BlueGriffonTM

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

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17May

BlueGriffon EPUB Edition 1.7

I just released BlueGriffon EPUB v1.7 for all platforms. Purchasers of older versions can safely download and install it over their existing install, it will not reset profile or license credentials.

Note to Windows users: you may have to install the MSVC10 Redistributable Package since we moved to VC10. See the download page.

14May

BlueGriffon 1.7

I just released BlueGriffon 1.7 for Windows (XP, 7, 8), OS X (10.6 to 10.8) and Ubuntu (12.04 and 13.04, 32 and 64 bits). You can find it here.

26Mar

Mailchimp Email Templates

In january 2011, Mailchimp released under a CC license 37 html-based email templates that became hugely popular among newsletter authors. I am glad to report these 37 templates are now available through our One-Click Templates add-on to BlueGriffon. If you already purchased our add-on, you don't have to upgrade; just launch BlueGriffon and open the One-Click Templates Manager to see the new MailChimp Email Blueprints section with its 37 templates. /* Enjoy! */

18Feb

One-Click Templates add-on

Thanks to Jean-Pierre Reyt's heads up (and patience), I have identified a well hidden bug in the One-Click Templates add-on. It's related to the permissions of the temporary directory in which the add-on downloads and unzips a template. Weirdly, that bug did not happen in the past. I am currently working on a fix, stay tuned.

Update:fixed, email sent to all purchasers, bluegriffon.com updated

29Jan

BlueGriffon EPUB Edition 1.6.1

We just released an update to our ebook editor, BlueGriffon EPUB Edition 1.6.1. Just install the new version over the previous one. If you have already purchased an earlier version of the app, your license credentials still apply and no change is needed. You should also have received by email an update to the User's Manual.

BlueGriffon is the only Wysiwyg cross-platform editor fully conformant to both EPUB2 and EPUB3.

Changelog from version 1.5.4:

22Jan

BlueGriffon 1.6 released

We just released BlueGriffon 1.6. The most important changes in the changelog below are the ones in bold:

  • fixed too many LFs in stylesheet serialization
  • fixed error in commandline handler
  • CSS Properties panel was horked by switch to dockable panels
  • page setup and print menus: b=500
  • remove floating panel; b=498
  • better inline editing (core patch)
  • fixes in Find/Replace in source view
  • font and color assignments in floating toolbar don't use css; b=482
  • TOC update horked; b=440
  • Save in source view should update iframe's oldSource; b=479
  • dockable panels; b=478
  • new pref for default file extensions on save; b=309
  • TypeInState not shown in UI; b=471
  • save from source view horked; b=473
  • blockquote button; b=472
  • xhtml 1.1; b=404
  • aria role dropdown always looking for block; b=430
  • only UTF-8 in xhtml5; b=430
  • updates on a daily basis don't work; b=436
  • add skip-this-version to updates; b=415
  • edit a page directly from a link; b=457
  • get rid of align attribute; b=464
  • revert shuffles tab order; b=466
  • bad serialization for embedded stylesheets; b=467
  • selected line in dark source themes unreadable; b=445
  • Add an 'Open File' menu; b=470
  • Better table row and column resizers; b=469
  • switch to final CSS gradient syntax; b=463
  • languages dialog horked on cancel; b=439
  • add toggle view command; b=426, patch by Yu Tang
  • IDs appear twice in link insertion dialog; b=422

/* Enjoy! */

14Jan

Towards BlueGriffon 1.6

BlueGriffon v1.6, even with a minor version number change, will in fact be quite a big change architecturally since all the floating panels of BlueGriffon become dockable. As a result, some add-ons will require an upgrade. Purchasers of older versions of the add-ons will soon receive a free upgrade offer by email. The add-ons store will also soon offer the new versions with a clear mention they strictly require BlueGriffon v >=1.6.

Localization teams of BlueGriffon, please verify your locale directory and commit or submit patches for all strings still in english. Thanks!

28Jun

QOTD

Hi BlueGriffon Team,

I would like to inform you that your company is chosen as to receive the “Best Web Tool 2012” award. We applaud your great products/services that truly make websites better.

