Exuse Me While I Go Play With My New Toy

A screenshot of WhizFolders Pro as I typically used it. Note all the different sized windows stacked and scattered across the screen.

I got a surprise in my inbox this evening.

I've blogged about my use of WhizFolders Pro for all note-taking and draft work many time over the last 2.5 years since I bought it and before that I blogged a number of times about the free version, WhizNotes, in which I did my NaNoWriMo draft several years running. The two latest posts about Whiz are here where I created and ebook and here showing how I used it during Bloggiesta.

Well recently Whiz generated an error report automatically which I agreed to send and a few hours ago I got a reply from AviTech, the creator of the ap, informing me that the bug had been addressed in the latest updates but that he noticed that my two years of free updates had expired last February but he was also aware that I had blogged about Whiz and because of that he was extending me a complimentary upgrade. Not only to the latest edition but to the Deluxe Edition which is a step up from Pro!

I was just sitting down to prepare Thursday's post and planning to work on a book review of The Girl with Glass Feet for Friday's post when this e-mail arrived. Ed was sitting beside me about to prepare for bed but when he saw that he was as excited as I was and he, (who is my tech go to guy) agreed to stay up long enough to walk me through download and installation of WhizFolders Deluxe.

Below are a few screenshots I took after the installation. With most of the same files open my desktop now has only two Whiz windows because Whiz now has tabbed view for the file windows as well as for the topics in the editor window. This is going to eliminate one of the minor hassles of loosing the smaller windows under the bigger ones and having to call up the master list of open windows to find it. Minor but annoying, so this is going to be nice.



Here the editor window is under the files window and the file selected is my Web Map which is my Web bookmarking file. The topic open is the one for reading & writing related blogs which I added dozens of links to during the Bloggiesta this past weekend. The reason I prefer to bookmark web pages this way is that I can drop comments with the URL that remind me of the relevance of the link to whichever interest or project.


Here I've selected the tab for my Reading Journal Whiz file. Note the colored topic titles in the list at the left. This feature was part of Pro and allows me to color code items. In this case these are the bibliography slips for library books and the colors indicate:

• green = currently checked out
• red = previously checked and begun but currently at the library
• teal = never checked out but confirmed the library possesses. You could call this a wishlist. I create these as I read reviews online that intrigue me.
• lavender = previously checked out and finished reading but not finished with book review
• white = read and review posted

Not visible above:

• purple = short story collections
• yellow = finished reading, still in my possession and available for review
• navy = books about writing
• maroon = books relevant to an ongoing research project related to my fiction WIP

Here the tabbed editor window (looking pretty much the same as before) is on top of the new tabbed file window showing the book review topic for The Girl with Glass feet. Note the ability to drop a thumb of the book cover. into the file. This is helpful to me as my memories are stored with associated images so being able to gaze at the cover helps me remember the experience of reading the book--the story, characters and plot as well as my thoughts and feelings at the time. This enables me to write a review after the book has gone back to the library.

Well, as you can imagine, I'm anxious to continue exploring the new features. Some would be new to Pro but many are for the Deluxe edition only and I'm eager to play with them.