Blog: WhizFolders, Articles and tips

Do you know that you can actually drag and drop a web site address from your browser’s address bar to a topic list in WhizFolders? This inserts a link type topic that works like a bookmark. Whenever you double-click on that topic in the topic list, it opens that web site in your browser. This feature is very convenient as you can then keep notes on that web site in the topic that is created for that link type topic. Just don’t disturb the first line and put your notes in the rest of the topic. This way, you can set up a WhizFolder document as a bookmark collection for often used web sites. What is more, you get all the features of topic list outlining for this bookmark list, and you can have more than one such documents, each keeping a different set of bookmarks. This makes WhizFolders a convenient bookmark utility.

Also, in case you don’t know, you can import your current Favorites from Internet Explorer in the topic list by using the menu “Insert–A Favorites folder or Insert–Links in Topic List–Multiple Favorites.” This import also inserts link type topics similar to the one described above. The only difference is that these topics point to the Favorite shortcut files (URL files) instead of to the actual web site.

Known problem with Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista: The drag and drop from the address bar in Internet Explorer 7 does not work in Windows Vista unless you are running Internet Explorer as administrator. This problem doesn’t occur with FireFox.

We just discovered a way to set up a reminder so that WhizFolders will automatically start at a preset time, positioned on a particular note. I want to share that tip with you.

Let’s assume that you want a particular WhizFolders note to be opened automatically at 11 AM every day.

Step 1: We first need to get a Run command that starts WhizFolders on that note. We can do that in WhizFolders 6.1.2 in a roundabout way, by creating a desktop shortcut–not very straightforward, I admit, but it works. In the next version to be released, we have already made it better. But for now, let’s see how to get the Run command in WhizFolders 6.1.2.

1. Open your WhizFolder document, select the topic, and click on the menu “Tools – Create Shortcut for the Selected Topic on Windows Desktop.”
2. Once the shortcut is created, find it on your Desktop and right-click on the shortcut to see the “properties.” From the “Properties,” select and copy the full content of the “Target” box. This is the Run command that we want. Keep this copied in the clipboard as we are going to use it in the Task Scheduler.

Step 2, Make the reminder in the Windows Task Scheduler (Windows XP):

1. Click on “Settings–Control Panel –Scheduled Tasks–Add Scheduled Task.” A “Scheduled Task Wizard” comes up. Click on “Next.”
2. Click on “Browse” on the wizard window. Select the document from “Select a Program to Schedule” Dialog box.
3. After that the series of dialogs is quite easy to understand where we set up a Daily reminder time of 11 AM. I’m not going into details here as it’s easy to understand, and you can consult the help for the Task Scheduler. The last screen has a check box “Open advanced properties.” Select that so that the following properties dialog opens up after the task is set up. You can even get to it later by right-click on the task.



4. In the “Run” Text box paste the Run command that you copied from step 1. Click on “Apply.” You are done. The note will now be opened at that time.

Step 2, Make the reminder in the Windows Task Scheduler (Windows Vista):

1. On Vista, you will find Task Scheduler in Administrative Tools in Control Panel–System maintenance. But there is an easier way to quickly start it. Just click on Start menu and type “Task” in the Start Search at the bottom. This will quickly show the Task Scheduler icon by which you can start it.
2. Here, you need to click on the menu Action–Create a Basic Task. After that, the setting up of reminder time is easy to understand. Finally, select “Starting a Program.” You see a “Start a Program” screen with two boxes “Program” and “Add Arguments” as shown below.

   

   You need to split the Run Command that we copied above in two parts. Enter the first double-quoted value that gives the full path name of WhizFolders exe file in the Program box. Put the rest of the Run command in the “Add arguments” box and complete the wizard by clicking on the Next button till it finishes. That’s it. You’re all set.

Finally, you can delete the desktop shortcut created in Step 1 unless you want to keep it.

Universal links: If that program supports running external commands in its links, you can simply copy a Universal Link to a note and use that as the link target. This is described in Now you can insert a link pointing to a WhizFolders note in any application that supports hyperlinks.

Shortcuts: Sometimes, that other program may not support the above feature of having commands as links. Instead, it might support a limited external link that can only execute a shortcut. In this case, you will need to create a shortcut to the note and then use it. Here are steps to create shortcuts to WhizFolder documents or to individual notes within them.

Creating a shortcut to open a WhizFolder document: This is described in Always opening the same document when starting.

Creating a shortcut to open WhizFolders, positioned on a particular note: We will be giving this feature in the next version by a direct Tools menu. But for now, you can follow this procedure.

