Feeds
BETA 3 update 1 – Slightly enhanced the interactive between the tabs and the Project Manager.
Posted in: Version History by Edwin on April 25, 2010
I have just uploaded beta 3 update 1, which includes some minor changes, especially for the newly introduced multi-column outliner which helps get a big picture of the selected portion of the project and manage it easily.
- Fixed the two issues reported by Taxi in this thread in the beta test forum.
- Fixed the second issue reported by Andrej in the beta 3 announcement thread.
- And slightly improved usability of other parts of this Word add-in.
BTW, I’m going to make some demo videos for Writing Outliner .
Writing Outliner Beta 3 Is Released!
Posted in: Version History by Edwin on April 24, 2010
Full-featured multi-column outliner
At the bottom of the multi-column outline you can see the total words/characters and target words/characters, so that you see the progress of any portion or the whole project. A picture worth a thousand words:
Search snippets preview and auto locating
go to the exact matching places easily when searching documents. See my previous blog post for details.
Project restore (and backup, of course!)
Project restore function – now you can revert the entire project to any previous revision which was saved manually or automatically! . See my previous blog post for details and screenshots.
New graphical visual outline style
Emphasis the hierarchical relationships – and you can switch back to the old text-based style, of course! screenshot:
Auto document synopsis extracting
Extract synopses from documents so that you can see the overview in the multi-column outliner.
- Customize the outliner – show/hide columns, switch between visual styles – shape-based or text-based.
- More outline structuring functions – indent, outdent, etc, with keyboard support!
- More friendly modified/created time showing, e.g. use “Today”, “Yesterday” instead of the ordinary long datetime showing.
- When opening a Writing Outliner project in the Welcome pane, it will be opened in a new Word window instead of asking you to close the current Word document first.
- Other improvements and bugfixes.
Thanks for your attention, folks! And I’m looking forward to you feedback!
I’ve been extremely busy in the past month, in the upcoming days I will still have a lot of work to do – mainly preparing for the first commercial release, and it’s very late here now, I’ve got to have a sauna and take a rest now now!
Have fun play with the new version, don’t’ forget to give me feedback via email or the online best test forum.
Instant Word document search with matching snippets preview
Posted in: Word addin by Edwin on April 17, 2010
I’d like to show you my recent works with regard to the Writing Outliner Word Add-in proejct.
Check the screenshot below, now you can instantly preview the matching snippets when doing a full text search search, and the best thing is that the keyword will be highlighted in Word’s6 document window once you select any of the matching snippets! And it will be available in the next release. Can’t wait to try it? Let me know then 😉
Currently, I’m working on the multi-column outliner which was discussed in the beta test forum, stay tuned!
New visual style for the outliner
Posted in: Outliner Software by Edwin on
Hi Folks,
Take a look at the new visual style for the outlines in Writing Outliner Word Add-in below, It will be available in the next release 😉
I think the new visual style makes the hierarchical relationships of the documents more prominent, as a result, you get a better big picture of the whole project. What do you think? Do you like it?
Auto Word document backup and restore in Writing Outliner
Posted in: Word addin by Edwin on April 14, 2010
I’m working on new things, such as improving the full text word document search function in Writing Outliner Word Add-in.
In the mean time I’d like to show you the confirm restore dialog which appears right before restoring a project to a previously saved revision, it also asks you if you’d like to save a new copy of the current project before performing the actual restore action, and it’s default option – to reduce the risk of overwriting new content by mistake.
Automatic Word documents backup
To summarize, Writing Outliner Word Add-in does not only make working on multiple related Word documents in one place easier (the so called project-centric approach), but also makes backup and restore your Word documents easily:
- Anytime you can save a backup copy of the entire project as a revision to which you can revert at a later time (if needed);
- If you want, Writing Outliner Word Add-in can also automatically saves a backup copy of the entire project as a revision upon closing a modified project.
- You can view the revision number, backup time and remarks of each backup in the revision list window, see my previous post.
- You can restore your writing project to a previous revision in case you need to do that.
