WHAT'S NEW
version 0.8.5.0 [beta], July 20th 2008
- added: Ability to set top and bottom margins of writing area in full screen mode. Handy when using WriteMonkey on large screens. You can, for example, increase bottom margin to avoid looking at the very bottom of the screen. Helpful for your eye and neck comfort.
- added/changed: Lock background or text color when using Try luck button in Preferences / Colors&Fonts. Hold Control key to change only text color, hold Alt to change only background color.
- fixed: If Windows shutdown (or log off) is forced, Writemonkey saves the current document before system closes it. In case of blank unsaved document (Scratch.txt), the file WriteMonkeyRecovery.txt is saved to the user desktop.
- changed / fixed: New splash screen and some other minor fixes and changes.
version 0.8.4.2 [beta], July 16th 2008
- fixed: Potential problems with system fonts when running on Vista.
version 0.8.4.1 [beta], July 8th 2008
- fixed: Some potential problems with typing sounds when upgrading from older versions.
- added: Quick peep function to briefly hide Writemonkey. Useful to see what's happening behind without unnecessary fuss. Press F3 to hide, release to bring back. Suggested by Mike.
- fixed: Some other minor fixes and changes (new about box).
version 0.8.4.0 [beta], July 4th 2008
- changed: Typing sounds were completely redone and are now much more realistic. There are three different sounds - key sound, space sound and enter/new paragraph sound. You can use different sound schemes - some are available on Writemonkey web site, but you can create your own. Just add appropriate wave files in "sounds" directory. If you are happy with your scheme, please send the files to me, so I can make them available for other users to download. Thanks.
- added: Text area markers for better onscreen orientation. They are optional. Turn them on / off (or customize them) in Preferences / Layout tab.
version 0.8.3.5 [beta], June 15th 2008
- added: Drag and drop file into text area opens that file.
- added: CTRL + TAB: toggle recent files (Windows ALT + TAB style).
- added: Setting for maximum number of recent files items (Preferences / Open&Save tab).
- changed: Shortcut for toggling bookmarks is now ALT + B (instead of CTRL + TAB).
version 0.8.3.1 [beta], May 27th 2008
- fixed: Netspell library was fixed and rebuild and now supports languages like Slovenian, Croatian, Russian, Greek ... Some new dictionaries are available for download. Request more!
version 0.8.3.0 [beta], May 26th 2008
- added: Advanced backup/history system. Writemonkey will automatically create multiple, time tagged backup files of your work. Each document you are working on has it's own folder in WriteMonkeyBackups directory (on your Desktop by default). You can set maximum number of backups for both - manual and automatic save. There is also "LastSave_filename.txt" file which always contains last saved version. The backup files are out of your way (no annoying .bak files in working directory!), but you can browse them easily if necessary. Cure for accidental deletes and save based disasters. The backups are off by default - use Preferences / Open&Save tab to enable them.
- changed: Properties dialog was rearranged.
version 0.8.2.0 [beta], May 7th 2008
- added: Small and simple icons for both - main and context menu. Hope you like them.
version 0.8.1.0 [beta], April 30th 2008
- changed: Printing was completely rewritten. You can now preview before printing and set page properties (i.e. paper size, orientation and margins). There is a new tab in Preferences dialog, where you can choose to print page numbers (top or bottom) and save preferred printing style. You can print with current screen settings or use print specific formatting - font, line spacing, paragraph spacing and text alignment. For example - you can always print with basic Courier type and double line spacing, but use more appropriate font and spacings when editing text on screen. Printing is "selection aware" i.e. you can print only currently selected text.
- added: 100+ new monkey wisdoms for your amusement.
version 0.8.0.0 [beta], April 11th 2008
- added: Integrated spell checking for many languages (using powerful Netspell engine). The program file comes with English dictionary, other are available for download in separate zip file. You can spell check whole document or just current selection. Just hit F7. See also Preferences / General settings for some other options.
- added: Writemonkey is now compatible with great Firefox extension It's All Text (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125). Use it when writing text for your blogs, for web based e-mail ... It works with any textarea on any web page. To use this extension set Writemonkey default character encoding to UTF-8 and check out Always save on exit (Preferences / General settings).
- added: Two shortcuts for changing the case of selected text: ALT+up - from lower to upper, ALT+down - vice versa.
- changed: The default character encoding is now set to UTF-8. For greater compatibility.
