I’m writing this very post in webpad, and I think this is by far the best release of the program, with some cool new features, much better stability, and compatibility with more browsers than ever. Jump on over to the webpad Project Page to see what all the fuss is about, or you can just go ahead and download webpad now.

I’m expecting to release webpad next week, if not this weekend!

Part of add the delete functionality required me to write out the (very, very simple) plugin API for adding and removing tools to the toolbar. I may be a little biased (and not at all modest), but I think it’s pretty cool More about plugins later – but basically webpad 3.0 supports plugins through a “My Plugins” section, so hopefully people might even write some new features for it, allowing access to more external sources of text to edit!

So, I can hear you asking; what’s left? Well:

1. MovableType Support (open, edit, create, delete)
2. WordPress Support (ditto)
3. Update a few interface niceties (like the ‘About webpad’ dialog)
4. Write the new Help Manual, which is a lot different to the last version, and will be a lot bigger
5. Update the webpad project page
6. Fix a scrolling bug in Mozilla (fixed on PC, needs a tweak for Mac)
7. Pretty up some of the error messages
8. Thorough system testing before release
9. Packaging up with some instructions on installation

Oh yeah, and of course, I’m doing the whole dog-food eating thing and as usual, this is posted with the very latest version of webpad (from FireFox), using a couple of the tools and bits and pieces and it’s all looking good.

Keep an eye on the project page and sign up to the mailing list to hear as soon as it’s available!

With the new integrated authentication, when you hit webpad you are presented with a log in screen, where you enter a username/password as normal, then continue to the actual application.

I’m also currently looking at templating (thanks to a previous hack that Brad Choate made to webpad 2.0 which allowed it to selectively edit the contents of a file, only within certain regions (denoted by webpad tags of some sort). I will have this functionality included in the official release of webpad 3.0 Personal Edition, and it will definitely be a part of the Professional release.

Things may have been quiet, but they’re not completely dead!

Ideally, I’d have webpad create files, then change them so that a specified user account owns/controls them, but that the Apache user would have access to them. Since I’m yet to get this working (or figure out exactly how I can do it on DreamHost), in the meantime I am just creating files or directories and immediately chmod’ing them to 777 (I know, I know, not secure etc, but the only way I can do it so that I can work with the files later.)

Anyone know a better way of doing it?

I am also considering switching away from HTTP Authentication, and using a form to log in to webpad, which might just allow me to run webpad in CGI mode on DreamHost, and thus solve user problems, because it would run as my user… will keep you posted on that though.

Turns out that it was because I was reloading webpad in a window which I had previously used it, so the session (containing filenames etc) was still active. When webpad loaded, it was triggering the ‘save’ operation, and saving the now-empty main window as the file I was previously working on. All I’ve done is make it so that you can’t write a blank file now — if you want to delete something, you should be using the delete operation in the file dialog anyway.

One step closer to release! Blogs are still a sticking point tho… how/what to support on Blogger.com/MovableType is the thing holding me up. Complete blosxom support is already in there, and works wonderfully – I’m using it to maintain my blogs and website. The Blogger Atom API sounds really ugly and excessively complex, but I’ll let it stabilise a little more and then have a proper look at it I think…

Incidentally, adding the functionality for the fantastic blogging application, blosxom was completely trivial, care of it’s wonderful use of the file system of the server that it’s hosted on. In effect, blosxom blogs within webpad are represented as alternate home directories, and use all the same file access operations as the normal server actions do – excellent!

Check it out and get yourself a copy of blosxom if you’re running a blog, it’s the best thing out there if you don’t mind a bit of hackery and custom mods

Turns out the main problem was that my cleanup script that removes temp files periodically from webpad’s directory was cleaning up the uploaded files before you had a chance to move them to their permanent location. Now that that’s under control, all’s well!

Development is progressing well, and at this stage, I hope to release at least an official beta within a few weeks, pending more rigorous file and security tests, as well as some browser compatibility tests.

In version 3.0, I’ve decided to attempt to support 3 platforms for blogging, namely:

1. blosxom (what I use)
2. Blogger (what I used to use)
3. MovableType (which I’ve never used)

This isn’t a problem in itself (apart from the complexity it adds to those operations , but I don’t want to release anything for Blogger which is based on the current Blogger API, because they are planning on implementing the Atom API in the near future, which will be much better than what they’ve got now. In the meantime, blosxom is easy to support (filesystem-based, what could be better?) and I think MovableType is also going to be changing their API structure in the near future (as mentioned here).

