Q10 Full Screen Text Editor – Free Fridays #13

If you find writing a chore, if you prefer to work from home on days when you have to write up big reports, you’ll love Q10.

Distraction Free Writing

Q10 is a writing tool with very few features and that is what makes it so attractive. It’s a great way to start writing a piece as you can’t procrastinate into formatting headings and changing fonts etc. It’s a full screen text editor, which means that the “page” fills the entire screen and shields you from distractions. There are no tool bars and no paper clips popping up with helpful suggestions. Using Q10 is the software equivalent of going into a quiet room and closing the door behind you.

If you’ve not used a full screen text editor before you should give it a try, especially if you do a lot of writing. It has to be said though, people tend to fall into two camps over full screen editors. They either love them or hate them. Personally, I love them. I have one for my Mac called WriteRoom and was really pleased when I found this equivalent version for the PC.

Return of the Typewriter

Q10 is about as close to an old fashioned typewriter that you can get nowadays and it doesn’t leave you with sore fingers. It even makes a typing sound just like an old fashioned type writer whenever you type a character or

Ching, do a carriage return.

Ching.

That may sound annoying and not in keeping with Q10s philosophy of only including essential features. When I first installed Q10, I thought it would be the first feature that I would switch off, but I actually like it. I find that the keystroke sound is a positive confirmation that I’m writing something which starkly contrasts with ominous silence of staring at the screen.

I should just point out that I do have an office to myself and I think that the typing sound might annoy others, so use it wisely.

It Must Have Some Features?

So if there are no tool bars, there can’t be any features right? There are features, but they’re all available via keyboard short cuts. They are all easy to remember though and if at any point you can’t remember a short cut, just hit F1 and it’ll bring up the complete list.

The main features that people who write for a living will like are the timers, targets and page stats.

Hit Ctrl + t and you can set a timer for a given number of minutes. This let’s you concentrate on you writing, sets a deadline for you and makes sure you won’t be late for your next appointment.

Global targets can also be set. Rather than working to specific time deadlines, these alert you when you reach a certain number of words, lines, paragraphs or pages. You can also choose to have all of these stats displayed in the info bar at the bottom of the screen if you prefer.

There is of course a spell checker (hit F7) included and when you download Q10 you have the option to download a version with or without the spell checker, though the file is so small anyway, you may as well choose the spell checker version.

The final nice touch that I like is the auto-correct feature. You can set various combinations of letters to automatically change so that you can easily type © symbols by typing (c) for example. This is all configurable and you can add common misspellings that you’d like corrected as you type or a set of acronyms and abbreviations that you’d like to always be written out in full.

If you’re a Portable Apps user, you’ll be please to hear that Q10 is also available in a portable version.

Q10, is a rare example of an application that has all of the complexity stripped out of it in order to make your life easier. You probably won’t write the final sentence of your best selling book in Q10, but you might write the first chapter and they’re both equally important.

You can download Q10 from www.baara.com/q10

Filed under: Free Fridays, Free Software , full screen text editor, q10, text editor, writing

Safari 3.1 on Windows Problems Displaying A Background Image On a Body Tag

[UPDATE: panic over. Let's just call it user error/stupidity and assume that they won't be naming a bug after me.]

I’m currently developing a site that uses a very common technique of tiling a background image on the body tag in css.

I tested the site in Safari 3.1 for Windows and the image would not display. It works fine in all other browsers.

I then moved the css for the background image into a div tag that wraps the entire site and hey presto it works as expected. I didn’t give it much more though until just now.

I’ve just been to look at Adobe’s new Photoshop Express website in Safari 3.1 for windows and they have exactly the same problem. Nice to know I’m in good company!

They are using the same technique e.g.

body {

background-image:url(assets/landing/background.jpg);

background-repeat:repeat;

}

Is anyone else experiencing this?

I can’t show you my site as it’s still in development, but the Photoshop Express site is here www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

Filed under: Apple, Web Browsers, Web Standards, Accessibility and Best Practice , adobe, css, css problems, photoshop express, safari 3.1, Safari For Windows

Brussels on AIR Tour – 7 April

Anyone out there going to the Brussels meeting of the Adobe on AIR Tour on the 7th of April?

It’s sold out now but they sometimes have a reserve list.
onair.adobe.com/schedule/cities/brussels.php

Drop your name into the comments and I’ll look out for you.

Filed under: Adobe Air, Benelux , Adobe Air, brussels

Introducing the 6 Euro laptop!

Meet my new laptop. It’s just over 5 centimetres long, it’s lighter than a Macbook Air and you too can have one for only €5.98

During a tidy up of the office the other day I decided to copy all of the files I had sitting on one of my USB keys back to my PC and start deleting or archiving old files I no longer needed.

I then wiped the USB key and installed a product called Portable Apps. This is an ingenious product which does two things. It provides you with a complete suite of applications that can be run from a portable storage device such as a USB key. It also creates a directory structure on your storage device and handy menu for accessing the applications and files. Whenever you connect the portable device that you’re using for Portable Apps, it auto runs and is available via an icon in the system tray.