I’ll show you the new search snippet and auto locating feature soon.
Auto project backup and more – Writing Outliner Word Add-in BETA 2
Posted in: Version History by Edwin on March 31, 2010
Hi Folks,
I’m getting a great amount of valuable feedbacks from emails and the beta test forum since the first beta of Writing Outliner Word Add-in was release 15th this month, thank you all, guys!
Of course in such a short time I couldn’t get all suggestions and problems fixed, but here is the list of the new stuff in this second beta release of Writing Outliner Word Add-in – the all-on-one writing tool for writers.
And I’ll be working on the rest, please don’t hesitate to give me more feedbacks through:
Download the new release (BETA 2) here.
Manual or automatic project backup
You write/edit Word documents a lot, you have to backup your documents frequently.
Word document backup with Writing Outliner has become easy now, it allows you backup your whole Writing Outliner project anytime as you wish, or simple let Writing Outliner takes care of it for you – automatically backup the modified writing project upon closing. See the screenshots below:
Quick Word document import, a great time-saver!
Quickly (with two clicks) import currently opened Word document to a specified Writing Outliner project.
It’s very easy, just click the ‘Import Current Document’ link in the Welcome pane and then select the target project you want to import to. Once it’s done, you open the target project and you’ll find the imported Words documents under the newly introduced INBOX folder. Screenshots:
Other improvements
- Move a document up or down in the Project Manager Outliner with keyboard <Ctrl + Up/Down>;
- Added the ‘address bar‘ to the embedded File Explorer tab, so that when doing document importing or exporting you can quickly navigate to a folder;
- Now ignorable notification messages are shown with the small notification window that appears at the lower right part of your screen, so that your workflow will not be interrupted (Like what Outlook, MSN/Live Messenger do).
Bugfixes:
- Project notes are missing after re-opening the project several times;
- In a rare case the document synopsis, tags or notes sub-pane in the Document Properties Pane (only the UI itself, not your data) will disappear until you reopened Microsoft Word.
- Temporary Word documents that are used internally by Writing Outlinier Add-in are no longer be added to Word’s ‘Recent Document List’, so you’ll not be seeing strange document names like 1AE63565B5E04ACB8674659621A9AA89.docx;
- Avoid moving the special ‘Compiled Output’ document node with drag and drop.
Download the new release (BETA 2) here.
Enjoy the new beta release!
Let’s start the BETA test of Writing Outliner Word Add-in!
Posted in: Book writing software, Version History by Edwin on March 15, 2010
Hi Folks,
Finally, I can start the beta test of Writing Outliner Word Add-in today!
What you can do with this version?
- Project-centric writing, keep all files together;
- Use the Project Manager Outliner to outline book-length documents, each outline item is associated with a Word document.
- Tabbed document editing – edit multiple Word document at the same time;
- Instant, Google-alike full text search, find any documents in the project, you can search by text, title, status, label, tags, notes, synopsis, or match all these fields!
- Document tagging and search by document tags, for example, search by “tag:MyTagA or tag:MyTagB“
- Attach icons (status and label) to documents and search by the icons, for example, you can specify the status icon of certain documents as “Needs Review”, and when you want to see only those documents, all you need to do is to input “status:needs review” in the search box.
- Import existing documents (supports doc, docx, RTF, text, wri, all file formats that supported by MS Word).
- Embedded File Explorer tab for viewing and importing files in your harddisk, or exporting files from a Writing Outliner project to disk.
- Drafts compilation and branch compilation, the Drafts folder or a specific document branch will be merged for output.
- And so on…
You can see some screenshots in my previous blog post.
And I hope you think this is a good start!
Download and feedback
Please download the beta version here.
Please report bugs, make suggestions and post comments in the beta test online forum.
Thank you!
Update 1
I have just uploaded a new version which solves the following two problems:
- Error message is displayed when opening the sample project: “Wrong Project Property: Modified (Last Modified Time)”;
- The error report technical information does not contain the most important info for locating the source of the problem.
