News
| v0.98f Private Beta AVAILBLE
FOR DOWNLOAD and Alternate Method for running Free PDF |
| Tuesday,August
22, 2000 |
v0.98 Private
Beta adds the following new
features to v0.95 Public Beta (see the
Sneak
Peek page for details)
-
Update Checker (which utilizes the new
ZipGuy Version Master technology)
-
Downloads only about 50k for
an update yielding 10 second updates on a 28.8
connection!
(After the initial 1.1 Meg download of the executables)
-
Automatic transparent detection and
execution of the latest version with no action required
on your part
(e.g. install or configuration)!
-
allows you to have multiple versions of Free PDF installed
-
allows you to switch between multiple versions of
Free PDF simply by renaming them (for troubleshooting for example)
-
When Name for PDF received from RedMon:
-
Push 'Save_as' Button Automatically
-
Replace Existing File
-
Always Skip PDF Viewer
-
Free PDF checks that the input PostScript file
exists
-
Rerun the last PostScript file
-
You get ICON for your PDF!
-
"Always Use the Same Name and Folder (Last one) for PDF (Overwrites)" option
for people with special needs like integrating Free PDF with another process.
v0.98 Private
Beta- is available for
download on the
Sneak
Peek page.
Download it and:
-
Enjoy the new features before anyone else!
-
Let the ZipGuy know how it works (Use the Message Board to post about the
new version or email The ZipGuy or instant message him)
-
Be ready not to complain when the new real version of v0.98 Public Beta
has to be Downloaded in full (the executable part)
-
Be ready to ignore the extra console windows that may be there in case error
messages pop up in the Private Beta
-
Be Aware that this version will do spurious Downloads if you do an update
check so that the Update checker can be tested! There is no newer version
to download, so, a phony one is there for testing the update checker
and downloading. 8-P
-
Don't get mad if problems arise (that's why it's a Private Beta. It
needs testing. So far, testing is progressing extremely well and confidence
is high!)
NEw Alternate Method
for running Free PDF- is available on
the Alt.
Method page. This method:
-
Lets you convert existing PostScript files to PDFs (e.g. ones you created
or obtained from another source like downloading)
-
Does not require RedMon and RedRun
-
Also lets you combine PostScript files which are part of a larger file onto
one BIG PDF
-
Has many advantages
-
Can be used in conjunction with the normal method (or instead of)
Here's what it looks like
Lockergnome-
Chris Perillo, of LockerGnome Fame, was kind enough to feature Free PDF in
his 07/03/00 Daily issue (and of course the weekly issue). Those hordes
of eager clambering Gnomies buried this site on Monday! The ZipGuy thought
they'd be eating Fireworks, and shooting off Hamburgers! or was that
versa visa? Thanks Chris!
Dave
Central - The ZipGuy submitted Free PDF v0.95 Public Beta
to Dave Central (DC) on or about 6/10/00. After a couple of weeks he
gave up on his submission. Then when he found out Free PDF would be
in Lockergnome, he worked on that. Someone instant messaged the ZipGuy
saying that there was a bad download link. It turns out that DC put
Free PDF up on Friday 7/1 and didn't notify him. Well, needless to say, the
old submission to DC still had the old download link that had problems and
since has been fixed everywhere else. See the Message Board for details.
So someone posted a comment on DC that said "I
can't get a link to work to download this program". They also visited
this page and were too blind to realize that there
was content on this page! So they further stated that
"the FreePDF page is a dead end. I click the download
kink, get another page, click the link there, and my browser flashes
and...nothing." Theirs was the only comment! You can imagine how this
got the ZipGuy's dander up! Anyway he's posted comments there and the
matter seems to be straightened out (although the download link is still
bogus)! Despite this adversity, Free PDF has
been on their what's hot list since the day after it went up, and was at
a high (as far as The ZipGuy is aware) of #3 on Friday
7/7/00. Anyway, The ZipGuy is grateful to
Dave
Central for the Traffic! Thanks! Still haven't heard
a peep from NoNags! So, with the
Lockergnome
mention and
Dave
Central's help....
Traffic has been OUTSTANDING!
- Needless to say this has generated amazing traffic! Take a gander at
the 7/1/00-7/8/00 Traffic Report.
Bottom line, in that week The ZipGuy has had
10,895 visitors and 25,902 Page
Views! Thanks everyone!
