News Updates

On this page we will keep you up to date with the ongoing development of this product. This page is also generated by the News Updater program. The program also automatically changes the date in the top frame when a new article has been uploaded. Check here once in a while to see what features the next version will support.

V1.10.0 Faster and better

29-8-2005

The routienes for translating rich text into HTML have been re-written, resulting in much faster conversion (which was becoming a major problem in previous versions, especially when using the internal webserver for previewing). Farthermore nesting errors can no longer occur. Nesting errors would previously occur in cases where styles patially overlapped each other, like in bold and italics. In previous versions this would result in "<b>bold <i>and</b> italics</i>" but now neatly generates "<b>bold <i>and</i></b><i> italics</i>". Your pages will thus validate, even if the user makes extensive use of the formatting features. For the coloring feature we no longer use the depricated <font> tag, but generate a CSS Style sheet instead. All previous features have also been re-implemented into the new convertor, such as links & E-mail detection and HTML character conversion.

The full list of changes:
     - Faster page generation
     - No nesting errors
     - Generates Cascading Stylesheet for colors
     - XHTML compliant (if the template-designer uses compliant xhtml in the template)
     - Jpeg compression quality rate is now ajustable in the template
     - The date is now optional (nice for "photoalbum" pages)

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V1.09.1 Beta - SSI

26-8-2004

The built in preview-webserver can now parse your HTML files for SSI (Server Side Includes) comments and insert the contents of the approriate file (which should be stored in the WorkDir directory). If your newspage is inserted into other pages with SSI, you may point the previeuw button to an alternative startfile by inserting a filename in the new option "Alternative newspage preview start" at the bottom of the template page. Just insert the line <!--#include virtual="news.sht" --> in your preview file (assuming that "filename" on the FTP page is "news.sht") and the news-page will be inserted.

In the Internal Browser Settings on the Settings panel there is an option to fill in extensions of files that will be parsed for SSI when previewing. Other files will just be sent to the browser without scanning then for SSI. The preview will now also start with xmls.htm in the addressbar. This allows the preview button to start your browser instead of executing scripts when dealing with ASP documents.

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V1.09 Deployment on CD-Rom

20-8-2004

News Updater now has a built-in preview-webserver. That means that preview files no longer need to be temporarily saved to disk in the WorkDir directory, but can be dynamically served to the browser by News updater. The WorkDir remains the place for background images and stylesheets etc.. which are needed to complete the preview. When using the backup option in combination with the new Auto Syncronize option, you can deploy News Updater on a CD-Rom. In this case the online backup feature changes into the main storage solution.

Deploying News Updater on a small 80mm CD-Rom has allready proven to be a conveniant way for clients to update their site, but also for webmasters to make changes to the template whenever they want. This eveloutionary step eliminates the greatest disadvantages News Updater had towards server side CMS systems!

A new chapter has been added to the developers tutorial explaining the new functionality.

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V1.08 Beta release

3-6-2004

New features:
     - Full Foreign Charset Support. Although V1.07 already supported other charsets in the GUI (for example Russian, Greek etc...), it did not prevent the HTML encoding algorithm to convert bytes belonging to other charters, thus changing specific letters. The option Disable Charcode Conversion for use with multibyte and Unicode charsets now prevents this conversion but preserves the color and font decoration features. This feature can also be used if you want to enter HTML into your News Reports.
     - Backup option. It is now possible to save a backup of the WSU file to the server every time the page is uploaded. Enable this option on the FTP settings tab. It is also possible to enable a "retrieve backup" option in the Site menu. We would recommend this to any webmaster. Users tend to lose their files quite frequently!
Known bug: This version cannot be used with the localisation file. We are working on the localisation algorithm to make it more flexible for changes.

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Proxys, Passive FTP and Localization

20-4-2004

Some features have been added in V1.07.2
     - Passive FTP support. There is a checkbox to enable this on the FTP tab. The program previously used to hang when attempting to upload to a passive server.
     - Proxy support. You can now enter proxy settings on the FTP settings tab.
     - Localization. The program and documentation have been localized to the Dutch language. By adding a file called Local.lkz in the same directory as the News.exe executable, the entire program will have translated texts. When this file cannot be found the original English texts will display. See the Downloads page for details.

