The TSW Blog

Once again, a number of bugs have been fixed, features have been tweaked, and a couple of new functions have been added. Beta 4 is ready for download, and I hope that you will all continue the bug hunt. As you hopefully already know, we give away 5 free commercial WebCoder 2007 licenses  to the best betatesters, once the final version has been released!

Download TSW WebCoder 2007 beta 4 - please provide feedback in the beta forum

I'm looking very much forward to getting your feedback, so keep up the good testing! :)

Please notice that TSW WebCoder 2007 requires the .NET framework to run. The installer will try to install it for you, if you do not already have it. For more information about the .NET framework, please see our .NET info page. Also, please be aware that this is beta software. It's meant for testing only, and if you don't feel comfortable using software with known bugs and quirks, you should wait for the final version.

Hopefully you have already discovered the cool CodeSnippet feature, found in both WebPad.NET and the new WebCoder 2007 beta. If not, you can see it in action in this WebPad.NET product demo. Now, I would really like to see what you can do with this feature, and besides, it would be cool to have some standard CodeSnippets to include with the final release of WebCoder 2007 and the WebPad.NET update. If you have already created a cool CodeSnippet, or if you simply have a good idea for one, send it to us and enter the competition to win a free WebPad.NET or WebCoder 2007 (which ever you prefer) commercial license. So, send us all your best stuff, make your fellow TSW users happy and you may even win a free license! Here is how you do it:

• Write an e-mail to codesnippets {at} tsware [dot] net
• Include your full name and your e-mail address
• A short description of the snippet and what it does, as well as the target language
• Attach the CodeSnippet(s) that you wish to enter into the contest, to the e-mail

Please notice that by sending us your CodeSnippet(s), you allow us to distribute it as a part of our software.

Finding your CodeSnippets

Your CodeSnippets are saved in the WebCoder or WebPad.NET settings directory as simple XML files. You can find them by navigating to the following path or by selecting Start -> Run in Windows and copy/paste the path:

XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[Your username]\Local Settings\Application Data\TSW\WebCoder 2007\settings\codesnippets\

Vista: C:\Users\[Your username]\AppData\Local\TSW\WebCoder 2007\settings\codesnippets\

You should replace the [Your username] part with the username of your Windows user. If you're using WebPad.NET instead of WebCoder 2007, you should replace the WebCoder 2007 part with WebPad.NET.

In this folder, you will find a bunch of folders, corresponding to the languages for which you have created CodeSnippets. You will find your CodeSnippets inside of these folders, as simple XML files. 

The contest will be running right up until the final version of WebCoder 2007 will be released. We can't wait to see your best snippets!

After more than a week of very intense bugfixing, beta 3 is now available for download. Thanks to all of you, a serious amount of bugs have been fixed, features have been added and tweaked, and WebCoder 2007 is now one step closer to perfection :). The bugs should now be less obvious and more hard to find, but I hope you will stay dedicated and track down the remaining ones anyway :). Keep up the good work, enjoy beta 3 and don't forget that we give away 5 free commercial WebCoder 2007 licenses  to the best betatesters, once the final version has been released!

Download TSW WebCoder 2007 beta 3 - please provide feedback in the beta forum

I'm looking very much forward to getting your feedback, so keep up the good testing! :)

Please notice that TSW WebCoder 2007 requires the .NET framework to run. The installer will try to install it for you, if you do not already have it. For more information about the .NET framework, please see our .NET info page. Also, please be aware that this is beta software. It's meant for testing only, and if you don't feel comfortable using software with known bugs and quirks, you should wait for the final version.

TSW Webcoder: Color Management Feature

Hello, friends and fellow TSW Software fanatics!

Come in. Find a seat and get out your pencils and paper... and open TSW WebCoder 2005 while you're at it!
Let's take a moment to learn another cool, unique feature of TSW Webcoder 2005. For the web-standards evangelists in the audience, you may want to turn-off the iPods and listen-up as this might interest you especially.