The
Message Board
Is Smokin' - If you haven't been there it is definitely worth
a look. If you're having problems with Free PDF or wondering about,
say, how it works on NT?, look
there. It's
the best place to
You Have to See this - Here's
a Sneak Peek at the upcoming
outrageous Splash Screen for Free PDF which is only 34k. The link is
to a zip file which is 12k! That's as small as a banner ad. Take a look.
Everyone loves it. It was made by the 'Mizer' who is a wizard and a
ZipGuy Cohort. There are two ZipGuy Cohorts how help
the ZipGuy with theirs skills. They call him the Mizer because
he writes excellent VB stuff and it is so small! He may be collaborating
with the ZipGuy and perhaps writing the "update checker" module.
And many thanks to WebXD Web Designer
extraodinare, LockerGnomie Chat Favorite,
and now ZipGuy Cohort!, for the new Free PDF Logo!
Visit Him for Excellence in Web design and in Web
Hosting!
| You can Help Promote Free PDF!
New Button, Banner and Funny Story! |
| Friday,
June 23, 2000 |
The ZipGuy knows you want to hear about the funny story first. This came
to him, in a burst of creativity while writing an e-mail. It has
a wacky caveman language where the order of the words are different. So it's
called "Wheel Story True mine" because it is about
the poor caveman from "Cave Netscape" who invented the Wheel and what happened
to him after the folks at "Cave Microsoft" got through with him.
If you like Free PDF and want to help promote
it, you can use this link to to
download a text copy of the story (right click and "Save target as..") and
E-Mail it to everyone you know.
LOL. It is funny and free, and yes it does have a plug for this site
in it. Here's how it starts
"Wheel Story True mine"
"Caveman Roller name me. Dirt me same old. yes and, Round(R) invented
me! Happen way this.
Food much having me lucky. Friends many. Roll can me ground on. Side mine
and belly and belly on mine. Big me legs hard mine use hurt. Dirty Me everywhere
on rolling dirt in. Mate mad me nag washing got time all the 'Skin Bear Great'
mine creek cave our time all. Cave ours 'Netscape(C)' holy be name. Know
why not me. Wizard Mighty Heap CAVE Holy ours words magic 'W3C' 'Mosiac'
and like, ask him me when. Scared Me am. Want him mad me at not. Stopped
why ask Him me. ...."
More
If you like Free PDF and want to help promote
it, you can use these buttons and a banners
The ZipGuy has a Free PDF animated Button for you. If you like Free PDF,
want to share the wealth or want to express your gratitude to The ZipGuy,
why not put a Free PDF button on your page?:
If you'd like to do this, just put the following code in the HTML for your
page and E-Mail the Zipguy and let him
know that you've done so.
<A HREF="http://over.to/freepdf"><IMG
SRC="http://www.webxd.com/zipguy/freepdf/freepdf.gif" WIDTH="88" HEIGHT="33"
BORDER="0"></A>
If you prefer a banner, The Zipguy has a one of those also:
if you'd like to link to Free PDF using this banner, just put the following
code in the HTML for your page and E-Mail the
Zipguy and let him know that you've done
so.
<A HREF="http://over.to/freepdf"><IMG
SRC="http://www.webxd.com/zipguy/freepdf/frpdfbanr.gif"
WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="60"
BORDER="0"></A>
| Color JPG's in your
PDF's... |
| Later
on Wednesday, July 05, 2000 |
Thanks go out to Eric Santos, a happy
Free PDF Customer (see his post in the message board) who found that using
the "HP Color LaserJet PS" printer driver yields PDFs which have the jpg's
in color! Well he did have some help from the ZipGuy, but he's the one
who found the printer driver that works. It is now recommend that once
you get Free PDF working you create another printer which uses this driver
if you want to do color jpgs in your PDFs. Make sure to leave
the "Use PostScript Level 2 features" option turned on in the "Advanced
Postscript Options" which you get to by hitting the "Advanced" button
from the "Postscript" tab of the printer's properties.
| LockerGnome. Yeah Baby!, Re-Vamped
Configuration Page, The Check's in the Mail... |
| Wednesday,
July 05, 2000 |
LockerGnome - Free PDF was featured in
LockerGnome (E-Zine about Freeware) in the
07/03/2000
Issue. On that Monday this site got 5,000 Visitors and 10,000 page Views!
