Foul Writer’s World

News from this week.

• Microsoft removes IE 8 from Windows 7 shipping in EU.
• EU still hungry for Microsoft cash and decide to go to court anyway
• The end of Twitter and the world was avoided this week, when twitpocalypse came to nothing except if your a Apple user.
• Live Search rebranded as Bing.com to take on Google
• Hopes of many are dashed in Iranian elections and cause widspread discontent
• MadCap release Flare v5. I’ll be doing a review of the changes once I’ve spent more time with it
• FIA / FOTA war of 2009 is intensifying as the FIA continually push car manufacturers further and further away from Formula 1 (The FIA should just get rid of Mad Max Mosley, it would solve so many problems)
• Is Twitter’s dominance at microblogging is under threat from Google?

I received a mysterious email yesterday that simply presented a  nice logo formed around the mysterious entry:

DITA 10-29-08

All well and good but very little else was forth coming.

I was tempted to write something about this but I found something even better over at monkeyPi regarding the very same email.

So here it is a delicious cookie recipe :

White chocolate macadamia nut cookies
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 ounces (1 1/2 cups) white chocolate baking squares, cut into small chunks, or white baking chips
3/4 cup roughly chopped, unsalted, toasted macadamia nuts

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl.

Beat the butter in a large mixing bowl until fluffy. Add the brown sugar and mix together until smooth.

Add the egg and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture in 3 stages and stir in the white chocolate and the nuts.

Scoop out walnut-sized mounds of the cookie dough and place on a cookie sheet, leaving 2-inches between the mounds. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cookies are golden.

Madcap have officially launched Flare 4.  However, they have also launched new releases of Blaze, X-Edit and Analyzer.

And if that wasn’t enough, there is also a new and improved Madcap Software website.

Following my Flare release iminent? post a few weeks ago. Tom has announced he is running a competition (for MadCap) to give away a copy of Flare 4 to one lucky winner. To enter the competition just leave a comment in the following post Flare 4 Giveway — Enter to Win a Free Copy by Commenting on This Post

You need to…

In the comments below the post, explain what you feel is an important feature for a help authoring tool and why. Your answer can be short (one sentence), or you can write a novella.

In addition, Paul Pehrson has written a blog post about some of the new and improved features in Flare 4. Take some time to read his post, it includes some great comments and good insight in to what will be available:

• MadCap Flare 4 Preview (aka Ten Things to Love about Flare 4)

I have heard rumours that Flare v4 is nearing release within the next couple of months. Does anyone else know about a possible release timeline for the new version?

I know I have the following wish list that I hope is fulfilled in the latest release:

• Simplified CSS designer
• Snippets implementation improved
• Easier control of text indentations
• Variable use simplified
• Improved responsiveness of application