Antenna v3 - Enhancements & New Features
- Enhanced Properties Palette
- New Language Manager
- Site Themes and Templates
- Enhanced Tabbed Page Editor
- New File Manager
- Project Management
- New Object Capabilities
- New Events Scripting Editor
- Enhanced Layers System
- New Styles Palette
- Enhanced Text Editor
- PhotoRazor Built In
- Integrated Form Handling
- New Button Lab
- New Photo Gallery Maker
- Enhanced Site Publisher
- New Options
- New Engine Under the Hood
- More Improvements...
Many changes improving workflow so you can get things done faster:
1 - New Page Properties tab at bottom of palette for quick access to title, keywords etc. No longer any need to change layer just to access the page settings.
2 - Extended detection area: Toggle properties on/off by clicking checkbox or name.
3 - Pressing Enter once stores your new value, but keeps the editor open - so you can try various values without having to reselect the property. Pressing Enter a second time closes the editor as before.
4 - Edit the properties of several selected objects at once e.g. select 6 objects and enter a new width value - the new value is applied to all the selected objects.
5 - New drop-down file selector, displays colour-coding and icons:
6 Groups files by folder, avoiding lengthy filename paths and making it much easier to select files,
7 Includes a direct file import option, speeding up workflow,
8 Enables entry of case-sensitive external links e.g. http://somesite.com/MulTiCaSe.html
9 - Improved filename drag & drop checks to make sure file extension is valid before accepting.
10 - Right-click a property to restore its default value (great for quickly restoring a picture's original width and height).
11 - Press tab to cycle through editor properties.
12 - Palette tabs respond to file drag-operations, so you can change tabs between palettes during drag-and-drop operations.
13 - New inline colour palette swatch for rapid colour selection without opening the colour mixer.
14 - New transparent background colour option enables overriding style background colours.
15 - Rename object by clicking on its displayed name at the top of the palette.
16 - Single Events property handles all events.
17 - Object coordinates and dimensions always displayed whichever tab is currently selected.
18 - Previous coordinates and dimensions displayed in brackets when dragging and resizing objects for comparison.
19 - Palette displays number of objects currently selected when multiple objects are selected on the page.
20 - Revised tab position and appearance to account for new tabbed palettes.
21 - Invalid links highlighted in red.
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1 - Language Manager dialog introduced to enable easier management of multilingual web sites.
2 - Quickly add and remove new languages and translations.
3 - Easily send web site text to translators: Exports and imports translations using universal xliff files.
4 - Rename languages.
5 - Promote and demote languages using up and down arrows to quickly change language priority.
6 - Change which language is the primary language at any time.
7 - All Windows languages listed and supported out of the box, including complex alphabets such as Japanese, Greek and Cyrillic.
8 - Support for separate language dialects (e.g. English - UK, English - American, English - Canadian etc.)
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1 - Create new sites based on supplied theme templates.
2 - Create, save and share your own templates - any project can be saved as a template.
3 - Enhanced 'New Web Site' dialog, lists available templates and displays template preview images.
4 - Replace supplied templates with your own revised versions (and restore the original version at any time).
5 - Import (install) and Export (share) new templates.
6 - New dedicated Site Theme page included in all new projects and applied to all your pages automatically, much easier than setting up Include layers. (Page-Include object still available for experts!).
7 - Unlike Included Pages, the Theme pages themselves are virtual (not published).
8 - Create additional Theme pages for different sections of your site.
9 - Cascade/nest multiple theme pages by referencing other theme pages.
10 - Pages now inherit their default description, keywords, centring, background etc. from the Theme Page - so you don't have to spend time repeating basic settings for each new page.
11 - Theme page properties can be overridden on an individual page by page basis.
12 - Theme page can be enabled/disabled on an individual page basis (useful for pages that will appear in I-Frames where a theme is not desired).
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1 - Smoother, more responsive page editor with better visual feedback.
2 - Tabbed page editor, open several pages for editing at a time and switch between them quickly with a single mouse click. Much easier to cut and paste between pages.
3 - Options to close all open pages, all except the current page etc. available by right-clicking any page tab in the editor.
4 - Larger 16 step Undo & Redo memory.
5 - Preview your pages in other web browsers, not just your default browser, at the click of a button (detects presence of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Netscape).
6 - Object icons grouped into dropdown categories avoiding clutter on the toolbar and dropdown captions make finding the object you want to add easier.
