Oh yeah, forgot to mention one more thing – thank you so much to all the nice Scope users who decided to let me know that you enjoy Scope (you know who you are <g>) It is always nice to know that one’s work is appreciated – your words make it all the coding seem worthwhile. So thank you for your thank yous :p

What do you know? I was actually able to get the work that needed to be completed on Blog 2.5, get the Beta 1 documentation ready and the distro done and it’s not even evening yet :p This release is still missing one more major feature I wanted to add – a sort of an upload manager which shows the currently queued extra files (added via the image and file link dialogs) and allows you to add to the list or remove stuff from the list. That will probably be added in Beta 2. I haven’t exhaustively tested the new additions (hence the Beta title <g>) but wanted to get this release out the door fast because about half of the few Blog users out there (I mean two people <vbg>) have asked for these particular features or something like them … Download links are in the side bar and Downloads page. Enjoy!

On an unrelated note, I was kind of amused and kind of hmm … disappointed? (not quite …) enraged (not at all :p) disgusted? (not really …) … can’t exactly put my finger on the word … I guess irritated would be the closest … to see some comments by certain NetCaptor users in response to a comment made by a Scope user on the BetaNews Scope page. Why do we have to get into petty arguments like this? Those who like Scope like Scope and those who like NetCaptor like NetCaptor … Live and let live 🙂

Hmm .. I’m not sure where to start <g> Do I start with the new idea for Scope that makes me want to work on Scope again or about the code I’ve already done for Blog or the very nice e-mails I’ve been receiving? I guess I should start with the e-mails since they made me feel really good about the stuff that I do 🙂 First of all, I heard from my friend John yesterday since he thought that I might be feeling down after reading my journal entry yesterday (and just to clarify, I wasn’t feeling down – just ranting as usual :p) He had been on vacation but is now back and he is eager to get to work on Scope and fix a few things – so even if I don’t work on Scope, you should see stuff moving along … hopefully …

Then I heard from Daniel Bishop today who simply started his e-mail with “Scope Rocks!” <vbg> and basically all he wanted to say was that he really enjoyed Scope and that was it – no caveats, no buts :p I know that there are many others out there who do enjoy Scope but it does make it seem all worthwhile to hear from some of those people every once in a while and to know that you like what I do since that’s all I get from doing this stuff – the appreciation of others 🙂 So thank you Daniel for making things seem so much better!

Of course, the time away from work (I worked from home the last couple of days) helped as well I guess since I don’t constantly have people coming upto me and asking me about this, that or the other (don’t you just hate it when you get to be the person who knows all about the existing system?). I really felt eager to code again and even though I said I was taking a break from coding, I went back to the Blog stuff and implemented a few things that I wanted in place for Blog 2.5 🙂 In fact, now you can specify how many days worth of posts you want displayed on your blog and you have new dialogs for specifying hyperlinks, images and file links. I am in the process of implementing extra file uploading so that any images and file links you specify will be automatically uploaded along with your journal entry. Once I get that done – hopefully tonight – you should be seeing the first beta for Blog 2.5!

Oh yeah, I also have a new idea for Scope which will help alleviate one of the most irritating things about web surfing – popups! Now this is not my idea – rather it is Matt Porter’s – so I’m not a genius :p He said, “why don’t you have a toggle button on the toolbar which allows/disallows the creation of new popup windows?” I think this is simply a superb idea! While the Blocked URL feature blocks popups, you have to know the URL for the particular ad site but with the toggle button, all new popup windows will be closed except for when you want them to work – isn’t that neat? I think so 🙂 I am going to implement that before Scope 2.0 final just because I like the idea so much!