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.

If you’re new to PageFour, it may take you a little while to get used to the interface and the way it works. Here’s a few tips to make those first few days a little easier:

1. Choose a default font. When you begin using PageFour, all new Pages use Verdana 10. To change this to a font of your choice, simply open the font dialog from the Format menu, select the font and size you wish to use, and check the “Make default font for all new pages” box.
2. Set up your default paragraph options. As with the default font, changing your paragraph settings for new pages is a simple process. Open the Paragraph dialog from the Format menu, specify any settings you wish such as double line spacing, and check the “Make default for new pages” box.
3. Spell checking - the live spell check (squiggly red underline) can be switched on and off by using the F8 shortcut key, or the right click menu in the Word Processor.
4. AutoSave is switched ON by default and will save all your open work every 2 minutes, or when you close a Page. This means you never need to click the save button. You might ask why the save button still exists, and the answer is that many people simply find it reassuring - a throwback to software like MS Word.
5. The Import Dialog allows you to select Word, RTF, or text documents to import into PageFour, and can be accessed from the “Tools | Import Documents” menu, or the Import button on the toolbar. This should be your first step if you wish to edit your current work in PageFour.
6. All On / Off - Clicking Ctrl+O will switch off or on all unnecessary sections of the interface, removing any distractions and letting you concentrate on your writing.

These are just a few tips to help you get started, and touch on many of the more commonly asked questions from new users. No doubt you would have found all this information on your own over time, but many of us grow frustrated very quickly with software if it behaves in ways we do not expect.

Kathy Sierra wrote a great post back in 2005 called Featuritis vs the Happy User Peak. It’s well worth a read if you’re involved in any sort of product development - software, dog houses, electronic voting machines. The general gist of the post is that adding features does NOT add value - the secret to creating a great product is adding just the right features to give the most value, making them perfect, and then stopping.

Software companies don’t like this. The last company I worked for in the UK had what might have been a great product, but ruined it by continuously piling on feature after feature. They did this so their sales team could say to a customer: “Yes, our product does that too!” The end result was two years of development, a product that kept crashing through lack of testing, a dissatisfied customer base, and an even more dissatisfied work force. And of course, low sales.

To borrow a line from Kathy’s post: “Don’t give them new features just because your competitors have them!”

I’ve tried to follow this advice with PageFour, choosing to add features only when they add value to the product for most users, and impact little on usability. The Search and Merge Pages in the recent release are examples of this. But I haven’t always been so successful in the features I’ve chosen to add. My feeling is that version 1.50 strayed a little off course, with the inclusion of Smart-Edit.

This is a great feature, and I use it all the time. It was designed to identify over-used phrases - something that has always plagued my own writing - and I’ll be running it on this post as soon as I finish. But it’s complicated. And it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of PageFour.

The problem, is that recently I’ve been thinking of numerous additions that could be made to Smart-Edit, making it much more powerful. Each one would benefit a certain proportion of users, but these users would, of necessity, be people who have no problem running complex bits of functionality, adjusting configuration settings, and playing with the features until they obtain the best results. And this is NOT most PageFour users.

PageFour was designed with simplicity in mind, and Smart-Edit, and the extra features I’ve been thinking about, are not simple. But don’t panic! The current incarnation of Smart-Edit will be staying where it is.

So I’ve been considering a spin off product - a product built around Smart-Edit, and incorporating all the extra functionality that would only weaken PageFour. To offer a general outline: the product would be designed for use on a first draft of your 80-100,000 word manuscript, just as you begin editing and revising. As with Smart-Edit, it would not tell you what to do, only highlight areas that you might want to look at in more detail.

I’ve drawn up a list of features it might contain. It’s a very rough and ready list I put together yesterday evening, but should give a taste of what I believe IS achievable through software.

• List of over-used phrases, as with the current incarnation of Smart-Edit.
• Highlight excessive use of certain phrases at the beginning of sentences.
• Flag potentially awkward tags used in dialog. For example: ‘she snarled’, ‘he bellowed’.
• Over us of ‘…’ of ‘-’ in dialog. A lot of amateur writing tends to suffer from an abundance of dialog interruptions through ellipses and dashes.
• Frequency of adverbs in sentences. How many or what proportion of sentences include adverbs? And are multiple or strings of adverbs used in the same sentence?
• Highlight weak qualifiers - such as very, a bit, fairly, quite, slightly.
• Excessive use of The, A and And to begin sentences, as well as There was or There were.
• Highlight redundant words. For example: a cold chill, the end result.
• Use of weak phrases: The fact that - of the (students of the college instead of college students), She began to - He started - appeared to - seemed to, etc.
• Use of ‘then’ in place of ‘and’ or a new sentence - she did this, then she did the other…
• Flag clichés - a trusted servant, a mighty warrior…
• Flag sentences without verbs - excluding dialog, of course.
• Excessive use of punctuation - exclamation marks, for example.

Before anyone leaves an angry comment along the lines of “But Faulkner did that ALL the time!”, I should point out that features like those above, and like Smart-Edit in the current version of PageFour, only point out POTENTIAL problems. It’s always down to the writer to decide if they actually are problems, and make corrections where needed.

The intention would be to make the product fully customisable, with the user capable of editing lists of ‘weak’ words or phrases and saying whether something constitutes a serious problem or not. Creating a separate product independent of PageFour means that the potential user base would be far larger, while PageFour itself would not be contaminated with new and complicated features.

I’m very interested in hearing feedback on this - do you you think it’s a good idea or not? Does it have potential? Would YOU use it? If not, why not? Have I left anything obvious out?

About 6 weeks ago, I noticed a gradual increase in Google traffic to this site. Without revealing precise figures, I’m getting about 4-6 times more hits from Google today than I was only a few months ago.

It’s always difficult to pin down the precise reason for such an increase, as many different factors come in to play. Back in April, I redesigned the site from the ground up. The old site - in all its green ugliness - was the first website I ever designed, and it suffered from many of the more common website design mistakes: poor wording in page titles, no use of header tags (h1, h2, h3 etc.), static content…

It was not designed with search engines in mind, and the traffic reflected this. The redesign addressed these issues, as did pulling the PageFour blog into the site. To this day, I have no idea what possessed me when I decided that hosting the blog under a separate domain was a good idea.

Most of the ‘new’ Google traffic is very relevant to PageFour, with search values such as “creative writing software” and “software for writing novels” appearing regularly. What has surprised me though, is the high number of people searching for “page four software” rather than “PageFour.” This breaking of the name in two is a VERY recent phenomenon, and I don’t know where or how it began.

Someone, somewhere, must be writing about PageFour in this way, or speaking very slowly when they talk about it, pausing after the ‘page’ to catch their breath before moving on to the ‘four.’ I’m convinced of this, because these searches only began two months ago. To date, I have had no luck in tracking them down.

The title of this post is a signpost to Google - just in case any of these potential PageFour users have difficulty finding me.

By far the most common ‘useless’ search value is a variation of “strikeout shortcut”, with MS Word often appearing alongside. I can’t help but feel there’s a message here for the Microsoft Word development team.

On a lighter note, I’m always amused to come across a search value such as “pagefour license crack.” Those cracks may or may not be out there, but if they are, does anyone really believe they’d be hosted on the PageFour site?