7 - Previous object menus consolidated into one menu.
8 - Editing icons moved onto the main toolbar, removing the need for a second toolbar and freeing up more space for the page editor canvas.
9 - Improved snap-to-grid system when moving and resizing multiple objects (maintains relative distances between objects).
10 - Realtime display of object coordinates and dimensions in properties palette when moving and resizing objects.
11 - New selection tools to select all objects to the right, left, above or below the current selection. Ideal for quickly making space for new content in the middle of a page.
12 - Canvas size expands automatically when objects are dragged off the edges of the page.
13 - Canvas scrolls automatically when cursor is dragged into the page border or ruler areas.
14 - Default position for new objects takes scrollbar position into account, avoiding the need to scroll back up the page when adding new objects.
15 - Dragging out a selection rectangle indicates which objects will be selected before the mouse button is released making it easier to select the objects you actually want selected.
16 - I-Frame contents displayed in the editor.
17 - Automatic page centring, without having to specify page width.
18 - Quick clone and drag by holding down the Alt key while dragging.
19 - Constrain to X or Y axis by holding down the Ctrl key while dragging.
20 - Quick clone, drag and constrain axis by holding Ctrl + Alt together while dragging.
21 - Mouse wheel scrolls page canvas up and down without reaching for scrollbar.
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1 - New File Manager view gets its own palette, so you no longer have to switch between page editor and file views. The web page takes centre-stage and is always visible.
2 - Drag and drop items from the file palette straight onto the page.
3 - New Update command in file view grabs the latest version of any picture or media item from your hard drive - very useful if you are editing graphics outside Antenna.
4 - Scalable media preview window with high quality thumbnail preview.
5 - Media preview image auto-sizes to fit preview window.
6 - Progress bars when saving and loading.
7 - Page Preview thumbnail images enable you to see whats on a page before you open it.
8 - Resolves dimensions of .swf media so they appear at the size they were designed at when initially added to the web page.
9 - Files and folders displayed in a tree for rapid selection.
10 - Preview displays sizes of web pages and media files in kilobytes.
11 - Hover over the filesize display to view estimated download time in a hover-tooltip.
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1 - Recent web site files list for quick access to recent projects.
2 - Open several web sites and switch between them using the View menu.
3 - Cut, copy and paste pages, folders and files between open web sites. Now you can reuse your previous designs and pages in other sites.
4 - Float, dock, hide and show palettes to customise your screen layout to suit your workflow and screen resolution.
5 - Three predefined screen layouts provided.
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1 - Picture object enhanced with rollover capabilities - RollPicture and RollAlpha functionality rolled into the standard Picture object. Now you can make any picture into a rollover at any time, without changing object type.
2 - Picture object enhanced rollover capability: with smooth soft-fade effect.
3 - Picture object enhanced rollover capability: includes separate hover and click images.
4 - New Picture object rollover latch-down property, latches the rollover click image to avoid flicker when jumping to a linked page.
5 - SiteSearch object provides quick way for visitors to search your site using Google.
6 - Enhanced VisualHtml object includes separate tabs for adding code to the Head and Body sections of a web page. No need to go to Page Properties to add code to the Head section, making it easier to keep related Head and Body code together and easier to add 3rd party HTML that includes both Head and Body code.
7 - VisualHtml object code editor includes a Session tab useful PHP sessions, PHP redirects and other instances where pre-processing code must appear before the initial html tag.
8 - VisualHtml editor checks for the presence of 'illegal' tags such as HEAD, BODY etc. which are not permitted within the body of a web page.
9 - VisualHtml displays scrollbars automatically if content exceeds dimensions.
10 - VisualHtml, I-Frame and Flash objects display a dotted border outline to make them easier to see and position when no content is yet assigned.
11 - Flash object supports Flash Video (FLV) streaming.
12 - Flash object supports Flash variables.
13 - New PayPal Buy Now, Add to Cart and View Cart objects.
14 - Panel object features a new Caption property to display a simple caption within a panel.
15 - Panel object features rollover alpha effect.
16 - Panel object introduces slow fade alpha effect.
17 - New Page Include object replaces previous Page Include layer and adds properties for X,Y positioning of an included page.
18 - New Text Box property tab 'Text' provides quick access to the text editor and rapid switching between text editor formatting controls and object properties. This replaces the previous 'Text' property.
