BlueGriffon.org

Adding presentation to HTML is hard

BlueGriffon — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:12:00 +0200

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?

CSS 3 Multicolumn Layout

BlueGriffon — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:00:00 +0200

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

T-shirt :-)

BlueGriffon — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:42:00 +0200

here...

Fresh Meat 20100621

BlueGriffon — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:17:00 +0200

Progress 20100621

BlueGriffon — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:55:00 +0200

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

Rotations, starts looking ok...

BlueGriffon — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:54:00 +0200

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.

First proto of CSS 3 rotation in the viewport

BlueGriffon — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:48:00 +0200

It's a very very early prototype...

Rotations

BlueGriffon — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:02:00 +0200

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!

Word count

BlueGriffon — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:06:00 +0200

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.

Progress 20100517

BlueGriffon — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:21:00 +0200

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 !

Progress 20100513

BlueGriffon — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:40:00 +0200

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!

Image dialog #2

BlueGriffon — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:36:00 +0200

Starts taking shape...

Image dialog

BlueGriffon — Wed, 12 May 2010 09:21:00 +0200

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

Progress 20100510

BlueGriffon — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:37:00 +0200

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

JSCSSP in BlueGriffon

BlueGriffon — Sun, 09 May 2010 22:03:00 +0200

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.

BlueGriffon add-ons

BlueGriffon — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:14:00 +0200

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

Fresh Meat 20100505

BlueGriffon — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:57:00 +0200

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.

Progress 20100503

BlueGriffon — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:44:00 +0200

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

Progress 20100430

BlueGriffon — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:26:00 +0200

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

Progress 20100429 #2

BlueGriffon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:04:00 +0200

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