Thanks for all the hard work. But it still does not slurp Typepad correctlly. My system: BookSmart 1.9.7 on Intel MacPro Quad-Core, OS X 10.5.4, and a ridiculous amount of RAM and hard disk space.

And still, it will only ‘slurp’ the first 20 posts in my Typepad blog…

Hi all,

Thanks for your prompt feedback.

First, to FubarEast, please note that 1.9.7 doesn’t fix absolutely everything. If there is a problem with your file, it’s not necessarily something that resulted from 1.9.6. This may be a typical file corruption problem, which Customer Support should be able to help you fix. Please contact them and tell them Jeremy recommended they solicit your files.

Danielflahif, unfortunately our developers were only able to fix 1 of the apparent 2 Typepad issues (the first issue being the complete breakage of BookSmart/Typepad communication). The problem now with it only slurping the first page of entries will be fixed in an upcoming edition of BookSmart. I am sorry about that and recommend you try out a blog migration (export/import) tool so you can port, temporarily, your entries to a blog platform that is currently working. I know that sounds like a pain—I’m only recommending it in case you want your blog book NOW.

Cheers,
Jeremy

Jeremy, Thanks for the tip, quick response, and professionalism. I’ll give the export option a try and see how it goes.

Love this project and wish y’all the best!

d.

If you’re almost finished with a text heavy book, we recommend uploading your book project before upgrading, as the new changes will result in slight shifts within your text layout. If you’re ready to start a new project, you’ll appreciate this improvement, so go ahead and upgrade now.

Thank you SO much for this warning, Kathy! I have a couple of books I’m close to being done with – I was going to save/export them and then try to upgrade – now I know I should wait. You just saved me tons of time. Thanks again! :)

Jenny, no answer for you I’m afraid, but two suggestions in this post…

http://forums.blurb.com/forums/1/topics/3573

.........Tony
 

If you want Blurb staff to look into this issue you need to raise a Technical Support Request, the forums are primarly meant to facilitate exchange of help and ideas between Blub users, though the staff do monitor the posts.

Go to Search FAQs and you will see a heading of EMAIL SUPPORT on the RHS, under that you will see Technical Suppport. Their customer support is pretty good.

........Tony

Help! I am halfway through designing a book of fine art photography and I am using borders on the photos. Now I downloaded the new version of booksmart and have no option to add borders. on the bar at the top of the window I now only have options for “THEMES” BACKGROUNDS” AND ORNAMENTS” The borders tab is completely missing!!!! Now I’m halfway through the layout with all the photos having borders and I cannot continue. Can I still download the previous version?

John-Mark,

Pagination works for me! But what I did notice is that although the page numbers in the footers of my pages now start at 1 where I requested (and previous pages the page number is blank) the numbers below the page thumbnails in the strip along the bottom of the BookSmart window still start at 1. I was a bit miffed to start with but then realised that if that wasn’t the case I wouldn’t know how many pages were in my book and I couldn’t work out the cost.

Double check the page numbers in your footers (or headers if you have requested the page numbers there).

.......Tony

"Quote" Help! I am halfway through designing a book of fine art photography and I am using borders on the photos. Now I downloaded the new version of booksmart and have no option to add borders. on the bar at the top of the window I now only have options for “THEMES” BACKGROUNDS” AND ORNAMENTS” The borders tab is completely missing!!!! Now I’m halfway through the layout with all the photos having borders and I cannot continue. Can I still download the previous version?"

The Border button is still there, it has been moved down a little bit. It was hard for me to find also.

How does one know if they have the latest patch?  Mine shows Verson: 1.9.7.25866

I really enjoy working with Booksmart, and it has been working flawlessly. Can’t wait to publish my book.

After updating to 1.9.7 I am struggling with entering text. I set the font to Georgia 12 but whenever I start typing the font size is set to 9 again. Even in the middle of a paragraph of Georgia 12, with the font box on top saying Georgia 12.

Also navigating and selecting text using the keyboard (e.g. shift-end, shift-home, end) does not seem to work anymore. I never noticed anything peculiar when entering text so I suspect this has slipped in?

Nothing serious like crashes or lost text, but it is quite annoying and not good for my confidence in the robustness of Booksmart.

Bonjour Kathy and
Jermey, as well as et al at Blurb,

Re: feature enhancement for consideration

{a icon of box to be checked} Perhaps that this feature to be assigned at the time of “uploading .book file” prior to order book, it should include a box of check in “to” acknowledge this—something like this…

Something like this… “I have examined the proof for correction of content, fonts, images and quality of image. As consequence, I understand that this proof means the *final* finished book. I approve the printing to be published.”

{continue} {cancel}

If this feature included in the future release of “new” version of Blurb BookSmart app, THIS probably will help Blurbarians (or customers or bookmakers) to realize. Perhaps this will help people to recognize that they need to be more organized in preparation of their book file through BookSmart. Also, I would think some aspect of sRGB color profile and its related wording related to 300 ppi and sRGB color profile should be assigned prior to import and all. I mean, it should also include in the “acknowledgement button” to approve this, or not. If not, then they can press “cancel” and go back to editing in BookSmart and go through the same procedure and MUST check-in to approve this PRIOR to upload the .book file. I don’t know if that make things easier, no?

The reason for this, I have notice that there were so many forum topic discussed about typo errors, how to resolve this after they realize they found some error on typo error or something like that…

Just a thought and suggestion. Please take this under consideration for feature enhancement. I would think that it is a big time saver, some problem that arise… That said, this feature could be of saving lot of time, effort and money – it is win-win situation on both sides: Blurbarians and Blurb as a whole.

