WebCipher 2009 Beta 1

[smctainsh]

Hi All,

Thank you to everyone who has posted feedback regarding WebCipher so far - I really appreciate it! Here is yet another release - this time, Beta 1. This release brings bug fixes and interface changes, as well as new feature called Magic Templates.

Changelog for Beta 2:

FIXED: Improved exception handling for documents being opened that are currently in use by another process

FIXED: Magic Template Builder inherits editor font family and size

NEW: The last closed tab, regardless of whether its content was saved, can be reopened using the corresponding menu item or Ctrl + Shift + T

NEW: Special Characters dialog, where characters are inserted as HTML entities

NEW: HTML Entity encoding and decoding

NEW: Open Tabs dialog

NEW: New Window menu item

NEW: Snippet from selected text

UPDATED: When checking if a document to be opened is already open, WebCipher no longer unnecessarily changes between available tabs

UPDATED: Add/Edit Snippet dialog now uses a syntax highlighted control instead of a standard text box

UPDATED: Magic Template variables that are referenced but undeclared are now alerted during the build phase

UPDATED: Fixed PHP syntax definition to resolve conflicts when using <? and ?> tags inside PHP strings

UPDATED: Improved exception handling for magic templates

UPDATED: Icons for expand and collapse all in Code Folding menu

UPDATED: Added support for missing elements in CSS syntax definition file

FIXED: WebCipher may crash unexpectedly when an OpenFileDialog is opened

NEW: WebCipher can list functions found in a particular document for insertion into other documents

UPDATED: Improved Help and Support

FIXED: Active project would still remain active even if deleted

FIXED: Syntax highlighting updates based on file extension when a 'Save As' operation is successful

FIXED: When an attempt is made to open a file in the Projects Panel that no longer exists, a error message is now displayed

UPDATED: Added the ability to insert a magic template at the cursor position (applies to individual template instances)

UPDATED: Added icons for selected file types in the FTP browser

NEW: Text completion can be temporarily enabled or disabled by pressing Ctrl + Shift + A

NEW: Shortcuts Panel, allowing you to view chosen pages (e.g. phpMyAdmin) within WebCipher itself

UPDATED: Added ability to disable Shortcuts panel initialisation at startup

UPDATED: Existing magic templates can now be loaded in the Build Magic Template dialog

UPDATED: Close button to up-to-date and unsuccessful update attempt screens within WebCipher Update

NEW: Magic Templates library, where frequently accessed templates can be added to your template library

UPDATED: Syntax highlighting for files edited in WebCipher using Server Edit Mode is now automatically detected

UPDATED: The size of the editor area and the size of the side panel is remembered on program exit

FIXED: WebCipher previously failed to remember the panels you had visible and hidden between sessions

UPDATED: Added whitespace to the top and bottom of the FTP listing grid on the FTP panel

Changelog for Beta 1 Update 1:

FIXED: Tag and bracket completion wouldn't work on keyboard layouts other than US English or equivalent layouts

CHANGED: Upon closing WebCipher, if you have unsaved documents open, the Yes, No, Cancel buttons have been replaced with OK and Cancel buttons for simplicity

CHANGED: The validator windows are now resizable and can be minimised to the taskbar

Changelog for Beta 1:

ADDED: Brace matching

FIXED: Brace definitions for HTML and PHP

FIXED: Support for '' in JavaScript syntax definitions

UPDATED: Various icon changes

ADDED: Tag and bracket completion

ADDED: Startup operations can now be enabled and disabled using the Options window

FIXED: Documents can now be dragged and dropped onto the editor tabs to open them

ADDED: Magic Templates, allowing you to create templates with variables that can be specified via dialog prompts

ADDED: Additional buttons to the main toolbar for a more efficient experience

FIXED: The 'Delete Snippet' button previously did nothing

FIXED: Added scrollbars to the update information text so that longer update messages can be implemented for available updates

Check it out and feel free to post any feedback, feature requests or comments you may have. I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback! :D

Download: WebCipher 2009 Beta 2

Steven

Edited July 17, 2009 by smctainsh

[Ambroos]

Hmm... For some reason I can't insert question marks anymore (Belgian keyboard, questionmark is shift+ , (, is where the M is on a regular keyboard)). Instead it creates <> with the cursor in between them. Opening < does not automatically complete the bracket for me.

