11 shortcut key - thereby increasing the screen size for the word processor. Switching it back on again is a case of using either F9 for the Notebooks list, or F10 for the Snapshots list.

Closing Pages: As you open more and more Pages, things may start to look a little cluttered. There are 2 simple methods for closing Pages quickly. The Ctrl+W key combination will close the current Page, whereas the far more powerful Ctrl+Q shortcut will close EVERY Page apart from the current one. This is very useful when you finish a large piece of work and wish to move on to something else.

Remembering these few shortcut key combinations will allow you to get a lot more out of PageFour. Full details on all of PageFour’s shortcuts can be found in the Help section.

The PageFour website will be down tomorrow morning, 4th April, for about half an hour. These past few days I’ve been working on a new site design that is just a little easier on the eye. It all seems to be working in the test folder, so hopefully there won’t be any issues when it goes live.

The look was getting a bit old, with all that greenery, chunky buttons, and hard-to-read text.

I would ask a favour though - if any of you find a spelling mistake, PLEASE tell me. I’m a notoriously poor speller. It took me 14 months to notice I’d spelt ‘guarantee‘ wrong on the Buy page - how embarrassing is that?