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New release V1.07

8-4-2004

We have added a few minor features as well as fixed some bugs. We also decided to take it out of the Beta stage because V1.06 Beta was already quite stable since its initial release. We are calling this one V1.07 because of the minor additional features which are as follows:
     - Custom attributes for detected links (target="NewWindow" has been taken away, you can insert anything there). Some W3C standards are listed here for your convenience:
          target="_blank" (Open in new unnamed window).
          target="_self" (Open in the same frame).
          target="_parent" (Open the document into the frameset parent of the current frame (same as _self if the current frame has no parent)).
          target="_top" (Open into the full, original window (thus cancelling all other frames)).
     - "Secret" way for registered users to access the template on their customers (unregistered) computer. (read the beginners tutorial very carefully to find out (near the end)).
     - Charsets. The User Interface now supports multiple charsets. We cannot guarantee however that the HTML will be filtered correctly when using other charsets. We would appreciate some feedback on how this is working from users who are familiar with non-default charsets.
The major bugfix since V1.06 is an issue with images not being deleted from the server after their articles were deleted. We have also corrected some spelling. Spelling mistakes may also be reported as bugs, but please ignore differences between British and American spelling, we cannot satisfy everyone.

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New features in V1.06

6-12-2003

From Version 1.06 the following new features are available:
     - Pictures Upload (import an (optional) image to show in an article)
     - User Password (independant of the developers password, only for files created by registered users)
Pictures can be imported in the following formats: .bmp, .jpg, .emf, .wmf, .ico. The images will automatically be converted to the jpg file format. The designer can specify a maximum height and width for images. If an imported image is larger than the constraints, the image will be resized to the new constraints preserving the original aspect raito. At this point the standard windows routine is used to resample the image, so for now it is better to first use a paint program to resize before importing. We are planning to implement a better resampeling algorithm in the future.

The new version is available from the download page. The documentation will be updated shortly.

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Links and E-mail Detection

12-11-2003

Links are automatically detected as long as they begin with 3 W's and a dot, or with "http:" and two forward slashes. The end of an URL is detected by a space or the end of a line. An occasional trailing dot will not be part of the URL, allowing users to end their sentences with a period behind the URL.

Links will be opened in a new window (target="NewWindow"). If this is undisirable you could name your target frame "NewWindow". An example of a link is www.xmlssoftware.com.

If the link doesn't begin with 3 W's and a dot, you need to add the http: with two forward slashes in front of the URL, for example: http://subdomain.host.com.

Email- addresses are detected if they have at least one charter before the @ sign, only have one @ sign in the "word", and have at least one dot after the @ sign before the next line or a space occures, as in me@mydomain.com.

Note: if you use font-decoration on your URL's or E-mail addresses, make sure that the whole address is decorated the same way, else it will not be detected. For example: www.bold.dom will not be detected, but www.bold.dom will.

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Extras for registered users

4-11-2003

Registered users now get some extra functionality
     - Customizable about-box. It is possible to put your logo, text and links in the about box.
     - Hide template and settings from user altogether (don't offer a password to access them).
     - No password required for registered users to change template or FTP settings.

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Support for Font Decoration

30-4-2003

News Updater now supports font decoration, like styles (bold, italics, underlined and striked). Also coloring is supported, enabling you to bring some life into your articles. Note that striked text is not supported by all browsers, and that printed versions are often different than on-screen results. For example: Internet Explorer 6 prints underlined text as normal text.
     Indented text is now supported (use the tab key)
Note: there is one small drawback, that excessive use of these functions may cause HTML nesting errors. This is only your concern if you want a strictly XHTML compliant website. Your page will only be XHTML compliant if the developer has made a XHTML compliant template. If you want your site to remain XHTML compatible (if the template already is), you can stil use text decoration, but ensure that effects (styles and colors) don't overlap one another. This means you can use several different styles and a color on the same text, but don't do things like starting with bold, and adding italics a few words later, then stop the bold effect (after some letters) and again after some letters ending the italic style.

Example: this is ok but would not be if bold was turned off before the "o" of ok.

However, 99.9% of the sites on internet are not XHTML compliant, and nearly all browsers will display your page correctly despite possible nesting errors. We are trying to keep this site XHTML compliant (reason for not showing a "wrong" example here). XHTML was invented to make it easier to implement webbrowsers on mobile devices.

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© 2003 XMLS Software