Sorry for the problem, please download it again!
Update 2
If you couldn’t download the software with the above link, please DO let me know, and try this download link.
Writing Outliner Word addin will not get in your way when you don’t need it
Posted in: Word addin by Edwin on March 10, 2010
Just now I received an email from someone, he concerned once Writing Outliner Word add-in is installed, will it get in his way when he is not working on documents that need Writing Outliner Word addin.
His original question:
Your outliner looks very promising, but I’m wondering if after installation Word will always start with it or is it possible to have the options for a clean startup and a startup with the outliner? I’m new to Word addins.
The answeris: No, Writing Outliner will not get in your way when you don’t need it.
Look the screenshot below, it only shows a small vertical strip on the left of your Microsoft Word main window.
Why this UI design instead of using a Ribbon item (or a toolbar/menu item in pre-2007 versions of Microsoft Word)?
Because you can recall it with just one-click!
Don’t like my idea? Tell me please, my mind is always open, you know, I’m not a writer and I am trying to write an all-in-one writing tool for writers, so my mind needs to be wide open to get ideas from you 😉
Turning Word into an outliner software, more new screenshots!
Posted in: Book writing software, Outliner Software by Edwin on March 8, 2010
Hi Folks,
I’m finalizing the preparation for the beta test of Writing Outliner Word addin, just now, I have setup a forum for discussion of the beta test process, it will be ready before the 15th of this month, there are some other things to do before that though. In the mean time, please have a look at the new screenshots of this Word addin.
Using Microsoft Word™ as an outliner software
The main screenshot of Window 2003 with a Writing Outliner project opened, doesn’t it look a outliner software 😉
Search your word documents like Google!
Yes! The search function in Writing Outliner is almost as powerful as Google 😉 With it you can instantly find any Word documents. An example search string (search documents that contains phrase ‘New York tims’ and doesn’t contain ‘dontIncludeThisWord’ and have two tags: mytag1 and mytag2 ):
“New York Tims” tag:mytag1 OR tag:mytag2 -dontIncludeThisWord
Browsing Disk Files Inside Word
One of the important idea behind Writing Outliner for Word is: Do all things related to writing in Word with tabs without even leaving Word. And this embedded File Explorer is an example, with it you can easily drag and drop files to import them into the project, or the other way around, drag documents from a Writing Outliner project to export it to the disk. And your can smoothly view your research files on the disk without switching to other windows! The embedded File Explorer is full featured like Windows Explorer!
Easily word document tagging
The document tagging function is very usable, I learnt a lot UI design ideas from Gmail, Actually, I’m a lazy man, I hate unwanted mouse clicks 😉
The blank-project wizard tab
Stay turned, the beta testing starts soon!
Word Tabbed Editing, etc – Writing Outliner New screenshots
Posted in: Word addin by Edwin on February 23, 2010
Hi Folks,
I know you have been long waiting for Writing Outliner Word addin, and I’m sorry for not being able to release it that early as you might have been expected, but here are some screenshots and I hope you’ll find it ‘s worthwhile to be awaited 😉
Tabbed Word Document Editing
So with Writing Outliner you’ll be able to editing multiple documents in Word without switching programs with tabs (the popular modern UI design concept, especially in the Web browser world).
Icon markers for Word document
In the outliner there are two built-in columns: document status and document lables, both are represented by an icon and a name. I’m a “visual” guy, I believe that human brain processes graph better than processing text, so I believe these two visual clues will help you better manage your writing projects.
Tagging Word documents
Tagging such a popular tool for organizing information nowadays, especially in the Internet world, why not adopt it to manage Word Documents? It’s another tool in Writing Outliner for your to manage your documents right inside Microsoft Wor!
Another secrete about Writing Outliner Word addon I want to unveil: The Project Manager in Writing Outliner Word addin is almost a full-featured file manager like the Windows Explorer 😉
But I’m kind of perfectionistic (?) so I’m still adding some more features before I release it as a beta version 😉
Questions? Please!