OK, OK, I know. I said I wasn’t going to do anything. But I had some free time and there was this feature that I really wanted, and I thought some of you that are doing NaNoWriMo might want.

So I coded it up, and while it’s a might unpretty, I think it’s pretty cool.

Basically, there’s a Statistics item in the View menu that will bring up a page of Statistics. Right now, there is only a weekly view of your daily word counts, but I will be adding other nifty things as I come up with them.

I’m releasing it now, instead of later after it’s pretty, so that the daily stats can start being tracked. If you’ve already started a project, your first day is going to be HUGE! There’s not much I can do about that.

So, install this build BEFORE you start heavy writing on your project.

http://www.storyboxsoftware.com/download.htm

I released StoryBox 1.0.85 today, which adds the ability to export and print notes and synopsis. It also fixes a data destruction bug (doesn’t affect the actual text – just the synopsis, notes, title, and document properties) when trashing a document under certain circumstances. I highly recommend updating to this version.

I am going to be taking a break soon from updating for about the next three weeks. I will be attending David Farland’s Writers Death Camp, during the first week of November and will not have the capability to fix anything while I’m away.

I will fix any critical bugs that are found this week, but with Halloween and preparations for my trip, I won’t have much time to add features.

http://www.storyboxsoftware.com/download.htm

The first update in the new era!

I’ve added printing, storyboard background images, and a status indicator to the outline view, among other things.

You can print either single documents, or your whole project. It has the same options as the Export (minus the file format selection), however, it does not automatically print your whole story. If you want to print the whole story, select the Story in the File Drawer and then print.

The Storyboard background images can be set by right clicking on the background of the storyboard and selecting one of the three options in the context menu.

There is a “fix” or a “feature” that has been added to the version management. When you delete a version, it will now compact the file which should limit the file bloat. It will ask if you want to back up the file first, and I recommend doing that. I’ve tested it on my projects and it works, but I’m paranoid.

http://www.storyboxsoftware.com/download.htm

Today is a day that I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. Creating a piece of software and releasing it into the wild is about as stressful as anything. What did I miss? Will anybody like it? Will anyone buy it?

I tried to limit my stress by following my pre-release release plan, and it worked. There are quite a few users of StoryBox already and I’ve seen some nice comments about it in various places. They’ve posted a large number of problems to me, and I’ve been pretty diligent about fixing them as they came up.

There are still issues with it, I’m sure. The more people using it, the more oddball problems will be found. I’ll fix these as soon as they crop up. The release strategy has worked all this time, and I see no reason to change it. You will continue to get updates frequently.

I have a list of features to add to StoryBox that includes 26 items. Some are small, and some are rather large, and perhaps difficult to do. There are some I’ve committed to doing, like printing and exporting of synopsis and notes, and others that I haven’t yet committed myself to doing (not spilling those beans yet since I don’t know if I will do them).

You may be asking yourself, if I’ve got a list of features that long, why am I releasing 1.0 right now? With software, there are always features that could be added. StoryBox, as it stands today, does everything I wanted it to do when I first started out, and more. Could I have added the features on my list to 1.0? Sure, but it would be another year before I could release it, which would mean a year of people looking at it and saying to themselves, “It’s pre-release, it’s not done.” Software is never done. Versions releases are only a pause in the development, a point at which the developer decides the software has reached a milestone.

And thus, today is the birthday of StoryBox. Thank you to everyone that has helped or purchased a copy during the pre-release period. I can’t wait to get started on my list.

Download Version 1.0.83

Reena Jacobs has posted this review of StoryBox on her blog. It covers the 1.0 version that will be available tomorrow.

Today is your last day to get StoryBox for $25 and save nearly $10 from tomorrow’s price.