Change Log

Version 5.1

New Features

• A new keyboard accelerator has been added to open an item’s properties (Alt+Enter).
• A new keyboard accelerator has been added to preview color schemes (Ctrl+P).

Bug Fixes

• Indentation is now handled with a div element, rather than the blockquote element. Not only is this more standards compliant, but it fixes some small word wrapping issues when using multiple columns.
• None of the keyboard accelerators had been assigned, and so none of them worked. This problem has been fixed.
• The "Create New Favorite" and "Create New Folder" commands caused Favorites Plus to crash if nothing was selected in the favorites database tree.
• The "Use two columns to save vertical screen space" page option previously only broke the columns between top-level folders. This resulted in a number of page formatting issues when this option was turned on. The page column break now occurs on the folder after the favorites mid-point, regardless of how deep the folder is.
• Favorites Plus now automatically rebuilds the favorites database when the favorites path (set in the options dialog) changes.

Miscellaneous

• The "Create New Favorite" dialog has been resized.

Version 5.0.1

Bug Fixes

• The Table of Contents feature was being incorrectly generated. This has been fixed.

Version 5.0

New Features

Brand new interface, including:

• New page preview pane makes it easier to see what the generated HTML will look like.
• Improved page setup dialog compacts all of the various page setup options into one location.
• New color scheme toolbar allows for quick color changes.
• Tree-view now displays tooltips for favorites (when hovering the mouse over a favorite), showing both its title and URL.
• New, high-color toolbar and tree-view icons.
• Main program window is now resizable.

Other new features:

• Page style information can now be exported to an external CSS file.
• Page can now be broken into two columns, saving vertical screen space.
• New properties dialog allows user to change the name and URL of a selected favorite or folder.
• New color scheme editor allows new schemes to be created and existing schemes to be edited.
• Page colors can now be entered directly as a HEX value.
• Text sizes now implement keywords, rather than fixed point sizes, allowing text to be scaled in a web browser.
• A complete XHTML DTD is now used in the generated page, better conforming to web standards.
• Brand new, standards compliant program documentation.

Bug Fixes

• Memory was previously leaked when a folder of favorites was recycled from within the program.
• Sub-folders with an identical name in the table contents, incorrectly pointed to the same anchor on the page (always the first anchor). For example, if two sub-folders were named "News", clicking either would take you to the first "News" subfolder, regardless of the link you clicked. The links now point to the proper subfolder.
• Folder icons are now set correctly when expanding or collapsing all tree branches at once.
• The HTML markup "target=_top" is no longer written for links being launched in the same window.
• A validation problem in the generated copyright statement has been fixed.
• Stylesheet information has been streamlined, reducing the overall size of the page.
• Indentation markup has been corrected, reducing the generated page size.
• Table of contents anchor links are now more standards compliant.

Miscellaneous

• Progress bar now appears in the status bar.
• The favorites path is now set in the options dialog.
• Default filename changed from "MyFavorites.html" to "My_Favorites.html".
• Program logo has been redesigned.
• "About this program…" menu item renamed to "About Favorites Plus".
• Copyright information updated.
• Registry key branch has changed (from JGB Productions to Born Geek).
• All links to the JGB Productions website have been updated to point to our new home.

Version 4.4

Bug Fixes

• A source code problem with the table of contents feature has been fixed.
• If no child links were found in the top level of the favorites folder, source code for an empty list was still written to the generated HTML. This problem has been corrected (the list tags are only written if child links exist at the root level).

Version 4.3

New Features

• A table of contents can now be included in the generated HTML file, thanks to a new option in the page output dialog box. This feature results in easy access to favorites folders anywhere on the page.
• New page output option allows the user to specify whether to launch hyperlinks in a new window or in the same window as the favorites page.

Bug Fixes

• The method used for previewing the resulting favorites page has been cleaned up.

Miscellaneous

• The online documentation index tab has been removed.
• Tweaked the navigation images a little (adding some grayed out images for the first and last page).
• Corrected some link targets (new window vs. same page) in the online documentation.

Version 4.2

Bug Fixes

• Not all of the link styles were being written to the HTML file, causing the bold and italic styles to be lost. This has been fixed, and the styles are now written correctly.
• The means by which data is indented has been improved. This will correct several generated source code problems when child folders are placed before child links.

Miscellaneous

• The copyright date on generated files has been updated.
• A few typos in the help file have been corrected.

Version 4.1

Bug Fixes

• URLs located in the root favorites folder are now converted properly. In the previous release, these favorites lost their target location, preventing them from pointing to the correct website.

Version 4.0

New Features

• A new user interface has been implemented, cleaning up the look and feel of the program.
• New program command opens the favorites folder for file browsing.
• Color selection controls in the page setup dialog allow any color to be used for the various page elements.
• New page output option allows the user to specify the order in which child folders and child links appear.
• Page appearance settings have been separated from page output settings. Program options have also been moved to their own dialog.
• Font selection is now limited to only a few common options. This is to aid in conforming to the W3C standard. If there is enough demand, selecting from all system fonts will be added back in a future release.

