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We frequently update Friday to add features, make it work better/faster and to fix bugs.

Some of these features and fixes are experimental, at least until they've been tested thoroughly. We don't release our current in-house version until we're reasonably certain it's safe to turn loose.

That means that the version you originally downloaded and installed may not include all the new features listed here. If you see something you want, we're more than happy to share.

29 Oct 2004, Version 4.1.92

firstanswer, lastanswer pointed to wrong answers
The firstanswer and lastanswer placeholders sometimes produced links to incorrect or non-existent HTML files. Both returned links to the first/last answer in numerical order (ie, order of creation) in the FAQ, rather than the first/last in the list on the main faq page. Both returned held answers when they should have ignored them. Now fixed.

Wait cursor etc when searching
When using global search, Friday now displays a "wait" cursor and disables the main and search forms.

Upload CANCEL button
When uploading, there's now a CANCEL button on the upload progress dialog box. Friday checks for a button click before uploading each file. It may still hang until timeout if there's a problem during the transfer of a file (ie, if the server stops responding or your internet connectivity is interrupted).

Forced upload of all files
Friday normally uploads only files that have changed since -- that have later file dates than -- the most recent upload. You can now click Ctrl + Upload to force Friday to upload all files in the HTML folder of your FAQ, not just new or newly changed files.

This is handy when

5 Aug 2004

Edit external files from within Friday's editor
You can now call up files you've included in your Friday pages for editing without even leaving Friday's editor.

If you select the filename and press Ctrl+E to launch the file in the appropriate editing program.

When you do this, Friday first looks for the file along the path part of the selected text.

If it doesn't find it, it looks for it along the default paths you specify in FRIDAY.FQA (you can have a different path for each extension if you like):

[DefaultPaths]
HTM=C:\MyFAQs\ThisFAQ\HTML\ 
PNG=C:\MyPictures\Photos\
TXT=C:\MyFAQs\ThisFAQ\FAQ\ 

and so on.

If no default paths are found in FRIDAY.FQA, Friday

If it can't find the file in any of those places, it checks Friday.INI (in the same directory as Friday.EXE)
It looks for this:

[Editors]
TextExtensions=HTMLTXTASCCSS 

TextExtensions is a concatenated (ie, all run-together) list of extensions that are expected to be ascii files. If the file's extension is on the list, Friday offers to create the file; if the user accepts, it creates the file and launches it in Notepad.

If no TextExtensions entry is found, it uses HTMLTXTASCCSS as the default

However, if Friday found the file during one of the tests above:

It checks a different section in Friday.INI

[Editors]
GIF=full path to your preferred bitmap editor's exe file
HTM=NOTEPAD.EXE
HTML=NOTEPAD.EXE

If it finds the file's extension and an EXE listed, it launches the file in the specified application.
If it doesn't find the extension, it shellexecutes the file. This produces the same effect as doubleclicking the file's icon in Windows Explorer, so before taking the trouble to specify EXE files in the [Editors] section of Friday.INI, doubleclick the filetype you're interested in. If it opens in the app you want, you don't need to do anything else to make it open there from Friday.

Edit CSS files directly from within Friday
Choose Templates, Edit CSS to open the CSS file for the FAQ in Notepad or your choice of CSS editor.
For this to work, you must first tell Friday where to find the CSS file by adding an entry to the [FAQ] section of FRIDAY.FQA:

CSSFile="FULL path to file"

If there's no entry, you'll see a message box about it when you select the menu option
If the file specified doesn't exist, notepad offers to create it for you.

If you also add:

CSSEditor="full path to program exe file"

then instead of launching your css file in Notepad, Friday launches it in the program you specified.

It's a good idea to enclose both the paths to files in quotes, especially if there are spaces in the directory or file names.

You can specify a CSS editor for each individual FAQ or for all of your FAQs.

Add this to the FRIDAY.INI file in the same folder as FRIDAY.EXE to specify a CSS editor for all FAQs, or add the same lines to individual FRIDAY.FQA files if you want to use different editors for different FAQs.