- changed: "Monkey says" will never pop up when opening existing file using Open with Writemonkey in Windows context menu.
- changed: Preferences dialog was rearranged. Other settings is now named General settings. There is also a new tab - Spelling.
- fixed: some other performance issues and bug fixes
version 0.7.9.7 [beta], March 26th 2008
- added: Quick find in Jumps dialog.
- fixed: Some inconsistencies in Jumps dialog.
- changed: In Jumps dialog: CTRL + Backspace = return back to starting point and close (instead of just Backspace)
version 0.7.9.5 [beta], March 1st 2008
- added: Left click "blind scrolling" is improved: if you click at the very top or very bottom of the screen / window, the text is scrolled to the top / bottom. Same as "Home" and "End" buttons.
- added: Basic support for multiple monitors. You can use extended Windows desktop feature (in Windows display properties) and run Writemonkey in full screen on any monitor connected to your computer. This is also a fix - there were some problems when using monitors with different resolutions. Thanks to Jeff.
- fixed: The user settings are now preserved when upgrading to new version of Writemonkey.
- added: Ability to restore all settings to their default values. See: preferences / restore defaults.
version 0.7.9.1 [beta], February 18th 2008
- fixed: The text in repository is now safe even when using Windows new lines (default in preferences / other settings). Thanks to Mike and his quick insight.
version 0.7.9.0 [beta], February 17th 2008:
- added: New Layout tab in preferences dialog. Ability to set text column width (moved from Other settings), line spacing, paragraph spacing and text alignment (left, right, centered or justified). Beware that these settings do not apply when using built in printing. Not yet anyway.
- changed: Scroll buttons were removed, because there is no need for them. You can still scroll by clicking next to the text area. Upper half will scroll up, bottom half will scroll down. You can disable this feature in preferences / other settings.
- added: Jump back to caret shortcut (ALT+C). Useful when scrolling through text and want to quickly return to the current writing position.
- added: Option to save files with Unix line breaks. \n instead of \r\n which is Windows standard. Unix line breaks are recognized by majority of Windows programs, but not by Notepad. Good for greater portability to other platforms.
- added: Now you can choose weather to use regular tabs (\t) or plain spaces instead of them.
- fixed: Text modification state is now preserved when changing preferences or colors. Ask to save dialog is shown only when needed.
- fixed: Open with Writemonkey check box state in preferences dialog is now correct even when upgrading to higher version of WM.
- changed / fixed: URL addresses are now clickable in repository and main text. This is due to reported framework bug - you can not change the DetectUrls at runtime. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814310
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- BUG [Fixed!]: in some circumstances the repository text looses line breaks. It has something to do with Windows line breaks \r\n. It seams that this is a framework bug, but I'm not sure if that really is the case. There is a dirty workaround: the bug will disappear if you use Unix line breaks. I'll fix that in the future. PLEASE REPORT YOUR INSIGHTS.
version 0.7.8.1 [beta], February 10th 2008:
- fixed: backgrounds of all icons are now transparent as they should be.
- added: shortcut to minimize Writemonkey to system tray (F2). Handy when working in full screen mode.
version 0.7.8.0 [beta], February 1st 2008:
- added: Jumps - an innovative tool for navigating documents. You can jump using:
Bookmarks (the default bookmark string is ">>")
Headlines (paragraphs in capital letters not longer than 50 characters)
Paragraphs (paragraphs longer than 50 characters)
Click = jump to specific location in text
Right click = jump and close
Backspace = return back to starting point and closeThere are some other controls and settings - Recent files list and Tools. Fell free to explore.
The jump window can be toggled by pressing ALT-J, or by middle clicking left or right of the text area. The window can be repositioned or resized - new settings will be saved.
Your feedback about this new feature would be appreciated!
- added: Vista icon (256x256 resizable png) and some other sizes for large screens (96x96, 72x72 bmps).
- fixed: some minor changes and fixes.
version 0.7.7.0 [beta], January 18th 2008:
- added: Simple but handy bookmark system. Insert bookmark string anywhere in your text (the default is ">>", but you can personalize this in Preferences dialog) and then toggle between bookmarks with CTRL+TAB shortcut. When the last bookmark is reached, the beep sound is played and the search continues at the top of the document. This feature will be expanded and refined in future versions. Please send feedback.
- added: Handy Help card with shortcut list. Just hit F1.
- added: New more pleasant and authentic default typewriter sound (under number 1). There are still four other to choose from.
