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.

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?

The beta version of PageFour containing the new Search feature is now available for download from the PageFour web-site. Please be aware that it is a beta, so it may contain a bug or two.

Before installing, existing PageFour users should take a backup of their current Notebooks. This is the first beta and does not contain all the features or changes that will form part of the next release. My intention is to release a series of betas as the changes are carried out, before the final release version which is still some time away.

The accompanying help file does not yet carry descriptions of the changes, but a full description of the new Search options can be found in the post below. Having said that, how to use the new features should be self-evident.

Any suggestions or comments, please or leave a comment. I’m interested in hearing opinions on which aspects of the new Search you feel work well, which you’re unhappy with, anything I may have left out or missed, and of course, any bugs that may be found.

The current version of PageFour implements a standard Search feature common to all word processors. Searching for text across folders and Notebooks however is not possible, making it necessary to perform either a Page by Page search within PageFour, or to use the awkward Windows Search.

The new Search feature gives you the option of selecting where to look for text, pages or folders. You choose from the currently open Page (the default), the current Notebook, or all Notebooks and Pages. Results from the more extensive searches are then displayed in a list, making it a simple process to find the exact Page you are looking for. Double clicking any item in the list immediately opens the Page and highlights the first occurrence of the specified text. It is then simply a case of using the Find Next (F3) option to jump to each successive occurrence on the Page.

As the new Search may lead to a long list of results, the old Search dialog has been abandoned in favour of incorporating the Search directly into PageFour’s main Window. The interface initially appears similar to the Find feature in the Firefox browser, popping up at the bottom of the window when Find or Ctrl+F is selected.

The results list appears below the search options as the detailed search is being carried out. If all you are doing is searching within the current page, no list is displayed and only a small amount of screen space used.

When you begin an extensive search across Notebooks, you may be asked to enter your password. This will only occur if a password protected Page lies within the scope of the search. Choosing not to enter your password will not cancel the search, it simply means that any protected Pages will be bypassed during the search.

The old ‘Find Folder or Pages‘ option has been changed to work in a similar way to text searching across Notebooks. Where the old version uses icons in the Notebooks list to highlight Notebooks that contain the specified Page or folder, the new version displays a list and allows you to immediately double click on the Page or folder you are searching for. Double clicking on a Page opens the Page, whereas double clicking on a folder opens the relevant Notebook and selects the folder in the display.

Use of shortcut keys make the new Search simple and easy to use. The Search menu remains, with Find (Ctrl+F), Find Folder or Page (Ctrl+G), and Replace (Ctrl+H) each opening a different window in the Search bar. The Find Next (F3) option now only works for text searches in the currently open Page, as the list make it unnecessary when searching for Pages or folders. The Close Search option closes the search bar, as does the Escape shortcut key.

Opening a page from the list is simply a case of double clicking or pressing the Enter key on a selected item. The list itself can be enlarged - making it easier to browse a long set of results - by dragging the splitter above the search bar upwards.

Results of extensive searches are NOT lost when the search bar is closed or if you do another search in a single Page. They are only overwritten when another extensive Notebook search is performed. This makes it possible to do a search and carry out work on the resulting Pages without ever needing to rerun the initial search.

While working on these new features, there was a temptation to add an almost identical feature for the Replace All option, which would carry out a global replace of text across all Notebooks. Though not difficult to implement, I decided that this feature would simply be too dangerous. Performing an obvious replace such as “Gandalf” to “Dumbledore” across all pages may be very useful, but allowing this would also mean allowing someone to change “the” to “for“, or “a” to “e“, which would destroy or seriously damage every Page in every Notebook. At the moment, the Replace All works only within the currently open Page. I’d be interested in feedback on this particular issue.

Suggestions and comments on the new Search are very welcome. Either leave a comment, or drop me an .

It’s been some time now since the last major update of PageFour, but work IS ongoing on the next version. Though a final release is still some time away, a series of betas will be available over the coming weeks as features are completed. This should allow plenty of time for feedback and any changes or corrections that may become necessary.

The first beta will be released later on today or early tomorrow, and will contain the new Search feature. The inability to search for text across folders and Notebooks has been one of the weakest areas of PageFour since day one. Implementing this feature has also allowed me to integrate the search and replace more fully with the main PageFour window, eliminating the floating search dialog in the process.

I welcome all feedback on the new features, especially while they are still in beta, as this is the point at which changes can most easily be made.

A full description of the new Search capability, along with a download link will be posted shortly.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone running PageFour - whether the Free Edition or the licensed version - under Windows Vista. There are a couple of known bugs when running with Vista, but most users should not encounter them as they only manifest under unusual circumstances.

The issues all relate to changing the Location of Notebook Pages to a folder where you do not have full write access - one of the areas that Vista has ‘improved‘ on XP.