[Editors]
CSSEditor="full path to your favorite CSS editor or notepad or whatever"

Friday looks first for the CSSEditor line in FRIDAY.FQA for each FAQ and uses that when you edit CSS
If it doesn't find that, it looks in the FRIDAY.INI file
If it doesn't find it there, it launches the CSS file in Notepad

So FRIDAY.INI provides a default for all FAQs, the local FQA for each FAQ provides an optional override, and Notepad is our Faithful Fallback Friend For when All Else Fails.

28 Jul, 2004

Gallery.TXT file
The Gallery file is a handy place to store often-used snippets of information, html code or whatever other text you like.

Choose FAQ, Edit Gallery File from the main menu or press Ctrl+G while in Friday's Editor to open GALLERY.TXT in Notepad. If there's no GALLERY.TXT file, Friday offers to create it for you.

By default, GALLERY.TXT is stored in the \FAQ subfolder of your FAQ folder.

If you prefer to store the gallery file elsewhere (for example, so you can share a single file among several FAQs) make this change to the FRIDAY.FQA file for your FAQs:

[FAQ]
GalleryFile=full_path_to_file

Show Held/Total pages on caption bar
Friday's main title bar now shows the total number of questions (entries) in your FAQ and how many of those are on Hold.

For example: [Q:144 H:9] means that there are 144 questions in your FAQ and 9 of them are on Hold.

TotalPages placeholder no longer includes held items
TotalPages now returns only the number of "live" items in your FAQ; it no longer includes held questions in the total pages count.

21 April 2004

New keywords placeholder
When Friday sees the :keywords: placeholder in the answer template file, it checks to see if there's a *.KEY file whose name matches the .TXT file of the currently being processed FAQ.

If the file exists, Friday substitutes the contents of the file for the keywords placeholder.

Look next to the "Test Link" button in Friday's editor to see the name of the text file that contains the FAQ you're editing (just add the .KEY extension to the name you see there).

If you modify FRIDAY.INI (in the same folder as FRIDAY.EXE), you can simply type the name of the KEY file (e.g. FAQ00175.KEY), select it and press Ctrl+E to create and edit it from within Friday's editor.

[Editors]
TextExtensions=HTMLTXTASCCSSKEY

You could even leave the name of the key file in your FAQ ready for editing at any time, but commented out so it doesn't appear in the HTML:

<!-- FAQ00175.KEY -->

Autodetect number entry in Search box
If you're in a hurry to find a specific FAQ by number, just type its number into the Search box. Friday now detects numbers and looks for the faq by number rather than searching for the number in the question text.

Spellcheck enabled
Friday can now pass text to Word (if it's installed) for spell checking. There are a few rough edges; some may be Windows and Word version dependent. Try it ... if it works, great. If not, let us know the specifics.

To enable spell checking add this to the [APP] section of your FRIDAY.FQA file:

EnableSpellCheck=1 

Spell check defaults to US English, but you can set other language preferences by adding the following to the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA:

SpellCheckLanguage=xxxx

where xxx is one of the wdLanguageID constants:

This actually just passes the chosen value on to Word, which actually does the spell check.
Your copy of Word must have the requested language installed in order for this to work.

8 March 2004

Friday now uses archive bit instead of file date on upload
Instead of comparing file date to last upload date, Friday now uploads any file with the archive bit set then sets file attributes to NONE once the file's uploaded.

This means that R/O and other properties will be reset as well.
It still touches the file to set the date to = last upload date

X-refs to subheads now produce links to named destination in index page
If you click a subhead in the XREF Friday now produces a link to the same-named subhead on the main index page. This assumes you have

[APP]
AutoLocations=1

so that Friday generates named destinations for the subheads. Otherwise the links will fail.

1 Feb 2004

File Picker to insert fully pathed filenames
Press Ctrl+P while in the editor to get a file dialog where you can choose a file name.
Friday adds the full path to the chosen file at the insertion point.
If you select text first, Friday replaces the selected text with the filename.

