LEE'S UPDATE - BETA 025 RELEASED

[LAP]

Hi Beta Testers,

Finally, the time has come for another release of Scrivener beta. I've
been let out of my man-cave, deep within the bowels of the earth, to
commune with the Scrivener community once again. The light is bright up
here on the surface and there's a strong breeze blowing. Ah, the air is
fresh and crisp - I can feel a storm coming - Scrivener beta 025.

I'm hoping that you'll all forgive my absence when you get to see this.
It's a big jump forward in terms of usability, aesthetics, features,
accessibility, functionality and it's all looking much more on par with
big brother Mac. There's a huge amount of change and improvement in this
release - too much to mention in this post; however, before you start
clicking the download link please read this brief post as it does contain
information that will assist you.

The first thing you'll notice is the large number of new menus complete
with shortcuts and accelerator keys. Some shortcuts may have moved given
that we have enable foreign language characters access to the 'Alt' key.
There is a PDF attached with a schema for all the current short-cuts
available for both normal and fullscreen mode. I'm open to sensible
suggestions if shortcuts are not quite right - we may have missed
something. However, please note that with every suggestion you must take
the entire schema into consideration as well as foreign language
characters extensive use of the Alt key.

Scrivener Shortcuts Beta 025 - Work in Progress.pdf

(138.29 KiB) Downloaded 1778 times

Please see notes on the shortcuts here.

There is no more 'Windows' menu but rather a more appropriate 'Tools'
menu. I've been using this for the past week and I must say it does fit
more logically and feels a lot more natural.

Extensive work has been put into table creation, editing and deleting.
These are now comprehensive and accessible via main menu, right click and
formatting bar. Work has been put into images to allow re-sizing, copy
and paste from clipboard and tagging for eBook publication. Yes, I said
eBook - we'll get to that shortly. Right clicking images now allows
editing etc. We're not quite drag and re-size but we're a step closer.

Considerable work has been put into the compile functionality, the
outliner, the binder, inspector, corkboard and editor. We've also worked
very hard to improve import and export functionality. We have started
down the track of producing native XHTML output, we still have work to do
here but we're moving in the right direction as this is key to HTML5 and
of course eBooks.

We have added the ability to toggle the visiblity of the header bar for
the editor as well as footers. These will assist users maximise their
viewing area as required - especially NetBook users. Simple short-cuts
like: Ctrl+Alt+Up will show/hide the main toolbar, Ctrl+Alt+Right -
show/hide formatting bar, Ctrl+Alt+Down - show/hide the footer bar, and
Ctrl+Alt-Left - show/hide the header bar. Couple these with Ctrl+B - to
show/hide the binder and Ctrl+I - to show/hide the inspector, you now
have complete control of your interface.

PLEASE NOTE FOR EXISTING PROJECTS (and the INTERACTIVE TUTORIAL)
the header and footer bars will be hidden and you'll need to enable them via
the View>Layout menu. The first time you split a screen for an existing project
you'll need to do this for the new panel as well. This is a one off and is not
required for new projects.

A lot of work has gone into collections as well making them available
along with search results in the compile dialog and various navigation
elements. There are many improvements throughout the editor, dialogs, and
search options.

Okay, eBooks. Both .ePub and .Mobi formats are available for both Windows
and Linux. There's just one gotcha - images within an existing project
will need to be tagged to be recognised and usable as an eBook Front
Cover image. You can tag any image by simply right clicking it, select
'Edit Image' and give it a name. This is not required for new document
images as they are tagged automatically - which of course you can rename.
We do not have all the granular Mac functionality for eBooks yet. But, I
figured many of you would just love to have the core ability baked into
Scrivener from the start. It's not going to be to hard to add the rest
once we complete our XHTML writer - most likely for 1.1.

What's left to do prior to release? It's mostly a lot of interface clean
up and optimisation work for performance. We still need to implement
keyword colors in the inspector and on index cards on the corkboard, type
writer scrolling, work on refining Scriptwriting further in the main
editor and fullscreen, caching history between sessions, download
updates, work around the name generator, saving layouts, overhaul of the
tutorial, Windows/Mac/Linux file compatibility and resolve outstanding
bugs etc.