All of the applications are modified versions of popular programmes such as Firefox and OpenOffice so you can not only carry your files and data around with you, you can now also carry the tools you need to work on them as well. All you need is access to a computer at your destination.

There are a couple of things you’ll need to take into account if you intend to rely on Portable Apps. First of all, it only runs on a PC, so you’ll need to make sure you have access to one. Secondly, Microsoft Office isn’t available on Portable Apps which some people would find to be a deal breaker. Personally, I use OpenOffice as my standard office suite anyway, so the change is no hardship for me.

You’ll also need to factor in that some internet cafes disable access to the USB port. But if you’re going to work in a clients office, a branch office or stay with friends who don’t mind giving you access to their PC then that shouldn’t be a problem.

Clam AV is included in the standard suite of products so if you are using your Portable Apps key in an unknown environment it’ll help protect you from viruses (not real time). All activity takes place on the external device, so all your passwords, cookies and favourites etc stay on the device and aren’t left behind on the computer you’ve been using.

There is also built in back up software that allows you to sync the USB key with a folder on your PC. All in all this is a great tool which gives you the choice to leave your laptop behind and travel light.

It’s Not Just For USB Keys

USB keys aren’t your only option for running a Portable Apps suite. Portable Apps will run on most kinds of external storage devices such as portable hard drives and MP3 players or iPods.

Not All USB Keys Are Equal

There can be quite a difference in price between USB keys. I’ve seen them for as low as €3 and they’re often given away at conferences etc. Most of us just look at the storage capacity, but it’s also important to look at the data transfer speed. I have a 4Gb own brand key which is very slow and a 1Gb key made by Integral. The Integral key is much faster that the own brand one and this is the one I have installed Portable Apps on. With the approaching USB 3.0 standard tools such as Portable Apps will start to match regular computers for speed and convenience.

What ever device you choose to install Portable Apps on, you can still continue to use the device as a normal storage device as well. You can find and install new applications from the Portable Apps web site.

You can download and install Portable Apps and review their full range of applications from www.portableapps.com

Filed under: Free Software , open source, openoffice, portable apps, portable computing, usb key

4Q Free Web Visitor Survey – Free Fridays #12

This weeks (yes, I know it’s been a few weeks) free software is an online survey tool that enables you to collect opinions on what people think about your web site.

It’s very easy to implement, it’s very easy for the visitor to use, it’s free and it’ll provide you with invaluable feedback that can make a real difference in improving your web site.

4Q is provided by Avinash Kaushik of the Occam’s Razor blog and Web Analtyics fame and a company called iperceptions.com. You can sign up at 4q.iperceptions.com but let me explain a little about how it works first.

What Does 4Q Do?

The survey take about 10 minutes to set up and most of that time is spent waiting for the account activation email to arrive.

It’s based on four key questions that look at why people have visited your site and if they found what they were looking for or managed to achieve what they set out to do.

When a visitor enters your website, they are asked of they want to complete a quick survey when they have finished their visit. If they say yes, they can carry on and when they finish browsing, the survey is there for them to complete. If they say no, they won’t hear about they survey again.

You can switch the survey on and off at any time and you can also set it so that it only asks a certain number of visitors e.g. every 5th person etc.

To see an example of the survey in action, visit www.webglossary.co.uk and answer yes to doing the survey. Don’t worry about how you answer the questions, this is just a test site that I’m running the survey on.

Four Key Questions

Your visitor survey will ask people four key questions after they have visited your site and close their browser.

These are basically:

1. Why are you here?
2. Was it successful?
3. If not why not?
4. Were you satisfied?

These are the essential questions that will give you insight in to why people actually visit your web site and whether or not they were happy with the visit. This is the kind of information that normal web analytics cannot provide.

For example, imagine someone comes to your web site and looking to join your organisation. They might look on half a dozen pages on your website, then give up looking and go away. Web analytics can show you that the person arrive via a search engine, stayed for 4 minutes and looked at 6 pages. That could be regarded as a good visit. But the fact that they didn’t find what they were looking for makes it an unsuccessful visit.

Conversely, someone could come to your site looking for your phone number, visit the home page, stay for 10 seconds and write down you phone number. In terms of web analytics that could be deemed an unsuccessful visit. They didn’t stay and the results will show a 100% bounce rate for that visitor. But they left because they had found what they wanted.

This is why the good old Customer Satisfaction Survey is still necessary and 4Q enables you to easily implement one.

Setting Up 4Q

When you create your survey you just have to choose some options from a list of pre-made answers for question 1. These include things like, “Ask An Expert”, “Compare Products”, “Research” etc.

Once you’ve made those choices, you save your survey and receive access to one line of code which you can either drop into the footer of your website code or add to one particular page.

If you don’t maintain your own web site you can just email the code to your designer and they can very quickly add it to your web site.

It’s very easy to do and the breakdown of the results is very user friendly as well.

Filed under: Free Fridays, Free Software, How To Manage A Website, Information Management, Promoting Your Website and Organisation, Web Analytics , 4q, online surveys, surveys

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 First Impressions

IE8 Beta 1 was released to the general public yesterday and here are my first impressions and quick review. I’ve installed it and taken it for a quick whistle-stop tour of the web. It’s stable, it’s a great improvement, but one caveat though, it’s only really intended for developers and designers at this stage, so if that’s not you, read on but don’t install it.

