Forum Posts Feed
A word on Surfulater (today on Bits du Jour)
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Cassius
May 24, 2007 at 02:38 PM
More on Surfulater vs myBase:
1. Wes pointed out that Surfulator, like mB, can have multiple databases open.
2. Surfulator says, “Secure HTTPS pages can’t be added as Attachments. This isn’t a Surfulater problem and is due to the nature of secure pages. Instead select the content you wish to save and use Surfulater: Add new Article in your Browser.”
MyBase CAN save such pages. (I just did it.)
-c
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
May 25, 2007 at 09:22 AM
SurfulatEr can also save HTTPS pages; they just can’t be saved as attachments, which is another issue.
[Surfulater: Add new Article] is the way that I save most pages anyway, so that they be viewed within the program.
In any case, I definitely expect MyBase to be able to do more things than Surfulater; it’s a broader-scope program, with a higher price tag. As far as I can tell, the main advantage in MyBase is the “breaking down” of saved pages to HTML and linked files, which I think is very useful if one wants to play around with the material. SuL’s (Surf-U-Later’s) main advantage is that its focused in saving web material and it keeps getting better at it, even as the web material gets more diverse. SuL’s main advantage will probably show in pages using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which are multiplying every day as more
and more websites use some kind of Content Management System, separating content from layout.
As an all-round database SuL is still immature, but the infrastructure is very powerful (if you read Neville’s vision http://blog.surfulater.com/2005/11/21/surfulater-under-the-hood-and-down-the-road/ there seems to be interesting times ahead). For example, though (apparently) you can’t as yet create external links to SuL content as in UltraRecall, OneNote, Evernote or Whizfolders, the underlying functionality is there and should eventually be available to users.
As a sideline, I have the impression that it will make more and more sense to maintain material segmented in specialised repositories, accessing it from a central location, so this kind of URL linking is something I am increasingly looking for.
alx
Cassius wrote:
>2. Surfulator says, “Secure HTTPS pages can’t be added as
>Attachments. This isn’t a Surfulater problem and is due to the nature of secure pages.
>Instead select the content you wish to save and use Surfulater: Add new Article in your
>Browser.”
>
>MyBase CAN save such pages. (I just did it.)
Posted by Derek Cornish
May 27, 2007 at 07:38 PM
alx -
>As a sideline, I have the impression that it will make more and more sense to maintain material segmented in specialised repositories, accessing it from a central location, so this kind of URL linking is something I am increasingly looking for.
Web Research may have what you want http://www.macropool.com/en/ . It is in many respects similar to Surfulater, but has been around somewhat longer (it used to be called ContentSaver).
You can copy the URL-like address of any of WR’s documents (htm, pdf, doc, etc) - using Ctrl+Shift+W - to any external software that can handle these types of hyperlinks. Then you can summon the document in question for viewing from that external software. Zoot, for example, can “read” WR’s addresses, as can UltraRecall (I think*) - and, no doubt, many other information management programs.
WR works with IE and Firefox (with a free add-in), and also has an Outlook add-in ($15) to make it easier to save emails etc., from within Outlook to WR.
*So far I haven’t been able to open UR’s editor to find out. After years of puzzling out Zoot my patience with poorly-documented programs is minimal…
Derek
Posted by Derek Cornish
May 27, 2007 at 08:14 PM
>*So far I haven’t been able to open UR’s editor to find out. After years of puzzling out Zoot my patience with poorly-documented programs is minimal…
O.K. It seems that the introductory database supplied with UR must be read-only or something. I opened a new one, made a new text item and pasted the WR hyperlink into it. Then I highlighted it and used Ctrl+Q to activate the shortcut. UR displayed the WR item in its Details Pane. Worked with pdf, htm, and doc - though the time taken for the Word doc to display was agonizingly slow. Probably works with other file types.
Derek
Posted by Neville Franks
May 31, 2007 at 01:38 AM
See my replies below:
Bob Mackreth wrote:
>I’ll put in a good word for Surfulater, too. I registered a copy a couple months ago. As a
>hybrid between a web clipper and a two-pane outliner, it does what it’s designed for
>very well. Surfulater parses HTML more accurately than any other knowledge manager
>I’ve tested, and it has a very useful search function.
Thanks.
>On the down side, the UI is just
>a bit quirky- eg, no “Edit” item in the menu bar, though cut/ copy / paste /undo
>functions are available through toolbar icons or right-click. You can set most font
>aspects for text you enter, but not color. Right-clicking the document icon in the
>tree pane- intuitive for most of us - does not bring up the normal set of choices; you
>have to select the label TEXT instead. Odd!
- What action would “Edit item” actually perform? About all I can think of would be to enter edit mode on the Title for the current record. There are already plenty of ways to edit content and this seems like adding unnecessary clutter to me. Note also that Edit works on a Record -> Field basis wherease Cut/Copy/Paste etc. all work on complete records.
-Setting text color is on our todo list.
- Surfulater makes extensive use of right click context menus throughout the program. It seemed logical to me at least that right click on an image would limit itself to menu items to change the image and right click on the item title would provide the full complement of capabilities. I could also add these to the image context menu, but surely that’s unnecessary clutter. Context menu’s are after all, all about what you click on.
Product design and development comprises various tradeoffs. With Surfulater I’m striving to make it as uncluttered, intuitive and easy to use as possible, whiles’t still catering for power users.
I welcome further discussion on these and any other issues.
Neville Franks.