I'm pretty sure this problem exists because we have different keyboard layouts. (mine: http://i40.tinypic.com/25gqz9g.png )

+ a suggestion:

When you close WebCipher with unsaved stuff opened, it asks to close anyway. Almost all other Windows apps ask to save your work first. This resulted in me closing WebCipher 20 times, clicking no 20 times and thinking that closing the app was bugged. Is it possible to make the No-button say Cancel? That would make it a little more obvious (at least to me)

[smctainsh]

Hmm... For some reason I can't insert question marks anymore (Belgian keyboard, questionmark is shift+ , (, is where the M is on a regular keyboard)). Instead it creates <> with the cursor in between them. Opening < does not automatically complete the bracket for me.

I'm pretty sure this problem exists because we have different keyboard layouts. (mine: http://i40.tinypic.com/25gqz9g.png )

+ a suggestion:

When you close WebCipher with unsaved stuff opened, it asks to close anyway. Almost all other Windows apps ask to save your work first. This resulted in me closing WebCipher 20 times, clicking no 20 times and thinking that closing the app was bugged. Is it possible to make the No-button say Cancel? That would make it a little more obvious (at least to me)

Thanks for the feedback Ambroos! I completely forgot about different keyboard layouts - I've updated WebCipher to resolve this issue and you can get the latest update by downloading it from the WebCipher website or updating via WebCipher Update. This update also includes the suggestion you made above. :) A changelog for this update is included in the original post.

Steven

[smctainsh]

Any further feedback?

Steven

[smctainsh]

Anyone?

Steven

[vip]

It's a very nice client, and glad it's free. I would gladly pay for this software. Thanks, and great job!

[smctainsh]

It's a very nice client, and glad it's free. I would gladly pay for this software. Thanks, and great job!

Thanks for the kinds words! :D Donations are always appreciated. ;)

Any further feedback on this release? I am preparing the next release as we speak, and would appreciate any feedback that can be incorporated into said release.

Thanks to everyone who has replied thus far.

Steven

[Bazenga]

the only bug I found is this:

[smctainsh]

the only bug I found is this:

Awesome, thanks for pointing that out! It's been fixed and will appear in the next release.

Any further feedback to be incorporated into the next release?

Thanks,

Steven

[threesixtyflip]

Testing it now, but I must say so far it is looking really good! Keep up the good work!

Just a question, but what did you code this in?

- Matt

[Bazenga]

Forgive my mess =).

[smctainsh]

Testing it now, but I must say so far it is looking really good! Keep up the good work!

Just a question, but what did you code this in?

- Matt

Thanks for the feedback and kind words! It's coded in C#. :)

Forgive my mess =).

Thanks for the feedback! I'll be sure to look into it and work it into the next release. :)

Thanks to everyone who has posted feedback so far.

Steven

[White Cuban]

any chance you'll add syntax highlighting for java? not a big fan of eclipse and... yeah.

[smctainsh]

any chance you'll add syntax highlighting for java? not a big fan of eclipse and... yeah.

It should already be there.

Steven

[smctainsh]

Thanks to everyone who has posted feedback regarding WebCipher. I have now released WebCipher 2009 Beta 2, and have updated the initial post to reflect this. Feel free to download it and submit any feedback! :) I'm looking forward to seeing what people think of it.

Forgive my mess =).

I have taken into account your padding suggestion, however, regarding the other points made:

- You can turn off the gutter margin via the Options dialog or via View > Editor Options.

- The gray area overlapping appears to be an issue associated with that particular visual style - I don't see that particular issue with Windows Aero.

- I'll have to delve into the source code for the editor component to look into the scroll bar issue. There seems to be an option to either turn them off completely, or have them enabled, but no option to only show them only when needed. I'll look into it.

Steven

[ncc50446]

Playing with it now :) So far so good.

Just one small thing so far, under the options to and the highlighting, when selecting which languages to highlight, you have to click twice. Once to highlight the language, then again to select/deselect it.

I also noticed that it always opened minimized...with the sidebar too small and having to be stretched out to view it.

It would also be nice to be able to get rid of some of those panels. The only one I need is 'files'.

Also, under files, it would be great if it would remember what folder it was displaying when you closed and opened it again.

Other than that, excellent work :)

[ncc50446]

Oh, thought of something else I was hoping you could add. A background for different programming langauges. I tried using what you had there, but I couldn't get it to work...What I mean is with programmers notepad, the background who the whole php section is a peach colour, javascript a purple, and everything else white. As screen shot shows.

Unless I'm doing something wrong, I can't seem to get the same results with WebCupher...None of the background colours seem to show

Thanks :)

Edit: Oh, the background sorta seems to be working...however more than just the php is getting highlighted as well. Its highlight html, but not the php at the top of the page.