Stay tuned for more information soon:-)

26Jun

Free BlueGriffon add-on : Opquast Accessibility First Step

OpquastI have a free add-on for you BlueGriffon users : it's an automated accessibility checklist built by the wonderful Opquast people. I took their checklist, wrote the corresponding JS-based tests and turned the whole thing into an add-on. The add-on adds a new menu entry to the Tools menu. It works for the last focused document and it works for both Wysiswyg and Source views. Localized in english and french.

The add-on is available here. Please save it onto your hard disk and follow the installation instructions starting at step 3.

Screenshot of the add-on

20Jun

BlueGriffon EPUB Edition beta1

BlueGriffon EPUB Edition logoI have in front of me right now the beta 1 of BlueGriffon EPUB Edition. That beta is EPUB2-only, no EPUB3 yet. I am going to give that beta1 for tests purposes (blogging allowed, no embargo, redistribution of course forbidden) to a number of selected people in the coming days. Please don't ping me if you don't get an invite, the list of testers is already frozen.

  • cross-platform Windows, OS X and Linux
  • powered of course by Mozilla
  • no proprietary pivot format at all
  • creates *.epub, opens *.epub, edits *.pub, saves *.epub; of course including if the ebook was not created by BlueGriffon
  • Web standards compliant
  • based on BlueGriffon
  • allows UI-based editing of all metadata
  • allows UI-based editing of guide, spine and ncx

Let me clarify one detail in case you missed it: this product will not be Open Source and will be fully commercial. The changes to the files already present in the Web editor BlueGriffon (not the EPUB one) will of course be published to fully respect the MPL but will be quite useless since almost all the magic happens in new files.

You can already see a few recent screenshots at http://bluegriffon-epubedition.com (that's a carousel).

Stay tuned !

Update: I also posted a screenshot of BlueGriffon EPUB Edition editing a japanese version of the Qu'ran released as an EPUB2 ebook.

08Jun

BlueGriffon 1.5.2 in Galician

I am really glad to report that thanks to the hard work done by Enrique Estévez, Galician is now enabled by default in BlueGriffon builds. 1.5.2 users can download and use the gl langpack following these steps:

  1. download the langpack and save it onto your hard disk
  2. launch BlueGriffon 1.5.2
  3. open Tools > Add-ons
  4. click on the Languages tab
  5. click on the wheel button and select Install Add-on Fom File
  6. select the langpack you saved above
  7. click the Restart link, let BlueGriffon restart
  8. open Preferences, switch to Advanced tab
  9. check "Use installed locale", select Galician in the list
  10. hit the "Use Language" button
  11. let BlueGriffon restart and enjoy 1.5.2 in Galego!

25May

BlueGriffon 1.5.2 released

  • fixed (regression from BMO bug 669026 handled in bug 757368): editor loses focus using arrow keys if a panel is opened and contains a focusable element
  • L10N errors
  • one minor error in the CSS Properties Panel

Available here, as usual.

27Apr

BlueGriffon 1.5

BlueGriffon 1.5 went live a few hours ago. If you purchased BlueGriffon's User's Manual, watch your inbox, a download link for the revised version is waiting for you there. Purchasers of our CSS Pro Editor, our Silver Offer and our Platinum subscribers also received a download link to the new version of the CSS Pro Editor.

13Apr

BlueGriffon 1.5 ETA

If everything goes well, BlueGriffon 1.5 will be released friday 27 april. There are still localization holes, in particular for the following locales:

  • he (Hebrew): severe lag
  • fi (Finnish): only last changes missing
  • it (Italian): only last changes missing
  • hu (Hungarian): DONE 20120417
  • ja (Japanese): severe lag
  • ko (Korean): severe lag
  • nl (Dutch): severe lag
  • pl (Polish): DONE 20120413
  • sl (Slovenian): light lag

If you can help us here in order to have these locales completed for the 24th of april, you're highly welcome. Please see our localization manual and then the list of recent L10N changes. Warning, that list contains only the recent changes. Locales severely lagging require more changes than what's contained in this list. Thanks!

21Mar

Localizing BlueGriffon

I have written a short manual for BlueGriffon localizers. This manual focuses on Windows for the time being.

20Mar

BlueGriffon in Serbian !

