I have spoken at length about the potential of Celtx, a free open-source screenwriting application built on the Firefox browser framework. In the past, I have tried to convey the sense of a great open-source application in the early stages of blossoming. I spoke a lot about promise and potential. But many projects, softwares, companies inspire similar feelings in writers that never deliver or live up to all the hype, however, there are others that do. Till 0.9.4, I was not sure whether Celtx would deliver.

With each update, the user interface seemed to get even more awkward. The company goal of creating a complete writing tool by 1.0 seemed like an unrealistic goal. But like a teen that matures into adulthood so suddenly, Celtx recent 0.9.5 update was so severe a jump from the previous version that it was hard for me to see one deriving from the other.

In most writing applications whether it be for novels or screenplays, there are lot of tools besides the writing tool that are meant to assist you with the process. These tools can also become crutches or, even worse, distractions for writers. In the new version, Celtx has added these very tools but these additions are unavoidable. Nowadays, it is expected that every writing application contain such features. Besides the writing tool, which has worked well since I first found the application, there have also existed tools to edit your title page, do web research and a Reports tool that aids in film production. In 0.9.5, four new tools were added, each in various stages of development and reliability.

The ScratchPad tool is place to store deleted or new scenes that need a home. It is like having an alternate disorganized script alongside your main organized one. Simply drag & drop chunks of your script into the Scratchpad window to access it at a later time. Though I loved this new feature, I found it to be somewhat buggy as it crashed when I dragged and dropped a large chunk of text. I hope that in the near future, a folder structure will be added to this tool so it could be easier to organize and find chunks of script or even random notes. I would guess that this is being developed already.

The most interesting of the new features is Schedule, which I sometimes might refer to as calendar in this article. When I clicked on this option, I was surprised to see such a developed tool. "This cannot just be developed overnight" or something like that ran through my head. I had a feeling that Celtx had piggy-backed on another Firefox technology. And in an email correspondence with Mark Kennedy, Co-Founder and CEO of Celtx, he confirmed my guess. I was elated!! Celtx had begun using the various Firefox/ Mozilla resources to their advantage. For those unfamiliar with Firefox or Mozilla, let me go back in time, just a little.

Just over a year ago, the non-profit (at that time) organization, Mozilla released Firefox, a browser that was meant to challenge Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) in the browser market. Firefox quickly gained a huge following (more than 10% in a less than a year) partially because it was better in security than IE but also because they were shitload of extensions and themes being developed by a community of open-sourced developers. These developers were quickly able to develop technologies in a years time that a company like Microsoft would achieve in a half-decade.

Celtx works off the Firefox framework, in a sense any Firefox extension or theme could be ported over to Celtx. Now the Schedule/ Calendar is one such extension, it is based on Mozilla's Sunbird (v0.2), an open-sourced calendar.

The new Schedule feature works quite well in Celtx, various calendars are available within each document. So if you were a Screenwriter working on more than screenplay, you could check your various project schedules in your current document instead of having to open all of your documents. There is also a mock production schedule of Wizard of Oz to get an idea of how it works. I would venture to guess that filmmakers will more often find themselves opening Celtx for the Schedule tool instead of the writing tool (as we do more schmoozing than writing).

I asked Mark Kennedy if any other Firefox extension will be ported over soon, specifically my most useful Firefox extension–Scrapbook? "We [want to] to finish implementing the Document Tabs feature, as this will allow us to add things like Scrapbook without disturbing the other aspects of Celtx. So, stay tuned…" Nice!

Scene Details, another new tool, helps you add notes to each scene. In little windows, you answer various questions about the scene.The Characters tool work the same way as Scene details, except you are adding details to characters instead of scenes.The default questions are helpful but the tools need more configuration options.

It seems Celtx will address this very issue in future releases. In discussing his future plans for Celtx, Kennedy says "most users have yet to appreciate the power we’ve introduced with our Form Tabs (the Character and Scene Details Tabs). Instead of just doing a brain dead dump of a HTML form in the application we decided to implement a template system. This [will] allow users to modify the forms to their own specific taste. The forms could be modified to include any dynamic content - like linking to other sites to provide RSS updates etc."

"The amazing thing though about this Forms feature is that if the data fields in the form are modified by a user, then the Celtx database will automatically reconfigure itself to accommodate any changes. In other words, users can create their own forms and their own database. This is only possible because of the nature of the database we are using – which, although 3 years old to us, is still leading edge stuff (RDF)."

Another thing that he said that was quite exciting was on collaboration: "We want to make it easier for people to collaborate with each other. We plan on achieving this by making the server side collaboration a dynamic process as opposed to the post and retrieve method currently offered. We’ll also open up an IM (Instant Messaging) like capability soon to foster 'in the application communications.' ”

That's right. Soon Celtx will feature some sort of IM so it would be even easier to collaborate. I cannot emphasize how useful this would be. Recently, while collaborating on a script with a fellow writer, IM became the tool of choice though we had to forgo script formatting. In future versions of Celtx, I would not have to make that sacrifice.

I liked what Kennedy says here about the goal of Celtx: "Our vision is to create a new platform for the independent film making industry - one that is based on open standards, comes in multiple languages, allows for collaboration and is Internet friendly. It made no sense to us when we saw people using one piece of software to generate a story idea, another to write a script, a third to do a breakdown, a fourth to make some storyboards, a fifth to do a schedule and a sixth to do a budget etc. etc. Crazy. Celtx will, at long last, provide filmmakers and others in the content creation business with the ability to use one system using one set of common standards to do their work."

With version 0.9.5, it is clear that the basic User Interface has also been established. Unlike before, where it looked like an incomplete puzzle, the new version seems to be using all areas of the screen wisely. The script outline window transfers nicely when you switch to the other tools. The tabbed windows can now be closed them unlike older versions (?!).

Overall, this feels like an incredible application. There should be no reason why you need to be paying hundreds of dollars for any other screenwriting application. Well, unless you need those robot voices to read your script aloud!!