We'll that's it from me - the best thing is for you all to have a play
with the new beta. I'd be interested to hear what you all think.


Enjoy

Lee
P.S. The Linux beta will be available later today.

Note: There is no auto-update for this release. Simply download the installer and install over the previous installation.

DOWNLOAD -> http://www.scrivenerforwindows.com

[Ian M. Pagan]

Downloaded and installed without any problems. To make sure there would be no conflicts with the previous release, I uninstalled Beta 024. One of the Scrivener gods might want to advise if this is necessary. Thanks for all your work. Along with many others, I wait with baited breath for the final release.

[garpu]

Question: Full uninstall/reinstall from the installer, or is the autoupdate safe to use?

And yay!

[Meleesa]

autoupdater didn't recognize a newer version so I downloaded and installed, didn't bother to uninstall first though.

[Marta]

Will Install/Uninstall tonight. From your description, sounds like there are many interesting changes.
Thanks, Lee.

[MimeticMouton]

Downloading and installing over the older version should work and preserve your preferences. Before updating you can also go into Edit>Options (as it was in the 024 version) and click the "Manage..." drop-down menu to save your preferences so that you can load them in again later, just to give a little extra backup (since I know we had some cases where the 024 install reset the preferences to defaults). Shouldn't be necessary, but not a bad idea to do occasionally anyway.

The update from within the program isn't responding, as Meleesa noted, so you'll need to download directly from the website.

[AmberV]

Hmm, according to the server, the updater should be triggering (unless I'm looking at the wrong config file). I just checked and it has been updated with 0.2.5 info. The release notes are still out of date though---maybe that is causing the problem.

[jmsthornton]

Seemed to install fine though the updater just told me that 0.24 was completely up to date and did not point to the new download. So I installed separately and it remembered all my preferences. (Whew)!
Think the Forum page could be updated to give more prominence to this forum as it must be incredibly difficult for new users to find information on Scrivener updates as it is buried so deeply away from the front page.

[melissa]

My version of 024 didn't recognize the need for new update either. 025 installed perfectly over the top of 024. Lovely work, folks.

[vientorose]

Wowsers... new Scrivener beta and Camp Nanowrimo open the same day! What fun!

Thought it was about time for both - been silently haunting here and there the last few days.

Thanks in advance for all your hard work - *really* looking forward to my long weekend now!

[Emeley]

I have no words to say how much I appreciate what you all do. All the people who are behind the Scrivener - thank you for opening the door which was open, I just could not see it.

Let me also say hello and thank you to all of you, who come and write such interesting posts on this forum. It is not a shame to learn from wise, more experienced than me, creative people - I am learning a lot from you. Thank you very much.

My life with Scrivener started not long ago. I am still a beginner although not the youngest of beginners, oh no. While writing, I am learning how to write better and how to use all the potential of the Scrivener. It seems like a long way to go to me, but I love it. I have just downloaded the latest update.

Thanks from the heart

emeley (Toronto)

[narrsd]

Lee, much good work. Downloaded and installed without pre-removal, just to be a part of assuring that.

First try very positive. List of little things begun, post later when enough of them

Glad you are enjoying the fresh air. So am I, in this place Oz-ites come to visit, and we there.

Regards,
Clive

[scribbles]

Also installed without pre-removal with no problems. *thumbs up*

First few minutes of poking around, and it's really, really looking polished. I love how much more intuitive the tool bar arrangement/naming is now.

Lee, hope you get a little more time to fully enjoy the fresh air/light. I've been sucked into my own work-cave this past month (with, sadly, no chance to write and/or test Scrivener), but I've only now begun to crawl out. Takes a while to recalibrate, that's for sure.

[altocumulus]

Brilliant. Another early xmas pressie .... 0.25 installed on top of 0.24 - no probs .....

Right Lee, now take some well earned R&R with your lady and the boys, and don't forget the dog .....

[Sciley]

Dear All,

great work.

Just want to let you know, that the problem with the dictonaries is still there. I´ve the uninstall, delete Scrivener folder, new install and have everything back - no problem there so .

eta: In the previous version when I hit "ctrl + z" Scrivener erased the letters on by one. I liked that one <g>. Is there a way to do it now, too?