This is the first public release of Softfile 3 for Windows.

1. To edit a page, click the green button. The button will turn red and stay depressed. Click it again when you are finished editing the page.
   
   There are keyboard alternatives to the edit button: Edit > This Page and Edit > Done.
   
   You must edit a page in order to change the title or the rest of the text, or to create new links.
   
   The button will be gray when you cannot change the current page. You cannot change Web pages, local files, or protected Softfile pages.
   
   In order to edit a Web page or a local file, you can convert it to a Softfile page using the menu choice File > Save As Softfile Page.
   
   
2. To create a link, first display the page you wish to link to. Click the Target button.
   
   Then go to the page where you want to add the link. Click the green Edit button to edit the page. Select the words where the link should be. Click the Link button (to the right of the Target button). Finally, click the red Edit button again to finish editing the page.
   
   
3. To back up the database, back up the file soft.sdb. All the other files can be reconstructed from that file if necessary.
   
   
4. In this version of Softfile 3, the program and the database must be in the same folder. Also, the database name must be soft.sdb.
   
   
5. Forms and lists are not implemented.
   
   
6. Forms converted from Softfile 2 are displayed using the HTML "preformatted" tag, PRE. This should display as a fixed-spacing font.
   
   
7. The menu choice Page > Source shows the HTML code for the page (excluding the title and the BODY tags). It is displayed in a message box, which limits the amount of text that can be displayed. If you wish to see the full HTML code for a page, you can save the page to a disk file with the menu choice File > Save As.
   
   
8. You can highlight text. While editing a page, select some text and choose Format > Highlight. The text will be highlighted by setting its background color to yellow.
   
   
9. To set a reminder date, choose Page > Set Reminder Date from the menu. The list of reminders is created when you run the program remind.exe from outside of Softfile, or you can use the command File > Update Reminders. If you turn on your computer every day, you can put a shortcut to remind.exe in your Startup group. If you leave your computer on, you can use the Windows task scheduler to run it each day.
   
   
10. To create a table, choose Insert > Table from the menu. The initial cell content chooses whether to put a label (A1, B1, etc.) or a blank space (the HTML non-break space) in each cell. Either way, you will probably want to delete that content when you add your own information to the cell. (A table cannot be created properly without putting something in each cell.)
    
    To add or delete rows or columns in an existing table, choose Format > Table from the menu. If the page has more than one table, put the cursor in the table you wish to change before you use the command, so Softfile knows which table to change.
    
    
11. A Softfile page can be password-protected. With the page displayed, choose Page > Encrypt from the menu. You will be prompted to enter a password twice. The "password" can be a single word or several words.
    
    Once you have encrypted the page, you will be asked to enter the password each time you wish to view the page. If you enter the wrong password, the page will appear as seemingly random characters.
    
    The title of an encrypted page is not encrypted. Because the words of the title are indexed, you can do a word search to find the page. The title of the page will appear on the search results page. You only need the password to view the page itself.
    
    The words on an encrypted page are not indexed, so you cannot search for them.
    
    How secure is it? It is unlikely that anyone but a cryptographer would be able to read your encrypted page unless they knew (or could guess) the password. However, there are two ways in which the information on the page might remain on your hard disk, unencrypted, even after the page is encrypted.
    
    First, when you encrypt a page initially, the Softfile database will still contain the deleted, unencrypted text. Choose File > Compact Database to remove the deleted text from the database. Since the old database is saved as soft.bak when you compact the database, the unencrypted text is still there. Choose File > Compact Database again to get rid of the unencrypted text completely.
    
    Second, the word index may contain words from the encrypted page. Every word on a Softfile page is indexed. When you encrypt a page, the word index is updated to remove references to that page. However, the words themselves are not deleted from the word index. That could reveal information about the page if the words themselves are important. For example, if the page contains an account number or a personal identification number (PIN), that number will appear in the word index. To completely remove words that appeared on an encrypted page from the word index, use the menu command File > Rebuild Word Index.
    
    Note that these two ways in which your text might be discovered only apply to text that was entered before the page was encrypted. If you encrypt a blank page, then enter the text, the contents will be secure from the start.

1. Occasionally you may see this error message:

   Timed out waiting for page to be ready

   It may occur when Softfile attempts to display a page that loads very slowly.
   
   
2. If the Adobe Acrobat Reader is set to display PDF files in the browser window (which is an option in Acrobat Reader), this setting will apply to Softfile, too.
   
   When Softfile is displaying a PDF file, choosing File > Save As Softfile Page will create a Softfile page with the Acrobat Reader embedded in the page. However, if you attempt to edit this page, Acrobat Reader will crash, and Softfile may crash as well.
   
   We recommend that you set Acrobat Reader so it does not display PDF files in the browser window.
   
   To do this, double-click any PDF file on your local hard disk. Choose Edit > Preferences from the Acrobat Reader menu. Click Internet or Options from the left column. On the right, in the frame Web Browser Options, uncheck Display PDF in Browser. Click OK.
   
   
3. The command View > Marked Pages creates a page of links to the marked pages. If you delete a marked page, the page is removed from the list of marked pages, but the page of links is not updated until you choose View > Marked Pages again.
   
   For example, suppose you choose View > Marked Pages and click one of the links. Now delete that page, Page > Delete, and click the Back button to return to the list of marked pages. The deleted page is still on the list, because the list was created before you deleted the page. However, if you choose View > Marked Pages again, the deleted page is no longer on the list.