I am in contact with the developer of the XCMD which handles image import. All problems associated with image import, including RAMDoubler problems, should be fixed soon.
Final release of version 1.0 of Arachnid is being held up while this situation is resolved.
****Non RamDoubler problems associated with image import can be reduced by setting your monitor's color depth to 8 bit before launching Arachnid. Arachnid will then display all graphics in an 8 bit mode, but this does not effect the image files themselves in any way.****
The menuBar stuff introduced in the last version has been removed. The huge slowdown in menubar response time that was introduced in beta 1.8 was an attempt to more closely monitor the current mode and selection and then to update the menus so that only defined commands were enabled for selection. This resulted in many other problems in addition to the obvious slowdown. I simply trashed this code all together and went a different route. Virtually all menu commands stay enabled as long as a project is open. When you choose a command which is not defined(for example trying to set a Graphic's Border width without having a Graphic selected) Arachnid should now display a descriptive error message explaining exactly why the command is not going to work. All menu items should do this instead of just beeping or doing nothing at all. This will allow beginners to explore the commands of the program without knowing what they are or can do.
Several more bugs with Text List which also had links have been found and fixed.
1. The first item of a list would lose its text styles if the text was also linked.
2. Using the Remove List Item command completely corrupted link information, even the Edit menu command for fixings the links would not work. This has also been fixed.
Bugs with Text Size selections in the Export to HTML. It was not properly inserting the </font> tag when text size changed again or reverted to the default size.
Bugs which inserted extra tags for diabling bold or italic styles have been fixed. The extra tags disabled style changes in subsequent spans of text.
Similarly, extra tags for enabling styles were generated in places where the style was already enabled. For example, 5 consecutive words are bold, the third word is bold and italic. The insertion of the italic tag would also insert another tag for bold. This would result in the rest of the text as bold.
Bugs with linking to in line iamges. Linking an in line image to a span of text could cause one of two problems; sometimes the name of the image was corrupted, causing it to be treated as an image map region, and other times an internal property would be wrongly set making it nearly impossible to select or respond to clicks. Both have been fixed.
A Bug in the Import of an HTML file where URL links of type "mailTo" would be incorrectly tagged as links to generic documents instead of a URL link.
The HTML import also now will import JPEG in line images, and resolves references to images in subdirectories which use Unix "/" directory dividers.
In general the Export to HTML produces more readable, spread-out HTML code.
In attempting to respond to and to distinquish Arachnid from the competition, namely PageMill, there will at least 2 more significant features built into Arachnid.
First, Web site (project or directory) management. This will allow custom naming of the HTML files which are exported instead of being limited to Arachnid's automatic naming. You will be able to set the file name when you export to HTML. Arachnid will search any directory you choose for HTML files which contain links to the file name that the file would have previously had generated for it. Arachnid will then update the link information in these other files to link to the new page name. Similarly, Arachnid will search your project finding links to the page and automatically change them into links to the actual file you are generating instead of the internal Arachnid page. In this way, other Arachnid pages will export links to the file with the correct name already stored.
**Note, this will change the Active Mode behavior of links to the page, it will launch the file with a Browser instead of opening the page withn Arachnid.
Second, Arachnid will be the first HTML editing/Authoring tool to offer WYSIWYG support for Netscape Tables. Table tools will allow you to draw a table directly on the screen(just like a Form object or clickable map region). There will be table properties and preferences for Border size, cell spacing and padding, each Table row will be alignable, and each table cell will be alignable within the given cell which contains it. From there any in line image, block of text or ruler can be dragged into the table. The layout and positioning of objects within the table will be more flexible than objects free on the page. Form objects will not be supported within Table objects.
It is very important that EVERYTHING possible be done to resolve the problems with image import, display, and linking before a FINAL version is declared. One thing that will NOT CHANGE is Arachnid's status as Freeware. Just consider Arachnid to be a personal gift from the University of Iowa and myself.
