The next beta version of PageFour will be available for download in a few days. This version will contain the new “Merge Pages” feature, which was designed to make putting your finished work together a simpler process.

Most PageFour users structure their work in such a way that each chapter takes up a single Page, but the time does come when the finished work needs to be taken out of PageFour and sent elsewhere - beta readers, publishers, best friends who NEVER criticize, etc. Extracting your work from PageFour is a simple enough process - as existing users know - but with 30 or more chapters in your novel, this comes to a lot of files.

The Merge Pages feature was created with this scenario in mind.

The dialog is very easy to understand, and is accessed from the right click menu after selecting a folder or a number of Pages. These Pages can then be moved up or down before the merge is carried out, and any unwanted Pages (notes for example) removed. The newly merged Page is then written to a PageFour folder for you to edit, export, or do whatever you wish with.

At no point are any of the Pages you are merging over-written, so there is never any danger of losing your work through misunderstanding the feature.

A fuller description will be available next week when the beta is released.

The first thing I would like to say is that I am not an expert in website design, and I am not an expert in Search Engine Optimization. The second thing I would like to say, is that neither are many people who claim to be.

Over the past year I have made so many mistakes with my own website, many of which I only learned about and corrected recently. And the site is still far from perfect. When starting out, I visited forums all over the internet - forums on web design, on SEO, on small businesses, and forums on the pitfalls facing startups.

What I’ve learned from these forums is that a HUGE proportion of the ‘web experts‘ who offer advice are anything but. They don’t know that much more than you or I. Sure, they can offer yes-or-no answers to basic HTML questions, or tell you why Wordpress is better than Blogger, regurgitating the same old discussions you’ve already read twenty times elsewhere.

Anyone can claim to be an expert or a professional when it comes to SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a new field, and without being an expert yourself, it’s difficult to know who’s talking crap and who’s actually speaking the truth.

So before you decide to listen to an expert you meet on a forum; before you pay them money to ‘redesign‘ your website and get you listed in pole position on Google, or, God forbid, ‘submit‘ your site to search engines - take my advice and pay a simple, brief visit to THEIR website.

I’ve drawn up a small checklist of my own that I use to filter the posers from the real thing. It’s by no means comprehensive but I’ve based it on my own experiences and the mistakes that I’ve made. You would be amazed how many SEO ‘experts’ fail many or all of these tests. (more…)

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?

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.