Thank You Chris! Thankfully, the ZipGuy
has not been deluged with messages about problems, but instead has gotten
a replies from customers like you. Mostly they were kind words and Thank
You's. See the new "Customers Say" page for
samples. Luckily the ZipGuy was able to re-zip the new web pages as
documentation into the old v0.95 release before the issue came out. This
let him include the new "Sneak Peek" page in with
the Download. Sadly the new Configuration page was not included.
New Configuration Page - After replying
to a customer the ZipGuy got carried away and totally revamped the configuration
page. It now can be used standalone and the RedMon Help is not needed!
It has much more documentation and many more screenshots. Customers
asked for this and the ZipGuy delivers.
The Check's in the Mail - Really, no
kidding. A new version will be out soon.
The ZipGuy's putting the finishing touches on the 'Update Checker' right
now and then after some testing, It will be ready to go. Look for it
this Week (or next at the latest). For the latest on the new version
check the "Sneak Peek" page. It changes often.
Some of the new features that should make
it into the next version include
-
Update Checker for new version of Free
PDF
-
When Name for PDF received from RedMon
-
Push "Save As" Button Automatically
-
Replace existing file
-
Inform you whether a name was passed from RedMon on
the Main screen
-
Always Skip PDF Viewer option
-
ALWAYS USE SAME NAME and FOLDER (Last one) for
PDF
-
Rerun the last PS file
-
Test Free PDF just calling Ghostscipt and PDF
Viewer
| New Button, Banner and Funny
Story! You can Help Promote Free PDF! |
| Friday,
June 23, 2000 |
The ZipGuy knows you want to hear about the funny story first. This came
to him, in a burst of creativity while writing an e-mail. It has
a wacky caveman language where the order of the words are different. So it's
called "Wheel Story True mine" because it is about
the poor caveman from "Cave Netscape" who invented the Wheel and what happened
to him after the folks at "Cave Microsoft" got through with him.
If you like Free PDF and want to help promote it,
you can use this link to to download a text copy
of the story (right click and "Save target as..") and
E-Mail it to everyone you know. LOL. It
is funny and free, and yes it does have a plug for this site in it. Here's
how it starts
"Wheel Story True mine"
"Caveman Roller name me. Dirt me same old. yes and, Round(R) invented
me! Happen way this.
Food much having me lucky. Friends many. Roll can me ground on. Side mine
and belly and belly on mine. Big me legs hard mine use hurt. Dirty Me everywhere
on rolling dirt in. Mate mad me nag washing got time all the 'Skin Bear Great'
mine creek cave our time all. Cave ours 'Netscape(C)' holy be name. Know
why not me. Wizard Mighty Heap CAVE Holy ours words magic 'W3C' 'Mosiac'
and like, ask him me when. Scared Me am. Want him mad me at not. Stopped
why ask Him me. ...."
More
And here's a button and a banner
The ZipGuy has a Free PDF animated Button for you. If you like Free PDF,
want to share the wealth or want to express your gratitude to The ZipGuy,
why not put a Free PDF button on your page?:
If you'd like to do this, just put the following code in the HTML for your
page and E-Mail the Zipguy and let him
know that you've done so.
<A HREF="http://over.to/freepdf"><IMG
SRC="http://hammer.prohosting.com/~bmark987/freepdf/freepdf.gif" WIDTH="88"
HEIGHT="33" BORDER="0"></A>
If you prefer a banner, The Zipguy has a one of those also:
If you'd like to link to Free PDF using this banner, just put the following
code in the HTML for your page and E-Mail the
Zipguy and let him know that you've done
so.
<A HREF="http://over.to/freepdf"><IMG
SRC="http://hammer.prohosting.com/~bmark987/freepdf/frpdfbanr.gif"
WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="60"
BORDER="0"></A>
| New Time Saving
Options! v0.95 Public Beta |
| Wednesday,
May 31, 2000 |
Free PDF v0.95 Public Beta has now been released.
Changes:
-
Beta! - Due to successful completion of Alpha
testing, Free PDF is now Beta!
-
Visit
The
New Free PDF Message Board
 and
Post your Thoughts, Feedback, Comments, Suggestions, Problems, Experiences,
Vote etc.,
OR look at everyone else's! Lots of good stuff there!
POST! POST! POST! Yeah Baby!