Step #1:

With your current project, or active document loaded in Web Coder 2005, open the CSS Panel. Ensure that your global CSS Selectors are visible. For example, if you are using a Web Coder Project, you might tick the "View
for active project" radio button and follow any prompts for loading your main CSS file, or if you're simply using a single file, be sure to hit the "update" button in the CSS Panel.

Step #2:

Open the Web Coder 2005 Projects Panel. Locate the top-most icon of your current project. Directly beneath the Project folder-name-- above the file folders belonging to that project, there are a few default Web Coder
icons which indicate any Database associated with the project, the FTP location, the Project Template(s) and the "Project Colors".

Step #3:

Using the secondary mouse-button (i.e. right-click), select the Project Colors icon, revealing the Project Colors context menu. Select "Add Colors from Project Stylesheet". Webcoder will ask if you want to add the colors. Select "Yes".

Violla!

All of your current Project colors, as declared in your CSS, should now be conveniently summarized and accessible at the click of a button.

If you tend to design with a limited set of colors, or what we might call a "color scheme" ( as in something like this:
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html ), you will definitely find this Web Coder 2005 feature to be of value.

ATTN: TSW Software Users and Advocates:

Big Deal...

I'm excited to have the opportunity to author some tips for you right here in the TSW Blog-- it's a great honor. I urge any other avid WebCoder and WebPad.NET users to become more involved in sharing your own thoughts, tips, success stories, and anything else you want to share with the community. Show the folks at TSW that you know how to put together a few sentences into a meaningful paragraph, and perhaps you'll be authoring text here on the TSW Blog too!

Best wishes, and Good Luck!

As some of you may have noted, beta 1 was only available for a pretty limited amount of time. After getting the first reports, it seemed to have a more serious bug, making it crash too much on some machines, and I didn't want too many people to experience this. Hopefully, this should be resolved for beta 2. The fastest of you (probably the RSS subscribers) did get to download beta 1, and you provided me with huge amounts of feedback - thank you! Beta 2 comes with loads of bugfixes, tweaks and minor additions, all because of your great work. Keep it up and see if you can earn one of the 5 free commercial WebCoder 2007 licenses we will be giving away to the best betatesters, once the final version has been released!

Download TSW WebCoder 2007 beta 2 - please provide feedback in the beta forum

In the next week, I will be very busy working on another project, so I might not be that active in the forum. Please don't let that keep you away from posting, I will be reading every word of it and reply to it once I'm done with the project. I'm looking very much forward to getting your feedback, so keep up the good testing! :)

Please notice that TSW WebCoder 2007 requires the .NET framework to run. The installer will try to install it for you, if you do not already have it. For more information about the .NET framework, please see our .NET info page. Also, please be aware that this is beta software. It's meant for testing only, and if you don't feel comfortable using software with known bugs and quirks, you should wait for the final version.

I'm very happy to announce that the first beta version of TSW WebCoder 2007 has just been released. Build directly on top of WebPad.NET, with all the features you know from WebCoder 2005 plus a bunch of new and improved features, you get the best from all worlds. But enough marketing talk for now - hopefully you wish to try the new version without any persuasion :). Be sure to go through the first beta version and check that your favorite features are still there and working the way you want it to. In the beginning of the beta process, I'm willing to implement new stuff, but the further we get, the more important it is to keep the new features to a minimum and mostly fix bugs and improve existing features.

Download TSW WebCoder 2007 beta 1 - please provide feedback in the beta forum

I hope you enjoy this beta version. Be sure to let us know what you think of it. All feedback is very welcome in the beta forum.

Please notice that TSW WebCoder 2007 requires the .NET framework to run. The installer will try to install it for you, if you do not already have it. For more information about the .NET framework, please see our .NET info page.

Please be aware that this is beta software. It's meant for testing only, and if you don't feel comfortable using software with known bugs and quirks, you should wait for the final version.

P.S In case you're wondering what's new in this version, be sure to check out earlier posts on this blog, where we've gone in depth with a bunch of the new stuff in WebCoder 2007.

