Monday, August 20, 2007

eXe 1.0

Well eXe 1.0 has ticked over with a dignified click. We are happy to announce that 1.0 has been unleashed in a low key sort of way. The Auckland based team will celebrate over a glass or two of good Kiwi wine tonight with Wayne who serendipitously is arriving back in Auckland this evening. We'll have a virtual glass with our Gisborne based crew, in fact if Brent brings his N800 we might even video call you in on celebrations tonight.

We have many people to thank for their contributions, first and foremost our developers without whom none of this would have been possible, David, Wen Chen Hol, Brent, Jenny, Matthew, Jim and Remo. These guys were dedicated to the cause even when sometimes it wasn't that clear what the cause was. You guys rock! We'd also like to acknowledge Jamie and Jonathan for the graphic work they contributed, all those who contributed to the language translations namely Bárd András, Arek Felinczak, Andres Mellik, Abbas Mousavi, Fredrik Paulsson, Ralf Hilgenstock, Sigurður Fjalar Jónsson, John Kostaras, Tania Oxenham, Sipho Msimango, L. Vandijck, Carla Impagliazzo, Jose Cifuentes Riquelme. Thanks also to our global community of users, testers, and enthusiasts who have encouraged us to continue our work here. Thanks to our funders and sponsors, The Tertiary Education Commission, Tairawhiti Polytechnic, Auckland University of Technology and The University of Auckland.

Thanks to Sandy for your leadership over the past year, we've probably left you a little grayer and wearier but as an adventure junkie we hope the ride has been worthwhile. Finally, Wayne, who believed that there was a real need for this software and that we could do it.

There are probably many people who have contributed to this release that I haven't mentioned by name here and I do apologise but please know we are very grateful for your contributions.

Friday, August 10, 2007

One More Thing

There is a lot of flexibility hiding behind the link button in eXe fields. You highlight some text that will become a link, then click the link button in the toolbar and enter the destination URL (complete with http://) in the popup box. The text becomes a standard hypertext link to the destination. A rather standard feature and very convenient for linking to resources elsewhere on the web. But we'd like to show you One More Thing... eXe 0.99.

You'll notice that the link popup has a file browser icon to the right of the URL field... just like the image, media, and math popups. Use the file browser to select a file and eXe will include the file in your package so that it can be accessed by clicking the link text. This brings the flexibility to include "attachments" in any eXe field with the rich text editor. There is no longer a need to use a special Attachment iDevice. Attachment handling now parallels that of images and media. We think this consistency further improves the eXe ease of use.