Happy bookmaking with Blurb Book,
Brian
a passionate Blurbarian

Hi! I’m back. All the pictures finally loaded up and I can work with my book in progress. Maybe its my imagination but I do think that the layout is brighter, sharper and better proportioned than before but slower to react to changes I want to make. I had to review each page because some text no longer fit in the boxes they were in and some photos shifted position in multi-pictures pages. So that leads me to suggest two changes for the next up-date.

1. Horizontal and vertical guide lines. Can you create movable guide lines that we can use to position pictures in multi-photo pages?  Almost all graphic programs have guide lines which can be moved about the page to help align text and graphics so inserting the programming for this feature shouldn’t be a big problem (easy for me to say, I know). This would be a HUGE help in making pages look symmetrical and professional. "Snap to" guide lines would be ideal but any type of grid we could overlay on a page to align images would be great.

2.  Can we get pages in which the user can adjust the size of the text box and the image boxes?The ability to resize the text and image boxes would be very useful. Sometimes the pre-set pages just don’t work out for the desired page purpose.

Martin

Hi all,

Okay, I’ve got a hot cup of coffee at my desk… So let’s help get some books made.

Backing up to angelab’s crash…If BookSmart ever falls down immediately after you hit "Get Photos," then the issue most likely pertains to BookSmart, via Java, calling up the Windows dialog box. To fix that crash, you can run a search for a file called "NativeSmart.dll" and delete that specific file. BookSmart will then fall back on its own dialog box, which should run normally without crashing.

Brian’s idea for some extra author acknowledgement/agreement text is right on. I agree that language should be bolstered somehow without creating a maze of warnings that an author will simply speed-click through. When Kathy is back from vacation, I think she’d be interested to read your suggestion.

Fluor, after loading your images the first time (and rebuilding the cache libraries), the program should run faster. It sounds like you’re still experiencing some lag, however… Guides would indeed be great (I design with a touchpad—no mouse—in InDesign, and would be lost without the "snap-to" feature. But is that coming to BookSmart? Probably not… not soon, anyway). But as for baseline guides, that goes hand-in hand with the possibility of allowing for adjustable image and text containers….Those are both fine ideas that I will pass along to the programmers.

Finally, SandyStaruk, ouch. I am sorry to read about that. Customer Support will do its best to get that working again for you. Feel free to ask them to escalate your case; they might need to ask you to send your files for examination/repair.

Thanks to all. We’ll be chattin’ more this week…
Jeremy

For those on a Mac, you might want to run “Repair permissions” in the Disk utility. I also run Applejack ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596 ) when there are problems. The previous upgrade was quite sluggish and even locked up my computer to the point I could not do a “Force Quit”.

After installing the new upgrade and running the utilities mentioned above, things are working quite well on a new project. Old projects however, do take a while to load. Cannot say that i like the type issue – I like the 1.5 line spacing and the small text boxes do not handle that now.

Richard

I have already downloaded the latest version of the software, and have just completed a redo of my previous publication to remove a few of the self-inflicted hiccoughs that were in the original. Everything seemed to go very smoothly and the issues I had found with the previous version all seem to have been addressed.

But! I just decided to go back in and experiment with the borders which are supposed to be an option around text boxes, and find that the border button does nothing at all. Where am I going wrong? It pops into action as usual for the image borders, but lies there completely lifeless for the text boxes. Am I missing something or just looking at the wrong button perhaps?

Also not slurping Typepad – only first 20 posts.

 

Come on guys, you had this right a year ago when I made a great book out of the first year of my blog. Now I want to do the second year, and you can’t make it work…..

1.9.7 fixed one of my problems but created another. I use the Mac version. On importing text from MS Word into two column layouts, the Booksmart-added indent atop new pages is gone. But so are my indents throughout the document! I have tried all manner of saving the text before importing to no avail. I like the other changes, but this still kills my plans for my text-heavy book.

upgraded while working on a book. Now it hangs when I try to edit a text-field. Tried to downgrade but the bookfile is not backwards compatible. Nice.. What can I do?

Came here after being unable to run the 1.9.8 version (After successfully downloading and installing, it won’t run.  Just get the error-reporting tool).

So I get here and it looks like 1.9.7 is not stable either?   WTF

Where is a version I can actually use?  Or should I just stick with Asukabook.  More expensive, but I can just use Photoshop for them  – and Pshop works :P

I am confused. I see BP2U is talking about 1.98 version. I saw no mention of that being released anywhere. Has he just got his numbers wrong or is there in fact a new release? At the top of this thread there is mention of the 1.97 only.

Howdy,

The most current version should probably be called 1.9.7.1, as it really fixes only text "borders" (which I also feel should be named differently, as it refers to decorative designs in text containers rather than the outline around a container itself).

Sorry for any confusion; 1.9.8 is essentially 1.9.7, just with that one tiny change…

Cheers,
Jeremy

Jeremy

thanks…........ !

Janys

Hi BP2U,

Please stay in touch with Customer Support. If their first suggestion did not work, please let them know. They will keep working with you until you’re up and running (or are able to provide a good explanation why it’s not working.
Thanks for hanging in there,
Jeremy     

I am also experiencing that strange font glitch where text that should be 12pt is registering as 9pt.  While it looks like 12pt, I can ony hope that when it goes to print  it will, in fact, be 12pt.  Is anything known about this glitch?