I’m leaving all the blog operations until as late as possible in the development cycle for this version of webpad, but basically if the blog vendors don’t sort themselves out, I’ll just release this with blosxom support, and perhaps support for the existing APIs, then extend support and release a patch once Blogger and MT have implemented their new APIs.

This version also has some more advanced features like renaming and deleting files, creating new folders and XHTML compliance on all HTML that gets created directly by webpad. The interface has been updated as well to make it a little slicker, and hopefully load a little quicker (more reliance on CSS). The big news though, is that this version will be compatible with Mozilla browsers as well as IE (still working on some of the HTML tools for Mozilla though…). Coming along, coming along. Get on the mailing list at http://dentedreality.com.au/webpad/ if you’re not already, because I’ll be sending an email to that list with notification when webpad Personal Edition 3.0 is released.

webpad Personal Edition will remain free for everyone to download and use, but webpad Pro will attract a small licensing fee which is yet to be finalised. I will also be slightly changing the balance of features in each version, so you will find that some features you would like to be available may only be in the Pro version, although I will keep as much as I can in the Personal Edition.

I think webpad offers a great way to manage a blosxom-powered blog remotely, since it offers a few easy-to-use HTML tools, while modifying the file directly on the server, which is just where blosxom wants them

php_flag register_globals on

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc on

The next version of webpad will not require this, but for now it’s the easiest way around the problem.

If anyone knows of any other problems and/or fixes to problems with webpad, please email them in to me using the contact form or email here.

Once webpad 2.1 is released successfully, work on v3.0 will begin shortly thereafter, which will be a major code-revision, giving webpad a much more stable backend and coding structure, as well as a number of new features to improve its functionality and usefulness as a web-based text editor. I am also considering splitting the code-base into a “Personal Edition” and “Enterprise Edition” (names not finalised!) which would allow me to ficus each version on either single or multi-user environments (respectively). This would also most likely introduce a pricing structure for the Enterprise Edition (Personal Edition will remain free for the taking). I’ll keep you all up to date.

The projects really could use a little work, but I just don’t have time to work on them right now. Once the site is live, I will be working on RESTments again to get that going, and then when that is up, the projects will all receive a make-over to ensure that they work with PHP’s register_globals off and magic_quotes_gpc off as well. I will also eventually get to working on new versions of webpad (which I have some great plans for) and AvantBlog (want to make a few versions, so that there is one for each major type if possible.

So now, with no other external contracts to take up my time, it is just a matter of not falling asleep and then all I have to do is my website, should mean that it’s up within a week or 2.

There are also a number of improvements I would like to make to the system at the same time, but priority one will be to bring all of the existing code up to a certain level, then move forward to a new version.

And so… the requirements (as far as I am concerned) for version 2.1 public are;

1. Re-write of backend code to standardize style/syntax etc.
2. Ensure that all code is 100% compatible with a default installation (no register_globals being the big one here)
3. Switch all of the Blogger.com operations over to using the new, inbuilt XML-RPC functions in PHP, rather than the external library it currently uses.
4. Ensure that all Blogger.com operations still work (their API has been all over the place, so who knows??)
5. Iron out any bugs in the install process to ensure that the app can be installed with a minimum of fuss.

With that out of the way, I will then look towards a 3.0 release, which should look something like this;

1. Inclusion of ODBC, PostgreSQL and possibly Oracle plug-ins for authentication
2. Streamlined setup/install and user management (*large* improvements planned)
3. Improved support for authentication methods other than WIXAS
4. Much better file management (directory creation, renaming, deleting etc)
5. Integration with Blogger Pro, Radio and MovableType if possible (expanded to include template management and better post management)
6. Ability to load a file from the filesystem via direct request (i.e. http://webpad/?file=/path/to/file.txt) assuming permissions allow it and it’s within the user’s home dir.
7. Much better mult-user support
8. Commercial licenses will attract a modest fee (in the vicinity of $USD15), while personal use will remain free