-
New Options - Now that Free PDF has been working
so well it's time to add some new features (hopefully not any new insects
with them). There are three new options on the Configuration Screen:
These should be fairly self-explanatory. They are intended to be used
once you get Free PDF working properly, and want to speed up the process
of making a PDF.
-
The first two save you from having to click on the buttons to make
things happen.
-
The third turns off a reminder to close the PDF viewer (not just to minimize
it, as this will create a logjam your print queue). Remember you still
have to close the PDFViewer even if you turn off the reminder.
-
The last option saves you from needing to exit from Free PDF after you've
viewed your PDF (probably in Acrobat Reader).
-
Note that if you get too ambitious and set all the three "Auto" options on,
you have sped up Free PDF so fast that you no
longer get a chance to hit it's buttons. So it is impossible to get back
to the configuration screen to change your mind about the options any longer!
In this case, if you do want to change the
options, just print anything to the "Create PDF" printer and hit "Cancel"
when the "Save PDF as" Dialog box comes up. Then you can access the "Config"
button and get to the Configuration Screen. Or else just delete the FREEPDF.INI
file which will change the settings back to the default (off) the next time
it is run
| Blank Screen Eradicated and
Configurable Pgm. Locations! v0.33 Alpha |
|
Friday, May 12, 2000 |
Free PDF v0.33 Alpha has now been released.
Changes:
-
Free PDF now lives in C:\FREEPDF folder.
-
New Configuration Screen New
Configuration Screen In v0.32 Alpha the Configuration screen was changed
from a simple alert box to a real window. Now in v0.33 Alpha, it allows
you to set the pdfConverter= and the
pdfViewer= progam locations by clicking
on the links in the Configuration screen using standard 'Open' file dialog
boxes.
-
Eliminated the Blank Ghostscript Screen
do this by using the command line Ghostscript
executable:
C:\Aladdin\gs6.01\bin\gswin32c.exe
(with the the 'c')
rather than the Windows Ghostscript executable
C:\Aladdin\gs6.01\bin\gswin32.exe (without the the
'c').
If you use the Windows one , you will get the blank screen problem!
So set it up as shown below:
(note that you can click on the links to change the File locations of
pdfConverter and pdfViewer)
| Save PDF as...
v0.32 Alpha |
|
Friday, May 3, 2000 |
The Zipguy has been busy toiling away at the coding
forge. Free PDF v0.32 Alpha has now been
released.Changes:
-
It incoporates v0.31's changes which made Free PDF compatible with Aladdin
GhostScript 6.01 instead of 5.50 (as the GhostScript folder names differ
between these releases).
-
Pick Input PS Button - If Free PDF is called
with an incorrect number of parameters, it:
-
Displays an Appropriate Error Message.
-
Displays the Actual Parameters Passed.
-
Provides a button with which you can Broswe and select the input PostScript
(PS) file to be converted.
-
Revamped user interface and new process flow
-
INI File - Free PDF now uses the old fashioned
FreePDF.INI file in it's directory (creating it if it doesn't exist). It
reads this file and it's parameters should be self explanatory. Here
is a good INI file
-
<freepdf.ini>
pdfOutDir=C:/freepdf/
pdfOutFile=Output.pdf
pdfConverter=C:/Aladdin/gs6.01/gswin32c.exe
pdfViewer=C:/Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 4.0/Reader/AcroRd32.exe
-
You can edit this file (although you shouldn't need to) to change the settings
and Free PDF will honor them when it starts up. If you make a mistake while
editting and change the parameter name to a meaningless one, it is ignored.
-
No More OUTPUT.PDF - Instead of creating PDF
immediately with he name OUTPUT.PDF in the Free PDF directory (which
was not very convenient), Free PDF Pops up and tells you the name of
the temporary file that is ready to be converted to a PDF
-
"Save As.." - At
Last! You then can press the "Save PDF as.." Button and you get a standard
"Save as" Dialog Box. Whatever filename and folder you choose will
be stored in the ini and used as the default for the next time you "Save
PDF as..". Free PDF converts the temporary Postscript file into a PDF and
changes its messages
-
View PDF - Next you can hit the "View PDF" button
and view the newly create PDF in Acrobat Reader. (Note: Free PDF uses the
value of the pdfViewer= parameter
from the FREEPDF.INI file to launch the PDF viewer. If you're using
another pdf viewer, or one in a different spot then just change the value
of this parameter)
|
