Coding for the CanalPlan Route -> Blog Entries functionality is well under way and I’m hoping to get it all in place before Nick formally announces the Beta of CanalPlan AC V9.0.

There will be a couple more tabs on the CanalPlan Options menu – one to allow you to change some basic configuration items (boat name etc) and one to manage the import and processing of CanalPlan Routes.

One of the big things you’ll be able to do is “refresh” the route from CanalPlan. So if you’ve planned a route and loaded it into the Blogs but then go and change the route on CanalPlan then you can refresh the data in the blogs.

I’m going to write up some notes about my ideas and publish them in the forums

At the beer festival last weekend when we were discussing how the blogs should handle routes Nick suggested that it would good if the CanalPlan Location insertion button gave you a drop down list of the places on the route for the day you are blogging about. This is a great idea and WILL be implemented.

However thats all well and good if you are writing up entries that are part of a blogged trip. What if you are just writing up an unplanned trip, or a short trip that you haven’t run through CanalPlan?

That is where the Favourites come in. You will be able to maintain a list of “Favourite” Places – this will, by default, include your nominated “home” mooring and you will be able to add other common locations (moorings for pubs etc) that you regularly refer too. You will also have the ability to change the descriptive text for the link (so you don’t have to edit it each time you insert a link).

Work on this functionality is well underway and should be in place within the next couple of weeks.