Bug Fixes

• URLs are extracted from favorites files using the proper IUniformResourceLocator interface. This will prevent the program from crashing when parsing favorites with a slightly different layout than was expected.
• Unchecked data is now properly maintained when the favorites database is rebuilt, and is only loaded from the unchecked data file on program startup.
• All path information for tree items is now relative, saving overall memory usage, as well as reducing the size of the unchecked data file.
• Document type information, as well as character encoding information, has been added to the generated HTML file (to conform to W3C standards).
• When all tree branches are expanded or contracted, or when all tree items are checked or unchecked, the currently selected item retains the focus (instead of the tree control scrolling to the bottom of the list).
• The "force items to start unchecked" option has been removed (since it was a redundant feature).

Miscellaneous

• New HTML help system has been implemented.
• The style sheet formatting (in the HTML source) has been altered slightly.
• New program icon.
• About box layout has been slightly altered.

Version 3.1

New Features

• New HTML generation engine has been implemented. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are now used to define the page’s styles, which makes the HTML source much cleaner. This also allows people with visual disabilities to override the page settings. Very handy!
• The browser window used to preview a favorites file is now closed when Favorites Plus closes.

Bug Fixes

• Previously, after previewing a created favorites file and closing the resulting browser window, the user had to close Favorites Plus in order to be able to preview the file again. This has been corrected.
• When reading the favorites files (.URL files), the resulting file pointers were not being closed. This has been corrected.
• Horizontal lines now separate top-level folders only (as they should have all along).

Miscellaneous

• Installer now removes the unchecked data file when the program is uninstalled.
• Fixed a couple of tab order problems.

Version 3.0

New Features

• Program name changed from "IE Favorites to HTML Converter" to "Favorites Plus".
• New right-click context menu is now available in the tree control, adding several handy common tasks. Available options are to check or uncheck all items, and collapse or expand all tree branches.
• Tree control is now keyboard friendly!
• New auto-detect button will obtain the default location for the current user’s favorites folder.
• New program option to show the URL after the link text.
• New auto-build option will cause the favorites database output filter to build at program startup.
• HTML page preview is now refreshed when changes are made to the currently previewed file.
• Additional output now appears at beginning and end of the generated HTML file.

Bug Fixes

• Tree control check box handling has been updated and is now way cleaner than it was. This corrects several problems that existed with this somewhat tricky logic.
• Favorites location is now initially set to the default location when the program runs for the first time.
• Plugged a memory leak related to sorting the tree control items.
• Unchecked items data file is now written differently.
• Reading the unchecked items data file now happens once. This used to happen in a recursive method, which caused the file to be read as many times as there are favorites (which is very inefficient).
• Fixed the "phantom" horizontal scroll bar in the tree control when the program loads.
• Better error reporting in HTML file creation.
• System menu icon now handled properly.
• Exit button now handled more appropriately.

Miscellaneous

• Registry keys are better organized.
• Program options are now on two property pages instead of four.
• The default page title is now set as "My Favorites".
• Disabling the tree control and convert button are now handled differently.
• Program about box logo updated.

Version 2.5

New Features

• Added two new colors (orange and brown) to the color drop-down boxes.
• Added some additional output to the end of the generated HTML file.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a potentially serious memory leak.
• Fixed a bug in the page font combo box. Some erroneous entries were mysteriously showing up - it turns out I was using the wrong structure data field to get the name. This problem has been fixed.
• Removed extraneous information being placed in the HTML file erroneously.

Miscellaneous

• Several changes made to HTML output engine.
• Reorganized program options.
• Updated my e-mail address in the about box.
• Updated the look of the about box.

Version 2.4

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a check box logic bug. Parents could, in some cases, be in an unchecked state yet have children who were checked. This case should have been prevented. The program now fixes this problem.

Version 2.3

New Features

• Added an option to preview the HTML file after it is created. This is a very handy option, and should have been in the program since the beginning.

Bug Fixes

• Several mnemonic keys (allowing keyboard users to toggle options) were left out of the options dialog. This has been corrected.
• The page font combo box now lists all system fonts (as it should have from the beginning).
• Removed the font selection dialog from the hyperlink rollover page. The page is now built using only one font (as it should be).

Version 2.2

Bug Fixes

• Corrected a major bug with unchecked items in the tree control. Previously, if any two items in the database had the exact same name, the first item would always be the one unchecked (regardless of whether it was unchecked previously or not). The second one, therefore, would always be checked. This bug led to yet another problem: if the first item were a parent (a folder), and that parent had children who were checked, things got unsynchronized. Namely, this would lead to a parent being unchecked while some of its children were checked (which shouldn’t happen). Unchecked items are now saved by their respective file path, rather than the file name (making each entry unique, regardless of its name).
• Fixed a bug that caused unchecked items to not be loaded when the favorites database is built more than once.

Version 2.1

Bug Fixes

• Fixed several problems with the color drop-down boxes in the options dialog.
• Removed several unused features.

Version 1.1 - 2.0

The changes made during these releases were (unfortunately) not kept.