Can now select entire INSERT string to edit with Ctrl+E
If you use Friday's FILE INSERT feature, you can now select the entire line of code for the inserted text and press Ctrl+E to edit the inserted file.

Added last edit date to status report
When you Shift+Click the Question button, you get a simple status report that lists useful information about each question in your FAQ. Last Edit Date is now one of the items reported.

31 Jan 2004

Automatic link formatting
If you select something like this in the editor:

Here's some text
http://www.somedomain.com/somefile.htm

then press ALT+2, Friday converts it to

<a href="http://www.somedomain.com/somefile.htm">Here's some text</a>

which looks like this in a browser:

Here's some text

Handy. But that's just the default. You can control what gets added before/during/after the text you've selected by adding this to the FRIDAY.FQA file

[Links]
; text Friday should add before the URL
AHREFBefore=<a href="
; text Friday should add after the URL but before the link text
AHREFMiddle=" target="_new">
; text Friday should add after the link text
AHREFAfter=</a>

This particular entry will cause the same selected text to convert to:

<a href="http://www.somedomain.com/somefile.htm" target="_new">Here's some text</a>

which looks like this in the browser:

Here's some text

It looks the same, but when clicked, it opens a new browser window.

You can get the same effect to apply to single selected lines of text or links by modifying your Custom Tags.

Strip leading zeros off faq number when searching
Previously when doing a find on FAQ number, entering "56" finds FAQ0056, FAQ0156, FAQ0256, etc.
Now it strips the leading zeros off the FAQ file names and only matches FAQ0056.

Copy FAQ to new location
Choose File, Copy FAQ to new location to create a copy of your FAQ in a different folder or on a different drive. This doesn't affect the current FAQ in any way, so it's useful when you want to

When you choose this option, Friday asks you whether to include the contents of your FAQ.

If you choose YES, then the FAQ, including all of your questions and answers, any generated HTML files ... the whole works, gets copied to the new folder.

If you choose NO, then the copy operation attempts to create a new version of your FAQ with all needed supporting files (templates, graphics, stylesheets, uploadable files, etc.) but it strips out your questions and answers and any generated HTML files.

Say YES if you want to back up a FAQ or move it to a new directory.

Say NO if you want to create a new FAQ that shares the current FAQ's appearance but that will receive new content.

Next you're asked for a path to the new FAQ. For now, you'll have to type it out.

Once you click OK, the copy operation starts. When copying is complete, Friday opens the new FAQ and displays its Settings dialog box. Be sure to check the information here carefully, particularly the upload settings. You'll probably want to set a new upload folder on your web site (if you don't, the new FAQ contents could wipe out the original FAQ on the site. Ooops.)

Improvement to Insert File routine
Friday now does the insert first, then does replacements. If inserted files contain placeholders, Friday now processes them.

Automatically place edit cursor after applying custom tag
You can now select where the text edit cursor will land after you apply a custom tag.
In either the Begin Tag or End Tag text box of the Custom Tags editing dialog box, type:

%C%

where you want the cursor to appear after the custom tag has been applied.

If that didn't suitably mystify you, perhaps this example will:

We have a Web Link custom tag like so:

Before: <a href="
After: "></a>

We type in a url like http://www.pptools.com and select it, then apply the tag and get:

<a href="http://www.pptools.com"></a>

Useful, but this leaves the cursor sitting at the end, after the . Now we have to move it back a few characters to add our link description text.

But if we make the After text look like this in the Custom Tags editor:

After: ">%C%</a>

we get the same text when we apply the tag, but now Friday puts the cursor where %C% was so all you have to do is start typing the link description text.

Note:
%C% or %c% will work. It's not case-sensitive.

10 Oct 2003

Upload password features

Friday encrypts your FTP upload password but you may still prefer not to let Friday store it

In the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FAQ, add the following line:

AskForPassword=YES

When you do this

If you're having upload problems and need to ensure that your password is being correctly decrypted by Friday, add this to the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA:

DebugFTP=YES

Friday then displays the decrypted password prior to uploading files so you can verify that it's been decrypted properly.