Thanks to Ivan Starčević (Иван Старчевић) and Snežana Lukić (Снежана Лукић), we now have a fully functional Serbian language pack for BlueGriffon 1.4.1!

  1. right-click on this link and save the file on your hard disk
  2. launch BlueGriffon
  3. open Tools > Add-ons
  4. Use the top-right button to Install Add-on from File and select the file you saved on your disk
  5. restart BlueGriffon
  6. open BlueGriffon's Preferences, select Advanced Tab, select "Use installed locale", select "sr (Serbia)"
  7. click on the "Use language button"

02Mar

BlueGriffon 1.4.1 released

We just released BlueGriffon 1.4.1 to fix the issue hit by some Linux users detailed here. It's not the only change in that 1.4.1, see the changelog.

01Mar

Books!

First book published on BlueGriffon! And it's in japanese! Wooohooo!!!! Don't forget the complete User's Manual in english!

28Feb

1.4.1

We will unfortunately have a version 1.4.1 of BlueGriffon before 1.5... Let me explain you why: below are screenshots of the very same modal window opened by nsIWindowWatcher.openWindow() on Windows XP, Windows 8, OS X, Ubuntu 10.10, and finally Fedora 16...

Windows XP Windows 8 OS X Ubuntu 10.10 Fedora 16

I guess you can immediately see the difference: no close button on Fedora if the window features don't include "dialog=no" :-( That drastically impacts (in some add-ons, the table properties, the spellchecker, SVG Edit) some Linux users of BlueGriffon who have usually no idea how to tweak their Gnome settings to fix the issue. Hence the need for a 1.4.1...

17Feb

One-Click Templates Manager 2.0

I'm currently ironing the v2.0 of our One-Click Templates add-on to BlueGriffon. First version of that add-on is already a best-seller and I think you're going to like v2.0. Main changes are:

  • nearly 3,000 (yes, three thousand) free HTML+CSS templates!
  • you can now create your own One-Click Templates from any document of yours

So here's a static demo for you, click on the images to see a larger version.

First let's have a web document created inside BlueGriffon. For instance a blank page for the BlueGriffon web site:

BlueGriffon editing a page for its web site

We are going to turn that document - and all the objects linked to it (stylesheets, replaced elements, fonts) - into a personal template through the File > Save as Template menu entry:

Save as Template menu entry

The dialog it opens offers first to select where you want your templates and the associated database to be stored, and then set a few metadata for your template (mandatory unique name, description, license):

Save as Template dialog

Once all choices are made, the dialog looks like:

Save as Template dialog ready to save

And we only have to click on the Save button to create our template's package. Once it's done, the package's file is revealed by the OS. Please note the sqlite database for easier access to templates' metadata. All URLs inside our document or inside the associated stylesheets (including imported stylesheets, whatever the nesting level) are rewritten for cleaner packaging.

package file revealed

Now let's close our original document and use our new personal template. To do that, use the File > One-Click Templates menu entry

1-Click Templates menu entry

That opens the Template Manager. In the current version, 2864 free templates are available!

1-Click Templates manager

Just for fun, let's look at the templates proposed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 by freecsstemplates.org:

freecsstemplates.org templates

For each template, we have a thumbnail, a description if one is available, a license, an author, a button linking to a live demo if one is available and a button to select that template to create a new document. If a large preview image is available, clicking on the thumbnail will show it. Hitting the Select button to use the template requires only one last operation from you: you must provide a file name for your new document... Let's go back now to our personal templates, and here's the one we just created:

personal templates

So let's create a new document based on our personal template. As I said earlier, I only have to provide a file name:

filename prompt

I'm all set. My new document is here. Wherever were the original files on my hard disk, I now have a "blank" document based on a template well packaged, all media files living together, all stylesheets living together, all fonts living together, all scripts living together for a greater maintainability.

a new document based on our template

Every time you'll use the File > Save as Template menu entry, it will remind you the location of the directory where your personal templates live in. Backing them up is then trivial and giving them to someone else is also trivial. Just give that person a copy of your templates directory...

This v2.0 is going live soon, don't miss it!

Update: images updated so they don't harm planet.mozilla.org

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