Archive for May, 2007

Firedoodle: Version 0.6 is now available – Focusing, Stickies, Improved Drawing!

May 16, 2007

I’m very proud to announce Firedoodle version 0.6! Firedoodle 0.6 offers three major new features which include Focusing, Sticky Notes, and Drawing History. Let’s get right into the details!

Where’s Firedoodle?

First off, when you install the new Firedoodle, you will notice that it is not there. That doesn’t make much sense, right? Well, a lot of people didn’t like the idea of another tool bar eating up your valuable screen real estate, so now Firedoodle is closed, or hidden, by default.

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You will notice that there is now a grayed out Firedoodle icon in the bottom right hand side of your browser. Clicking this icon will open the tool bar.

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The Focus Tool

Now that you have the tool bar activated, you will notice that there is now a few more icons on it. The first set, after the usual drawing tools, is the new Focus feature. The Focus feature is designed to allow you to bring attention to a certain area of the web page. Clicking the new Focus Area icon will bring up the following:

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This is the focus box. Mousing over it will display it’s controls. You can move it anywhere on screen and resize it as needed. Here, I’ve focused in on the main area of the page:

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You can save and edit your Focus Areas exactly like you do with the drawing tool.

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Sticky Notes

Firedoodle now allows you to add sticky notes to a web page so that you can create notes in finer detail than what is available with the drawing tool. Clicking the New Note icon will bring up a blank sticky note which can be modified.

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You can change the color of the note, move it anywhere within the browser window, change it’s opacity, and add multiple notes to a page:

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There is a hide button next to the Add Note button that will allow you to temporarily hide any notes on the page so that you can see the content behind it.

Improved Drawing Tool

The drawing tool in Firedoodle is really cool, but if you make a mistake, your only option is to clear the whole screen… well that has been greatly improved. First off, you can undo the last line you draw by simply hitting “z” while you are drawing. But say you want to delete the first line after you’ve drawn many…

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Here’s an example where I’ve drawn the digits 1 to 6. Now, if I hit the “h” key (for History), I get a popup that lists every line I’ve drawn in this session.

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Rolling over the line will highlight it onscreen (by slightly hiding the others). We can see here that we have the mouse over line #4, as it highlights behind us. Now, all we have to do is click the “X” on that line and that will delete the highlighted line.

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In Conclusion

I hope you like the new features of Firedoodle. If you do not have the latest version, please visit Firedoodle.com and install it. I will work on creating video demos of these new features in action as I can. Thanks for your time!