We recommend that you remove this setting once you're done using it.

10 Oct 2003

New Search/Replace Features
Friday now allows you to do simple one-time Search/Replaces on the current file you're working on in its editor or across every answer in your FAQ.

It also has a new "table-driven" batch Search/Replace feature that performs multiple Search/Replaces on a single answer or on your whole FAQ with a single keystroke.

See Search and Replace for full information.

File Insert
You can insert any arbitrary text file into your templates or FAQ answers by reference:

<!--INSERT:c:\test\file.htm:INSERT-->

Friday replaces the whole Insert placeholder with the contents of the file specified.
If the file doesn't exist, Friday deletes the Insert placeholder.

This gives you a very powerful way to insert "boilerplate" text into any of your FAQs and still maintain it from a central text file.

For example, suppose you have a dozen different FAQs. Somewhere in each you want to include some legalese, but it might be in a different place in each FAQ. The legal text itself changes often, and you don't want to keep it updated in each FAQ for each change. So:

You put the legal text in c:\boilerplate\legalese\Legal.txt

Now wherever you want the text to appear in the FAQ, put this in the appropriate template:

<!--INSERT:c:\boilerplate\legalese\Legal.txt:INSERT-->

Whenever you update your FAQ, Friday will add the most up-to-date version, hot and steaming from the legal department. All you have to do is update Legal.txt then re-create HTML from your FAQ.

Note: INSERT must appear all in uppercase as shown.

SpaceReplace feature
When you use the AutoLocations feature in Friday to create automatic named locations for each of your questions/subheads, Friday includes any spaces in the question when it creates the name.

These don't cause any problems for internal links, but if you want to link into your FAQ from another page, the links to named locations may break when the locations have spaces.

To prevent that, add this to the [App] section of FRIDAY.FQA

SpaceReplace=x

where x is any character or characters you'd prefer to use in place of spaces.

You could use underscore _ or %20 or ... whatever you like, really.

Adding it right after AutoLocations=1 would be a good idea, since the two features are related.

Ctrl+T to apply current tag
Press Ctrl+T (T for Tag) to apply the tag currently in tags listbox (exactly as clicking the up arrow button does)

Automatic bulleted list formattiong
Friday can automatically format your lists as bulleted lists.

For example, type this:

Item one
Item two
Item three

Then select all three lines and press Ctrl+U (for UNordered List) and get
<ul>
<li>Item one</li>
<li>Item two</li>
<li>Item three</li>
</ul>

which looks like this on the web:

Change the <ul> and </ul> to <ol> and </ol> to get a numbered (ie, Ordered) list instead of a bulleted list.

You can use EditDate placeholder in questions as well as answers
When you use the EditDate placeholder in a question, Friday replaces EditDate with the last edit date of the question's answer file in the main FAQ list, but not in the answer text.

Here's another neat trick. In the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA, Friday maintains an item that looks like this:

LastDate=1/7/2003 9:24:47 PM

This is how it remembers when it last generated HTML. You generally shouldn't modify this.

But right below it, you can add this:

NEWTEXT=<strong>NEW!</strong>

When you do that, the text specified for NewText appears in place of the NEWTEXT placeholder in the main faq template IF the edit date of the question is later than the last date HTML was generated.

By editing LastDate, you can force the issue (but note that you'll have to edit it each time you generate HTML)

Link List
It can be useful to have a list of the links to answers in your FAQ. Friday will generate these automatically in two different formats.

Add the following lines to the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA:

; Turn the LinkList feature on
MakeLinkList=1
; Optionally, supply a file name for the link list file
LinkFileName=linklistfilename

The next time you generate HTML from your FAQ, Friday will create two files, one a plain text file, the other in HTML format, both in the HTML folder for your FAQ. Both contain entries like:

Question
<a href="http://www.link_to_answer/faq0001>http://etcetc</a>


Filename: FAQ00175.htm
Last edited on 10/31/2004 3:49:02 PM

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