1. You need to create a BAT utility only once:

   Using Notepad, create a file called “mystart.bat” with the following line in it:
   
      start %1

   Copy this file mystart.bat to a folder on your path, for example, to the Windows folder. You need to do this step only once and can use this utility later for all such shortcuts.
    

2. Copy the universal link in WhizFolders for which you want to create a desktop shortcut.
3. On the desktop, right-click New–Shortcut and enter the following in the Location box:
   
    mystart universal-link-copied-above
   
    
4. Click on Next, and give a name to this shortcut.
5. Click on Finish and the shortcut will be created on the desktop. Double-click it to test whether it opens WhizFolders at the note correctly.
6. Now you can use this shortcut as a link target in that other program. You can even rename this shortcut to a shorter name or copy it (using Windows Explorer) to another folder if that makes it easier to remember its name.

A direct web publishing is not possible. But you can combine multiple topics to create a single web page (html file) with working links between topics and to the other web sites. Then you can transfer this web page to a web site manually by using a publishing or ftp program. Exporting to multiple pages is not possible yet.

To see the details on how to export to HTML, please look up Help Index of WhizFolders on “Exporting to HTML.” Note that there are certain limitations of this export as mentioned later.

Steps to Export the Topics to a web page or HTML File:

1. Select one or more Topics from the Whizfolder document
2. Click on the menu “Tools–Export selected topics–To HTML File.”
3. A screen comes up asking for the Title of the web page.
4. Type a name for the web page and select “Also put jumped topics in the HTML file” check box.
5. Click on OK. A dialog comes up to save to an HTML file.
6. Select a file name and the web page is exported and WhizFolders also gives an option to bring up the browser to test the web page.
7. When you have tested the page, you can use a file transfer (FTP) program to copy it to your web site.

Limitations:

1. Pictures can not be exported to the HTML File. But you can insert html tags to do that. This is explained in the help file and in the article “Inserting custom HTML tags.”
2. Formatting of the text might change as all the RTF options are not possible in HTML.
3. If the check box “Also put jumped topics in the HTML file” is not selected, the links to unexported topics won’t work (i.e. they won’t show the target topic when clicked)
4. To get a hierarchial list of topic name links at the top of the web page, select that option and make sure that you have selected a complete hierarchy of topics in the topic list.

This can be done by the feature called “Link to external file or document.” Here is an example of how to do it:

1. Suppose your WhizFolder document is at the location “d:\my stuff\mydoc.wzfolder”
2. Save your .mht file in the same folder (or make a subfolder within it to keep such files).
3. In your WhizFolder document, start editor on the topic in which you want to put the file link.
4. Leave the editor on and open the folder “d:\my stuff” in Windows Explorer. Keep both windows side by side.
5. Select the .mht file in Explorer, and drag and drop on to the editor to drop a link.
6. This will insert a link that can be used to open the attachment anytime. Moreover, the link will work even when you move the document along with such .mht files or the subfolders containing them. This way, you can keep links to attachments and your notes around them too.
7. Put your detailed notes on this link in the same note or make a list of notes after that note. It is upto you. For example, when I start to study a new book, I keep a link to its PDF file this way and can open it quickly anytime to continue making notes while studying it.

Other ways to do the same thing:

• Instead of steps 4 and 5 above, you can even use the Insert menu to insert links to files and folders, even the attachment folder itself can be opened with a link.
• You can insert links in the same manner (both methods) in the topic list itself. The advantage is that you can just double-click on that note name in the topic list to open the attachment. You can even use list outlines to organize such links. In this case the first line of the topic that is created is automatically reserved for the document path and your notes can follow in the rest of the topic.

As announced earlier, I am making new flash demos on WhizFolders. It requires quite an effort, and I am going by a list of basic features to explain first. Recently, I got a suggestion to give priority to the linking features. I liked the idea and have already started on the demo tutorials for links. Two such demos are already done (see Demos section on the web site), and at least five more are coming.

WhizFolders stands out for its hyperlinking features and these tutorials on linking will help a lot in getting things done with WhizFolders. Thanks to Joan Korte for making the suggestion.

Question: I would like WhizFolders to always open to the same .wzfolder file. What can I do to make this happen?

Open that document in WhiFolders and click on the menu “Tools–Create Shortcut for this WhizFolder on Windows Desktop.” This will create a new shortcut on your desktop and you can rename it to any convenient name too. If you always start WhizFolders using that Shortcut, it will open that document automatically.

