Journler includes native support for all kinds of media. Once you've added a file or other media to an entry, click on it to bring up its media viewer. View pictures in their full glory, play movies and listen to music, surf the web or browse through a pdf document. Even look at Address Book contacts and Mail messages, all without ever leaving your journal. Journler's media viewers are distinct entities, designed specifically for the kind of media they display. The PDF viewer is excellent at handling PDF documents, while the built-in web viewer is adept at viewing web sites and web archives.

The Customizable Mediabar

At the top of each media viewer you wil find the customizable media bar. The media bar is like a miniature toolbar that belongs to the media viewer. The default installation includes buttons for getting information about the resource, opening the resource in the Finder or launching it with its default application. You may customize the media bar individually for each type of media Journler supports, adding your own actions using 3rd party applications or AppleScrpt.

Begin a customizaton by right-clicking on the mediabar. From the context menu select Add Custom Item. The Custom Mediabar Item dialog that begins is a simple enough affair, although to take full advantage of its power you will want to be familiar with AppleScript. Specify a title and tooltip, replace the default icon and set the script that will be called when your mediabar item is pressed. Alternatively, you may specify an application with which to open the file-based resource. When you're finished save your changes. Journler adds the mediabar item to the mediabar for this particular file type.

A few important notes. The title is not currently used for your custom mediabar item, so be sure to include a helpful tooltip. Additionally, the code which passes the selected resource to the AppleScript handler is not working properly. Instead of using the variables provided, call the AppleScript command get selected resources on the Journler application.

Opening Journler Media in 3rd Party Applications

If you do not want to use Journler to view the files and links you add to your entries, that's no problem. In media preferences set Journler to view media in an external editor or open all media in a new window. You can do the same on the fly. Hold down the option and command keys when clicking a media link and Journler will open it in a new window. Hold down the command key alone and Journler will launch the default application for that media's type. Read more about keyboard modifiers.

For more information on file and media management, refer to resources.