Edited July 21, 2009 by ncc50446

[smctainsh]

Playing with it now :) So far so good.

Just one small thing so far, under the options to and the highlighting, when selecting which languages to highlight, you have to click twice. Once to highlight the language, then again to select/deselect it.

I also noticed that it always opened minimized...with the sidebar too small and having to be stretched out to view it.

It would also be nice to be able to get rid of some of those panels. The only one I need is 'files'.

Also, under files, it would be great if it would remember what folder it was displaying when you closed and opened it again.

Other than that, excellent work :)

Oh, thought of something else I was hoping you could add. A background for different programming langauges. I tried using what you had there, but I couldn't get it to work...What I mean is with programmers notepad, the background who the whole php section is a peach colour, javascript a purple, and everything else white. As screen shot shows.

<snipped>

Unless I'm doing something wrong, I can't seem to get the same results with WebCupher...None of the background colours seem to show

Thanks :)

Edit: Oh, the background sorta seems to be working...however more than just the php is getting highlighted as well. Its highlight html, but not the php at the top of the page.

<snipped>

Thanks heaps for the feedback ncc50446! Sorry for the late reply; been a bit busy. I will most certainly work on integrating these features into WebCipher - they sound great! Also, thanks for the bugs you spotted.

Any further feedback?

Steven

[vip]

Would love to have a live edit feature built in ... like subthaedit and Coda on OS X.

Live Collaboration. Using the innovative Subetha Engine, edit code live and simultaneously with a co-worker in the next cube ? or across the globe. Share documents via Bonjour, and track changes.

[edhgoose]

Hi,

I was just looking for something to do this for me, so figured I'd give yours a go. Here's what I've got so far:

If shortcuts are what I think they are, why do they need an icon? Maybe make this optional? I was about to try them, and then decided I couldn't be bothered to find a logo.

When setting up an FTP profile, the "home folder" has a folder icon next to it. It would be good to be able to click this and choose a folder.

I personally don't use end of line markers, and I don't think I've seen anyone use them - I'd personally leave them turned off as default (but maybe thats just me).

I'm confused by the Home / Remote URL in the FTP profile. The Remote one doesn't seem to do anything at all. And the Home one does what I'd expect the Remote one to do (change the directory on the FTP server).

Also, when tabbing in the ftp box, check the tab order of things - its a bit all over the place!

So far, looks good though. I think a few things wouldn't have done what I expected, but you've included options to change them round. Also, the above mentioned scroll bar problem really bugs me!!

I'll let you know if I have more experiences.

Cheers,

Just tried to edit a file on my FTP server, and got this error:

Then I tried to refresh the FTP directory and I got this:

Also, I didn't spot the Save and Remove buttons. These need to be at the bottom, or separated out more clearly. I thought it had a last working profile in place, but in fact I'd not clicked the save button. Also, add tooltips to them - just so its obvious.

And.... (I'm adding these as I go!):

When adding files or folders to a project, the selected project should be refreshed. I added a folder and nothing happened until I unselected the project, reselected the project.

And....

I have a list of files in the FTP tab, the Files tab and the Project tab. In FTP my php files are given a WebCipher logo. In files they are given the logo for the program they are associated with in Windows (Notepad++) and in Project they are given no logo. I think the Files one is correct.

Also, my natural reaction after clicking into a subfolder is to hit my mouse back button to go back to the previous directory, adding this functionality would be great.

Another error:

I think these are all caused by the connection closing. Does there need to be some kind of keep alive? This seems to be confirmed as after I click disconnect from server after one of these errors comes up it says I can't disconnect as I'm not connected.

(I've just confirmed this actually, if I edit a file quickly, it'll upload it fine. - but this raises two more issues:

The 1st is that I'd have that warning box that pops up about overwrite have a checkbox saying ignore this from now on,

The 2nd is that there is no confirmation that the file is uploaded. All it needs is a confirm of some sort in the FTP log. Or perhaps have the filenames as Red when opened, Green when saved AND uploaded successfully)

Next, in the options dialog, there is only a minus button for Favourite file locations. I can't add one.

Edited August 11, 2009 by edhgoose

[smctainsh]

Thanks heaps for the feedback vip and edhgoose! Sorry for the late response - I've been really busy as of late and haven't really had time to reply here. Your suggestions have been noted and I will definitely look into incorporating them into a future release. Thanks also for the bugs you spotted edhgoose - I'll work on having those fixed ASAP.

Steven