[Update: IE8 overwrites IE7, see the comments below for information on how to run different versions of internet explorer 6, 7, and 8 on the same machine using Virtual PC. It's all free of charge from Microsoft. I'll write up a post about how to do this next Friday.]

Feet First into IE8

Installing such early Betas isn’t always such a great idea and Microsoft have in the past had a reputation for not enabling different versions of products to co-exist. So why such as rash step?

Well, primarily I was just very impressed by what Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of the Internet Explorer team had to say in his keynote at Mix 08 and I wanted to see the browser for myself.

Secondly, I don’t use Internet Explorer as my default browser any more. Therefore I’m not reliant on it for web browsing or accessing any web applications. Most of the time I just use it for testing client web sites.

And thirdly, (and this is why I’m going to keep it on my machine) I liked the fact that Microsoft seem to have solved the multiple version problem by enabling you to toggle between IE8 and IE7 emulation mode.

IE7 Emulation Mode

This last point means that developers can continue to do real world client site testing in IE7 at the flick of a switch. Switch of IE7 emulation and you can still continue testing and preparing for the release of IE8. This is a very nice feature and makes the life of developers much easier.

Previously, developers required a virtual machine to run IE6 and IE7 so you had to log in to the virtual machine to use and test in IE6. You still need to restart the browser each time you want to switch between IE8 and IE7 emulation, mode but that’s no real hardship.

IE8 Is Focussed On Developers

Developers were really the focus of Dean Hachamovitch’s speech yesterday. That’s not surprising, as MIX is a developers conference, but it really feels like IE8 will affect developers most. He summed it up nicely by saying that developers have to spend so much of their time and effort on ensuring that things work across different browsers that it detracts from the quality of the final outcome.

So What’s New In IE8 for Developers?

So what have Microsoft done in IE8 that will make life easier for developers? They’ve reduced the gap between what features the major browsers can and cannot implement.

Microsoft are going to implement CSS 2.1 and ensure that IE8 always renders sites in the most standards compliant way possible. That will give back so much time from fixing CSS quirks related to floats, margins and padding etc.

They are also starting to implement elements of HTML5 which will enable the back button on a browser to revert to the last “state” of an AJAX enabled page (what users expect) rather than going back to the previous page. Also new from the HTML5 stable is the ability to of the browser to use local storage.

The example of local storage given in the keynote was very slick. He started to create a blog post and while doing so pulled the network cable out of his computer. The application detected this, notified him of the fact that he was not longer connected and changed the “Post” button to “Save” i.e. his blog started to function locally so that he would not lose his work due to connection problems.

There is also a new set of developer tools that seem to be close to Firebug and may even go beyond Firebug’s present capabilities, though I’ve not looked to closely at that yet.

Now these types of things are already available in other browsers, but we now have more of a level playing field and it’s easier to guarantee certain features being available in the browser.

But What About The Users?

If you already use IE7, IE8 won’t be that much of a big surprise. They’ve moved the favourites buttons to a better position and things like clearing your cache are a lot better. There’s also a nice touch of highlighting the domain name of a URL and making the rest of the URL less prominent. I guess this has positive security implications as it can will show people where they really are if they happen to have opened a link in a dodgy phishing email.

The image below shows which part of the URL is highlighted (my screen capture software decided to ignore the highlighting) and the new position of the favourites.

he two main things Microsoft are focussing on at what they call Activities and WebSlices.

Activities are essentially context sensitive actions that you can perform on sections of a web page. So if you highlight an address on a web site and right click, on of the available Activities is to view a map for that address. The big change for the user is that they don’t actually have to leave the page or open a new tab, the map just opens as a small box on the page itself and you can drag the map around , zoom in etc just as you’d expect. To create an Activity, developers just create an XML file that describes what data is required to return information back to the page and how to supply it.

WebSlices are kind of like microformats in that you simply mark up a particular section of a page with some class names and IE8 will recognise these as a WebSlice. You can then subscribe to that particular section of the page, a kind of mini RSS and watch for changes. The example that they give is watching for changes on an Ebay item. WebSlices appear in your favourites.

All of this just reinforces the importance of the browser in modern society and how the browser affects the choices we make. The pre-installed Activities will of course favour Microsoft’s own services such as Live Maps and most people will go with the default behaviours.

Google Maps Breaks : (

In my quick tour of the sites I commonly use, I found that IE8 rendered most sites pretty well with one glaring exception. IE8 really doesn’t like Google Maps. But if you’re a developer then you probably use Firefox most of the time anyway so things like this don’t matter too much and are to be expected in a Beta release.

So take IE8 for a spin and let’s look forward to finding out exactly how Microsoft intend to rid the world of IE6.

Filed under: Reviews, Web Browsers, Web Standards, Accessibility and Best Practice , activities, css2.1, HTML 5, ie8, ie8 review, internet explorer, internet explorer 8, microformats, webslices