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1 - Tabbed scripting editor for fast switching between different On-mouse events without returning to the Properties palette - speeds up your workflow.
2 - Tabs indicate content with a blue diamond icon.
3 - New menus to insert script code. Helps ensure your script syntax is correct, jogs your memory, and very helpful if you are new to scripting - select the commands you want and Antenna will practically write the script for you.
4 - Script graphics functions for moving and fading objects added to script editor menus.
5 - Script cookie functions for reading and writing cookies added to the script editor menus.
6 - Two new script functions for sending data and form contents via Ajax (Web 2.0)
7 - Various miscellaneous history and window functions added to script editor menus.
8 - Popup window functions added to events editor menus.
9 - Object name format changed to [#object] to make code tidier and avoid reserved percentage symbol issue.
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1 - Drag layers up and down to change layer order.
2 - Drag objects on expanded layers up and down to change their order/depth on the layer.
3 - Lock layers to protect them from accidental changes (right-click).
4 - Best of both worlds: Solo the current layer to isolate it and work with objects on that layer alone (this matches the behaviour of previous releases). Unsolo to enable selection of all objects, whatever layer they are on. This means you no longer have to remember which layer an object is on just to select it.
5 - Select and move several objects together even if they are on different layers
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1 - Styles Editor now has its own dedicated palette, so no more switching back and forth between the Styles Editor and Page Editor - you can now view your web page while editing styles and see the results on the page instantly.
2 - Define and edit styles with the text editor open.
3 - Styles list is sorted alphabetically making it easier to select the style you want.
4 - Styles are indented from the Global Style in the drop-down list to show visually that styles inherit from the Global Style.
5 - Style preview includes link and bullet properties preview, so you can see what your links and bullet-points will look like. They even respond to the mouse-cursor passing over them, so you can see the hover effects too.
6 - Style preview shows the final composite effect of global and current style settings together, displaying exactly what you will see when your style is applied on your web pages.
7 - 'New Style' creates a new empty style while the new 'Duplicate Style' facility creates a new style based on the current style. Previously 'New Style' always duplicated the current style.
8 - Style properties have been grouped into tabbed categories (e.g. text, background, links, scrollbars etc.) making it easier to find the property you want to adjust, instead of trawling through one long list.
9 - Several new style options have been introduced for adding background images to defined styles and also to link styles.
10 - The visual appearance of list bullet points can be customised for each style in the Styles Editor, including various shapes, roman-numerals and using small icon images as bullet points.
11 - New underline & overline options for text and links in the Styles Editor.
12 - More border styles (dotted, dashed) available.
13 - New Menus style appied to all new menu objects by default - this makes it a lot easier to customise the visual appearance of menus.
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1 - Enhanced text editor places formatting controls in the main Properties Palette for easy access, even with wide or long text boxes.
2 - Defined styles can be applied to individual words and phrases in the text editor - enabling you to combine headings and other styles within the same text box.
3 - Styles can be defined and modified in the Styles Palette, even while the text editor is still open, giving instant visual feedback.
4 - Realtime colour hinting when typing in a link address (red tinted background indicates link page does not exist).
5 - Multicase support for external links.
6 - Drag and drop filenames from the Files Palette directly onto words and phrases in the text editor for rapid text linking.
7 - New spellchecker with language selection, supports free international iSpell dictionaries.
8 - Spellchecker offers suggestions for misspelt words and 'add to dictionary' option.
9 - Paste formatted text directly from MSWord.
10 - Automatic generation of H1-H3 tags when styles Heading1, Heading2 and Heading3 are applied in the text editor.
11 - Revised #bookmark links system, supports placing bookmarks within text blocks, and cross-page bookmark linking (also works around IE bookmarking issue with centred pages).
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PhotoRazor Image Sizing Built In
1 - Integrated PhotoRazor introduces image adjustment capabilities within Antenna. Single images and groups of imported images can be selected for adjustment.
2 - Very high quality image resizing, smoothly reduces the size of large images, speeding up page download times and reducing bandwidth usage.
3 - Image rotation (+/- 90 / 180 degrees).
4 - Black & White conversion with channel balancing.
5 - Image colour tinting (e.g. sepia tint or more dramatic colourizing).
6 - All adjustments are non-destructive, images can be reverted to the original imported version at any time.
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1 - Each new project includes an enhanced PHP form handling script called FreeForm.