I never thought I’d be looking back on XP as a model Operating System, but there you go. Halcyon days, and all that.

So, if you are experiencing any issues running PageFour under Vista, or even if it’s running perfectly well for you, I’d appreciate an . I’m trying to get a picture of the proportion of Vista users who are having issues, and if they are for the same reasons.

I always love receiving emails from PageFour users. Usually, these emails begin with a small compliment, quickly followed by a suggestion for improvement or a question about a particular feature. Occasionally (from those with a more troll-like disposition), the email takes the form of a rant about how PageFour is just like Product X, which is free, but if I added ALL the features of MS Word, they might consider buying it.

The suggestions for new features and enhancements I immediately add to my list, being careful to increment the common ones that pop up over and over again; the questions about existing features I answer by explaining the feature in question, and drawing attention to similar features that may also be incorrectly understood; the troll-like comments I do my best to answer politely, without letting my more sarcastic side come to the fore.

I’m planning on utilising this blog more fully over the coming months, and have decided to begin by talking about some of the features in PageFour that users often question. I’ve come to the conclusion that many existing users are not fully aware of all the features within PageFour, and that their use of the product could be improved by describing them, and the reasons they were implemented, in more detail. Commonly asked support questions will also be addressed in detail.

In terms of feedback, I always welcome comments about the product. Every time someone points me to the lack of a particular feature, or suggests a method of improvement, I add them to the future releases spreadsheet, and it is from this list that upcoming work is decided upon.

Recent suggestions and queries that caught my interest come from Tammy, who suggests expanding on the word count feature to encompass entire Notebooks rather than just individual pages, one of my new French users who suggests configuration files to allow the menus to appear in different languages, and from Mike, who brings up one of the most commonly asked questions - Where exactly are the PageFour files on my hard drive?

I’ll be starting with this question.

Over the past year, there have been a number of enquiries about the possibility of a Mac version of PageFour. My response has always been that the probability of releasing a version for the Mac is very low. I’m a Windows developer, and have been for many years. Despite having a lot of respect for the Mac software community, I have never been tempted to join. My training and working life have been focused primarily on Big Business software - an area that tends to impinge little on Mac users.

Every time someone queries me on the Mac, I point them to Scrivener, a neat piece of software, written - like PageFour - for creative writers. For many months, Scrivener was available as a free beta, as the product was still undergoing development, but version 1.01 of the completed version has just been released.

Definitely worth checking out if you’re a Mac user, as it does share some features with PageFour (the use of Snapshots being the most obvious). You can download it here, or check out the authors blog here.

Most of the referrals for PageFour come from the actions of other people. Now, this may be simply because we’re more inclined to believe something if the person talking about it does not have a vested interest. If you hear someone saying ‘Buy my product, it’s the business,‘ you’re not going to believe them, are you? Why would you? They want your money. If, on the other hand, your favourite blogger or best friend says to you ‘Check this out, it’s cool,‘ you probably will. I know I do.

I’ve bought books, CDs, DVDs, even kitchen appliances, because strangers I’ve never met raved about them on their blogs. I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything in response to an add in a newspaper or magazine. I take Amazon reviews far more seriously than the blurb on the back of a book, or the ‘expert‘ opinion in a newspaper, and I do this because these people have no reason to lie to me. Similarly, user reviews on www.download.com mean far more to me than ‘What our users say‘ pages on software web-sites.

The last television I bought was a 26″ wide screen Panasonic. It cost almost £200 less than the equivalent Sony model, and I bought it because all the user reviews I found online said it was better than its more expensive (though stronger branded) competitor.

Like all small web businesses, I track my referrals religiously. Dodgy Warez sites aside, most incoming links come from blogs and message boards, both of which I have little or no control over. Of course, as soon as new links appear, I’m faced with the question of whether I should actively participate in the discussion of my own product, or simply step back and let nature take its course? When anyone speaks about PageFour, chances are I know about it. Searches on Technorati, and Google Alerts, make this a simple, even daily process.

NaNoWriMo is kicking off next month, and registration has already opened. For the next two months, the NaNo message boards will be the most active writing community on the web, with hundreds and even thousands of users online at any moment. In situations like this, I’m always faced with a dilemma. Taking part in the discussions, starting and participating in threads etc, is not allowed for commercial reasons, and this is as it should be. Should I pretend to be someone else and drop links, or wait until a PageFour user does it for me?

I see opportunities like this all the time and ask myself ‘Should I really do that?‘ or ‘Is it quite ethical?‘ And the answer is no. But does everyone else play by the same rules? Am I just being naive, and should I grow a thicker skin? Are all marketers really liars?

I’ve never written a review for PageFour, which in a way makes all the genuine user reviews that much sweeter. But would I make more money if I were less honest? I’ll be watching the NaNo boards carefully over the next couple of months, but I might be watching in vain.