BlueGriffonTM

The next-generation Web Editor
based on the rendering engine of Firefox

25Jun 2010

Adding presentation to HTML is hard

14:12 - By BlueGriffon - Thinking at loud - 6 comments

Attributes ? Inline Styles ? Context ? ID ? Class ? A mix ? *sigh*

I'm not happy with the CSS Policy Manager I implemented. It currently lets users of BlueGriffon decide in all dialogs how an action should be performed: through HTML attributes, through inline styles, or through embedded styles attached to an ID or a class. That's far too complex for many users and the resulting dialogs are so painful that I hate them myself. I am then going to revamp it entirely and remove the corresponding bits from the dialogs. I will probably also remove support for HTML presentational attributes... BlueGriffon will then rely 100% on CSS for presentation... That was not possible a few years ago because of the browsers' landscape but I think it's now a more - if not perfectly - reasonable target. The whole Table Layout dialog is already 100% CSS-based.

In summary, the Preferences panel will offer the following choices:

  • Let BlueGriffon decide by itself how it adds styles and let it pick IDs and classes for me when needed (enter a prefix below)
  • Let BlueGriffon decide by itself how it adds styles but prompt me when a new ID or class is needed
  • Let me decide

It's clearly (much) harder to implement but I am sure the whole CSS/HTML machinery should be hidden as much as it can. The average user - and that includes myself - does not want to know about the technical details as soon as the result is clean, standards-compliant and what he/she expects from a rendering point of view. Advanced users will still have the possibility to edit their stylesheets directly through the CSS Manager.

All in all and in my opinion, this proposal is good for both beginners and advanced users. Comments?

23Jun 2010

CSS 3 Multicolumn Layout

16:00 - By BlueGriffon - Progress

I started working again on CSS 3 Multicolumn Layout. Nice result so far.

CSS Multicol shot 1

22Jun 2010

T-shirt :-)

22:42 - By BlueGriffon - Thinking at loud

here...

21Jun 2010

Fresh Meat 20100621

19:17 - By BlueGriffon - Fresh Meat

21Jun 2010

Progress 20100621

17:55 - By BlueGriffon - Progress

  • New page wizard was horked
  • Support of html and xml flavors of HTML 5 added, including to new page wizard
  • Started working on ability to save an html5 document, whatever the flavor, as a polyglot document
  • Windows and linux themes including fixing various UI glitches

16Jun 2010

Rotations, starts looking ok...

16:54 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - 2 comments

It really starts looking ok, I hope I'll be able to check that in at the end of this week or beginning of next one.

15Jun 2010

First proto of CSS 3 rotation in the viewport

11:48 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - one comment

It's a very very early prototype...

14Jun 2010

Rotations

09:02 - By BlueGriffon - Progress

As you probably noticed, I am currently implementing CSS 2D rotations in BlueGriffon. But that's dialog-based. I also started working on something better... And since I don't think another implementation has hit the market yet, BlueGriffon will probably be the first wysiwyg web editor to propose direct CSS-based pointer-driven rotation of an element inside the editor's viewport. Stay tuned!

07Jun 2010

Word count

16:06 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - one comment

I decided to make a short break from bluegriffon's core and I spent an hour implementing a new add-on : WordCount. Yeah, you got it, it counts the number of words in the current document. But it can also enable a visual warning if that word count goes above a user-defined limit.

17May 2010

Progress 20100517

19:21 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - 2 comments

  • still working on the Projects Manager that does not share a single line of code with Nvu/Kompozer's site manager (BlueGriffon is entirely rewritten from scratch). The associated Publish button will also be much more powerful. Mime Cuvalo, the author of FireFTP, has formally authorized me to use his ftp stack's code inside BlueGriffon. I must say that implementing all the ftp high-level features is now hyper-simple. Thanks a lot Mime !

13May 2010

Progress 20100513

18:40 - By BlueGriffon - Progress

  • lot of work on the Image Insertion dialog,
  • even more work on the Projects Manager, totally rewritten because I was not happy with the former iteration of it. If you remember the old Site Manager of Nvu and the Publish Settings of Mozilla Composer and Nvu, they'll look totally prehistoric compared to the new Projects Manager and its integration in other dialogs of the app (links, image, external objects). Publishing (on a remote site) will be MUCH better than in Nvu, publishing all external objects including stylesheets and even imported stylesheets... It will also be integrated with the Templates Manager so you can add in one-click a page template you just downloaded from the Web. Yay!

12May 2010

Image dialog #2

14:36 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - 2 comments

Starts taking shape...

Image Dialog shot 1

12May 2010

Image dialog

09:21 - By BlueGriffon - Thinking at loud - 5 comments

The new Image insertion dialog in BlueGriffon will allow to set a CSS box shadow and a CSS roll-over. Other suggestions?

10May 2010

Progress 20100510

12:37 - By BlueGriffon - Progress

  • TableLayout add-on was horked, it's now fixed (Venkman and JSMs... pffff...). It's also now 100% undoable.
  • more fun with the cssHelper
  • Edit menu: undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, delete and more

09May 2010

JSCSSP in BlueGriffon

22:03 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - one comment

JSCSSP, our CSS parser in JavaScript, is now used by BlueGriffon to preserve all the contents of stylesheets, including unrecognized properties, unrecognized at-rules and comments between rules or between declarations (other comments not preserved yet). On a side note, JSCSSP now passes all relevant tests in the CSS 3 Namespaces Test Suite.

07May 2010

BlueGriffon add-ons

12:14 - By BlueGriffon - Announcements - 8 comments

A preliminary (and incomplete) list of the add-ons you'll be able to add to BlueGriffon when it reaches a more stable state.

05May 2010

Fresh Meat 20100505

13:57 - By BlueGriffon - Fresh Meat - 3 comments

A Mac OS X build (built and tested under Snow Leopard, may crash at startup under Leopard...) for your testing pleasure.

Important note: this is a strict xulrunner app. There's not a single change applied to xulrunner's trunk.

03May 2010

Progress 20100503

16:44 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - one comment

  • more source view work and debug
  • now using Laurent Jouanneau's serializer for XHTML
  • persisting properties in New File dialog
  • New Document wizard was horked

30Apr 2010

Progress 20100430

13:26 - By BlueGriffon - Progress - one comment

  • Bespin 0.7.3 added, with satyr's workaround
  • finally, after so many years of Composer and Nvu, changes done in the source view are now undoable ! Yay !
  • IRC discussion about BlueGriffon in particular and the mozilla editor in general happens in irc://irc.mozilla.org/#composer

29Apr 2010

Progress 20100429 #2

17:04 - By BlueGriffon - Progress

  • closing a modified tab discarded changes
  • closing window was closing regardless of modified tabs
  • added cmd-Q (quit) and cmd-W (close tab)
  • different style for modified tabs
  • favicon

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