[Clipmate-announce] ClipMate Newsletter - June 2006

[Chris Thornton]

June 1, 2006

Welcome back to our Newsletter, featuring news about the upcoming
ClipMate 7 update, a special offer, and as always, a ClipMate usage
tip.

HTML Version - This newsletter is posted at our website in HTML
format at: http://www.thornsoft.com/newsletter/newsletter_jun06.htm
And as an RSS feed: http://www.thornsoft.com/rssnewsletter.xml

Newsletter Contents:
  ClipMate 7.0       - Available Now!
  License Expansion  - Need to add more seats?
  Special Offer      - DreamQuest Games
  ClipMate Tip       - Outbound Clip Filtering
  Alert              - FireFox Stops Copying (Malware Related)
  Updating           - The latest versions

ClipMate 7.0 - Ready Now!
Many of you have already upgraded to ClipMate 7, as a result of the
auto-update notification. If that's you, then thanks! Otherwise, we'd
like to announce that ClipMate 7 is available, and that registered
ClipMate 6 users can take advantage of the $19.95 single-user upgrade
pricing by following this link:
http://www.thornsoft.com/ClipMate7_Upgrade_Offer.htm

Coming Soon: We're working on version 7.1 now, and all registered
users of ClipMate 7 will be able to download the update for free when
it is released this summer.

NOTE: The latest release is v7.0.07.133, and you can download it here:
http://www.thornsoft.com/dist/ClipMate.exe

License Expansion
While ClipMate's single-user license allows you to run the same
license on up to two computers, sometimes your needs grow. Our
"Household Pack" allows home users to run ClipMate on up to 5
computers. We also have multi-user discounts for workgroups and
businesses of any size. Sometimes the pricing gets tricky when you are
expanding or upgrading multi-user licenses, so send us an e-mail:
sales at thornsoft.com and Brenda can prepare a custom quote for
upgrading your license, taking into account what you've already
purchased.

Special Offering - DreamQuest Games
Sometimes our users ask us what they should do with all of the time
that they save by using ClipMate. How about some card games? Chess,
Checkers, Mah Jong? DreamQuest makes great games for Windows, Palm and
PocketPC. We've known the owners for years, and believe me, they take
their fun very seriously! We're pleased to offer all of their games to
our readers at a $5 discount (25% off) until July 1, 2006.

Click http://dqsoft.com/coupon/league_clipmate to order with the
coupon. Whether you're trying to hone your Euchre skills, learn Chess,
or want experience their online gameroom, we think you'll like what
DreamQuest has to offer. They have free trials available, and a 100%
money-back guarantee.  (The coupon is applied automatically.)

ClipMate Tip - Filter Outbound Clips
Today's major applications can place richly formatted data onto the
clipboard, containing fonts, colors, images, and all sorts of markup.
Sometimes this is great, sometimes it gets in the way. For example, if
you copy some text from a web page and paste into a Word document, it
will usually paste with the same font/size/color that it appeared on
the web site. Then you have to go and change the font back to what you
wanted. Or worse, you don't notice that your document switched from
"arial" to "verdana" until the document was printed. I hate that!

ClipMate's "filter outbound clips", found under the "Tools" menu and
optionally available on the main toolbars, allows you to "filter" the
clipboard, thus allowing you to easily "paste as plain text" into any
application, leaving the fancy formatting behind.

To use, turn on the filter from the Tools menu or the toolbar (you can
add it to the toolbar with right-click | Customize Toolbar). Once
activated, it will cause the clipboard to be updated with a "text
only" or in the case of graphics, "bitmap only" version of the data.
What happens next, depends on the "mode" that you are using - "active"
or "passive" filtering. This option is selected in the "Pasting" tab
of the options dialog.

"Active" mode will overwrite the clipboard with the "filtered" version
of the data, as soon as the clipboard is updated by any program.
Immediately after the data is copied, you'll hear the traditional
"pop" sound, followed by the "whoosh" sound of the filtering. Now the
clipboard contains plain text, and can be pasted immediately.

If you use the "passive" mode, the clipboard isn't overwritten until
you bring ClipMate to the foreground and then switch to another
program. So if you copy something and paste right away, you'll get all
of the formatting. But if you copy something, switch to ClipMate, and
THEN go to a program and paste, you'll get the text-only version.

Drawbacks: Filtering, particularly in the "active" mode, can disrupt
the ability to copy/paste files within Windows Explorer. That's
because Windows Explorer places file pointers and other fancy data
types onto the clipboard, and then ClipMate's filter overwrites it
with a plain-text list of the files. So then Windows can't paste.
Quite a few users have run into this when they've left the filtering
turned on, in "active" mode. The solution is to click the filtering
off, or switch to passive mode.

Conclusion: While it's not something that you would normally leave
turned on all the time, ClipMate Filtering ability can be a great
convenience when fancy data formatting gets in the way.

For more information regarding clip filtering:
  http://www.thornsoft.com/HTML_help/7/ui_exp_tb_filter.htm
  http://www.thornsoft.com/HTML_help/7/cfg_up_pasting.htm

Alert - FireFox Stops Copying
Several users have reported that all of a sudden, they couldn't copy
data from FireFox. And it didn't matter whether ClipMate was running
or not. They couldn't even copy simple text and paste into Notepad (a
basic test of clipboard functionality). ClipMate user Dave Hungerford, AKA
"WinSleuth", did some digging, and discovered that there is a
widespread, but largely undetected piece of malware known as
"AdWare.Win32.AdvertMen.a". It's been causing all sorts of trouble,
and there are several good articles and blogs on the subject. We've
listed some of the most useful ones here:
http://www.thornsoft.com/hwp/question.php?qstId=112

Translations
Most of the translation files from version 6 have been updated to work
with version 7, but are incomplete - they're missing the strings that
are new to v7. However, the Russian translation has been brought up to
date. German, Chinese, and Turkish are in the "partial" state, and
work has now started on Polish and Italian translations.
http://www.thornsoft.com/lang/index.htm


UPDATING
The current ClipMate 7 release is 7.0.07.  If you are a registered
  ClipMate7 user running a prior version of ClipMate7, you can
  update with this link: http://www.thornsoft.com/dist/ClipMate.exe
  Just install over the top of your existing ClipMate 7 installation.
The current ClipMate 6 release is v6.5.11.  If you'd like to
  upgrade to version 7, the upgrade price is $19.95 for a
  single-user license.  You can follow this link:
  http://www.thornsoft.com/ClipMate7_Upgrade_Offer.htm
  If you have multiple licenses, please write to sales at thornsoft.com for
  quotes customized quote.  Use "ClipMate Upgrade" in the subject.
The current version of Darn! Passwords! is v3.1.03. 

That's it for now! As always, please feel free to contact us with any
questions. If you would like to unsubscribe from this list, just let
us know.

Sincerely,
Chris Thornton, President
Thornsoft Development, Inc.
P.O. Box 164, Spencerport NY, 14559  USA
http://www.thornsoft.com

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