2 - FreeForm can be configured and published within Antenna (just double-click freeform.php in the files palette to adjust its settings) - no more messing around with Notepad or external uploading.
3 - FreeForm supports email file attachments.
4 - Works straight out of the box - in many cases with zero configuration.
5 - Form properties are now included with the form Submit button, so the hidden 'Post' object has been retired.
6 - Freeform has a test mode, enabled by default, which generates a report when forms are submitted. This enables form configuration to be checked before forms are set to go live.
7 - Freeform displays useful information for example if a form is submitted locally or from a non-PHP capable host.
8 - Freeform can store multiple recipient addresses internally, enabling different forms to select and dispatch to different addresses within a company while still masking and protecting the email addresses from spammers.
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1 - Button Lab completely rewritten with the following enhancements:
2 - New button shapes such as stars, arrows, octogons, hearts etc.
3 - Skew button shapes.
4 - Full 360 button rotation.
5 - Define separate up, hover and down states within Button Lab.
6 - New gradient creation system for creating complex gradients.
7 - Rotate gradient angle 360.
8 - New set of button textures with visual thumbnail selection.
9 - 8-way directional texture fading.
10 - Improved texture blending.
11 - New bevel effect with raised or recessed bevel, size and intensity.
12 - New drop shadow effect with soft shadows.
13 - New stained glass shadow effect.
14 - All project buttons managed internally by Antenna.
15 - Edit any project button type at any time - no need to save to presets.
16 - Built in button library with thumbnail images to aid selection.
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1 - New Photo Gallery object can be added to any page.
2 - Photo Gallery object references and displays photos from Photo Albums.
3 - Dedicated Album editor, Albums can be edited at any time.
4 - Photo order can be rearranged using drag & drop.
5 - Five different thumbnail layouts (top, bottom, left, right, contact sheet).
6 - Smooth photo transition fades.
7 - Automatic thumbnail tracking, thumbnail strip follows the mouse cursor.
8 - Filenames preserve case when used as photo or thumbnail captions.
9 - Optional custom caption field for each photo in an Album.
10 - Select separate photo and thumbnail background colours.
11 - Optional border around each photo.
12 - Option to burn filename and/or custom caption into thumbnail images.
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1 - New FTP publisher to upload your web site.
2 - Two step tabbed publishing dialog to make things easier the first time you publish your site.
3 - Resume on close connection. Marks files as published as soon as a file has been uploaded, so if you're disconnected unexpectedly, next time you connect publishing will resume from where it left off - instead restarting the whole publishing cycle again.
4 - Improved 'publish changes only' detection.
5 - Option to specify and preview published site immediately.
6 - Publish and Export functions separated on Site menu.
7 - All files considered for publishing, not just those that are 'in use'. This makes it much easier to add 3rd party scripts that reference other files.
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1 - New options dialog.
2 - Enhanced grid setup with realtime preview of grid spacing and colour adjustments, so you can see exactly what the grid will look like on the page before you click OK.
3 - Choose the default page extension when creating new pages (htm, html, php, asp).
4 - Option to start application maximized or previous size.
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1. Page building engine re-written resulting in faster build times (informal testing indicates more than 8 times faster), and in many cases build time is eliminated altogether - so less waiting around when you want to publish or preview your work in a browser.
2. Improved HTML on many objects generates higher quality code and smaller pages that download faster and use less bandwidth.
3. Various code improvements results in improved W3C standards compliance (HTML 4.01 and CSS Level 3).
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1. Revised visual appearance for Windows Vista.
2. Revised settings and presets storage to account for Vista UAC restrictions.
3. Developed on Vista to ensure full compatibility.
4. Rapid program startup time - much faster than previous releases.
5. New splash screen with fade effect.
6. New licensing and key entry dialogs.
7. Several IE only effects retired to improve cross-browser compatibility.
8. Web menu renamed as Site menu.
9. Added View menu to handle new project switching, palette visibility and GUI layout capabilities.
10. Reduced number of entries in Help menu for clarity.
11. New Open Project icon image for toolbar.
12. New icon image for Media Player object.
13. New icon image for Text object.
14. Numerous object property names and values renamed for clarity.
15. New Antenna program icon for Vista with alpha transparency.
16. New about box with scrolling credits.
17. Updated Help Documentation (PDF User Guide)
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Change Log