- added: Additional shortcut for toggling repository / main text: ALT + R.
- added to the web page: Microsoft Consolas font - for best experience Monkey recommends this new free font. Visit Downloads to get it.
- fixed: Some spelling errors in Preferences dialog box. Thanks to Mats Bleikelia.
- fixed: Some other minor changes and fixes.
version 0.7.6.1 [beta], January 4th 2008:
- added: Some control over text encoding. You can set the default text encoding scheme in Preferences / Other settings. All new files (Scratch) will use it. You can choose between Unicode, Unicode big endian, ANSI and UTF-8 code tables. The preset Unicode should work Ok. for the majority of us, so if everything is Ok. and you don't know what to do with this setting - just don't bother.
Encoding of old (opened) files is preserved - the opened ANSI text will be saved as ANSI, UTF-8 as UTF-8 ...
- fixed: Because of new encoding features, text files are not always saved as ANSI text. This should prevent potential problems when saving files with international characters.
- fixed: Some other minor fixes.
version 0.7.5.0 [beta], December 18th 2007:
- added: New repository mode for each document. Now your text document can be divided into two parts. The main text part is where your writings reside. The second part is repository for storing notes, unfinished parts, data clippings or URL's which are automatically recognized as active links and are clickable.
You can easily toggle between two modes and move parts of text back and forth. To avoid confusion the "Inverse colors in repository mode" can be set in Preferences / Other settings (already on by default).
If there is content in repository part, the text file is saved in format:
"main text***END OF FILE DIVIDER***repository text".
You can see that if you open file in Notepad or some other text editor. This feature was initially proposed by Nikolaj Pečenko.
- added: New icon set matching the current default color scheme (yellow on green). ICO file now includes multiple size icons (16x16, 32x32, 48x48).
version 0.7.1.0 [beta], November 16th 2007:
- added: New keyboard sound (number 5) emulating good old "click" computer keyboard. Requested by Miha.
- added: You can optionaly set default printing font. If this is enabled, the printout will allways use chosen font instead of onscreen one. If disabled the current onscreen font will be used. Go to Preferences / Other settings / Printing. Requested by Karina.
version 0.7.0.0 [beta], October 20th 2007:
- added: Killer feature for journalists! Now you can set the maximum number of characters or words and display the progress bar of your work. When limit is reached, the red overhead portion of the bar appears. This is appropriate when writing stuff which needs to be exactly of certain length, and you want to intuitively monitor your progress. The feature was proposed by Monitor magazine columnist Nikolaj Pečenko and welcomed by many of our journalist friends.
- added: "New from clipboard" command in File menu was added to quickly get your text into WriteMonkey. The new document is created with text from clipboard already in place. Of course copy and paste works well too.
-added: Shortcut for toggling progress bar on and off. Use ALT + P.
- added to the web page: WriteMonkey is still free, and always will be, but from now on you can donate through our Paypal account. It is not all about money - but if you send us some, we'll see that our efforts pay off and continue to develop this program.
- fixed: Shortcuts keys for changing screen zoom factor and text width are altered due to some conflicts with other commands. Instead of ALT + arrow keys use CTRL + ALT + arrow keys.
This release also implements some other minor features, bug fixes and cosmetic changes.
version 0.6.2.1 [beta], August 3rd 2007:
- fixed: Potential problems when adding "Open with WriteMonkey" command in Windows context menu i.e. adding right values to the registry.
version 0.6.2.0 [beta], July 31st 2007:
- added: Optional integration with Windows context menu. Right click on any file (even files with no extension) will show "Open with WriteMonkey" command.
version 0.6.1.0 [beta], July 26th 2007:
- added: Three additional typewriter sounds to choose from.
- added: Shortcut for toggling typewriter sound on and off (ALT + S).
- added: Shortcut for generating random color scheme. The same as Try luck button in preferences dialog (ALT + L).
- added: 150 additional "Monkey says" wisdom quotes.
- added: List of all keyboard shortcuts in online help section.
version 0.6.0.2 [beta], June 16th 2007:
- added: Ability to set text width and text zoom factor using shortcuts (ALT + direction keys).
- fixed: Some problems with typewriter sound when applying Preferences dialog more then once per session.
version 0.6.0.1 [beta], May 15th 2007:
- added: "Try luck" button in Preferences / Colors&Fonts. This will generate random text color and background color with preserved contrast for readability.
- added: New icon (still temporary).