I told you a bit about TSW SiteSync in this post and I promised you some screenshots. However, a test version is far more interesting than screenshots, so I have been working hard on polishing SiteSync up for the first beta version. I have tested it on several servers, and it should be pretty stable, but as usual, if you don't feel like testing unfinished software, you should wait a while, for the final version. With that said, I hope you will download the beta version and give us some feedback. Despite the fact that it has been released as a beta version, we're still open for suggestions - it has not been released only for bughunting, but also to get ideas for extra functions and improvements.

Download TSW SiteSync beta 1 - please provide feedback in the beta forum

To get started using SiteSync, please click the help button in the main window. It will show you a nice little "Getting started" guide, but if you have any questions, please ask. All feedback is more than welcome, and I would really like to hear what you think of it. I hope to see you all in the beta forum :)

I wrote about it some time ago and now it's here: TSW WebPad.NET 1.10. I'm releasing it for you, the readers of this blog, first, to see how you like it. I'm hoping that you'll tell me if I messed anything up while working on the update :). As I wrote earlier, this release is mostly about fixing minor glitches from version 1.0, but I have added some small but nice features here and there, like the ability to remember your open files/project etc. Please give it a try and let me know what you think of it in the beta forum.

Download TSW WebPad.NET 1.10

If you're already using WebPad.NET, you should be aware that this update will overwrite your syntaxcoloring settings. You may want to take a backup of your settings directory before installing. It can usually be found in C:\Documents and Settings\<Your username>\Local Settings\Application Data\TSW\WebPad.NET\settings\.

Also, please notice that if you have purchased WebPad.NET, you will need a new key to use the application beyond the usual 25 executions. Please contact us with your name and order ID if you need a key.

As you are probably already aware of, WebCoder has become an editor with a strong focus on PHP. It was only natural for me to develop WebCoder in that direction, when I started using PHP for all my web projects. With WebCoder 2005 I was really happy with the set of PHP features implemented, especially the PHP IntelliSense, since I've always been a huge fan of IntelliSense functionality. With "WebCoder.NET", we take it to the next level! The PHP IntelliSense has been rewritten from scratch, and then tweaked all over. The IntelliSense support in version 2005 will seem basic to you, once you've seen what "WebCoder.NET" can do. I've added support for constants and interfaces, and WebCoder will now be aware of the visibility for variables and functions. Support for static variables and functions have been added too, along with the self and parent keywords. You will also notice that WebCoder now suggests stuff whenever you start writing a word, if it's in the correct context. This list includes everything relevant, that is, PHP functions, reserved words, your own variables, functions and classes and so on. Besides that, almost every aspect of the IntelliSense has been tweaked, to help you out in most situations, with less annoyance. But have a look at the demo and see some of the new functionality and how easy and fast it is to write PHP code with the next version of WebCoder:

PHP IntelliSense demo

Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, comments or feedback in general :)

One thing that I always felt could use some improvement in WebCoder, is the project to FTP synchronization feature. With the latest version it became pretty good, but I was never fully satisfied. When I started to work with ASP.NET besides PHP, I really missed an application for doing complete site synchronization, beyond what I ever imagined implementing in WebCoder. I started working on "TSW SiteSync" a couple of months after I began creating WebCoder 2007, and it quickly reached a point where I saw some real potential in it. The idea of an external application, which could be used with or without WebCoder, seemed like a really good idea, so that's what I did. TSW SiteSync will be an individual product, with the possibility of synchronizing WebCoder projects very easily. It will be a cheap product, with a price somewhere near the current price of WebPad.NET, with a substantial discount for people purchasing both WebCoder 2007 and SiteSync.

So, what do you think? Have you ever needed a good application for synchronizing your websites? Did you ever think that the built-in sync options in WebCoder needed a bit more features? Feedback is more than welcome, as are questions. If you're interested, I'll be happy to post some more information about SiteSync, along with the first screenshots of it :)