You can make many such shortcuts for different documents on your desktop to open them. Even if WhizFolders is running, it will open that document for you.

A sample WhizFolder document to keep track of your events (or calendar) for 2007 is available at the bottom of the Calendar page. Thanks to Steve Jarjoura who made up this document. We will keep updating this file for each year so whenever you read this note, please check the calendar page for the latest year’s file.

The fact that Steve could generate the hyperlinks based on topic names shows that our design of the simple name-based hyperlinking in WhizFolders was right. Time and again, we have debated whether to change the hyperlinking to use internal hidden fields using some kind of object number. While this might simplify some of the user interface issues, it will break the capability of generating hyperlinks easily. Currently, you can simply make a link just by typing [~jump topic-name]. No hidden fields and no hidden numbers. That means a programmer can make a script to make the linked content of an entire WhizFolder document in a text file and then import it using Insert Topics from Text File. The above event file was created in this manner.

This is an old article. What you see mentioned as alpha version is now WhizFolders 6. So yes, this complete feature as described now exists in WhizFolders 6.

This is real interesting. The new WhizFolders (now in alpha testing) has a new feature called Copy Universal Link. You will find it on the right-click menu of the topic list. It allows you to copy a universal link to a topic or a text position. You can then paste this link in another application that supports hyperlinks, for example, Microsoft Word. When clicked in Word, this link will open that note in WhizFolders.

You can’t even imagine the power that this feature represents. This is true collaboration between different tools and once again proves that Microsoft Windows is indeed a very useful and powerful platform.

Let me explain. Suppose you have tried lots of note taking and outlining tools and finally settled on WhizFolders. You would like to keep all your notes in WhizFolders. But you continue using other applications for different purposes because each one has a unique advantage in its own area. For example, you use Outlook to keep reminders or use some kind of graphical flow chart or mind mapping software to keep other information. But you are not happy with the ordinary Note Management aspects of those applications. No problem. Now you can keep your notes in WhizFolders and link to them from those applications. This gives you unprecendened power because you are able to use any kind of front end for your notes which sit in the background in WhizFolders and can be managed easily there.

So what you get with Universal Links is the ability to have any kind of front end interface to your ideas and notes.

In the next alpha version, we are going to extend this power to give a universal link to a phrase of text (search text) so that the universal link positions precisely in a WhizFolders note and works at all times, even after you change the note very often. The Link to position feature would not work properly on a change of text before the link position. But the new link to Search Text will continue to work as long as that piece of text is present in your note.

How the idea of Universal Links started: I am grateful to Ian Goldsmid who pointed out that such a feature exists in Outlook 2007 and whether we can implement it in WhizFolders. Lot of research went into it before we could implement it. We decided to called this feature Universal Links because it looks very much like a web url (address). Who knows, WhizFolders may be the first non-Microsoft application that supports this kind of link copying. Thanks to Microsoft for doing the groundwork and making this possible in Windows.

Here is what Ian says in a recent note: “Just to say that these Universal Links work brilliantly - and not merely in Microsoft applications! I can now create an infinitely creative visual concept map in another application, and insert WhizFolder links - so that gives me a best of breed combination of Visual Navigation and Notes Creation and Management… So yes, the cream on the cake will be the ’search text positioning’ such that link navigation will be preserved in the Editor, even when the position of the link changes. Superb!”

You will need to make up the links by looking at Outlook help. For example, you will be able to go to a contact in Outlook by following this procedure:

1. When you are editing, click on “Insert into Topic Text–Jump link to a file.”

2. The wizard starts up.

3. Enter the following in the Target File:

   Outlook:\\Personal Folders\Contacts\~James White

   Here, the last part James White is the Full Name of the contact.

4. Enter a suitable link text in the Link Text box that you want to show up for the link (or leave it empty).

5. Insert the link and test.

To see details on various link formats, please see Outlook 2003 help. Just start a help search online in Outlook 2003 on “links.” Then click on “Types of hyperlinks”. You will find the information at the bottom.

In office 2007, you will be able to copy such links directly from any office application (including Outlook 2007) and paste in WhizFolders with a [~jumpfile enclosure. It becomes much easier.

Update, July 31: There is also a freeware utility with which you can easily copy the above links from Outlook 2003 (or earlier). See Linker for Windows.

Reverse links are possible too! WhizFolders 6 has a new feature called Copy Universal Link that allows you to copy a similar link to a topic or position in WhizFolders and paste it in Outlook or any other application. This allows you to open that topic from that other application easily. I am going to write another article next to explain Universal Links.