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Developer
Open Contacts is flexible, customizable and extendable. You don't have to be
a programmer to extend Open Contacts for your own needs.
For advanced users
Here's a summary about what could be customized in Open Contacts without
programming effort.
- Layouts. The
location and sizes of key windows like Categories, Initials and Edit etc
could be changed and saved into layout profiles. By default, current layout
will be saved when exiting the program.
- Colors. Colors of key components of Windows could be modified through
the colors
settings in the Options window.
- Predefined Fields.
They are shortcuts of speedy inputs of field names in the drop-down list,
and could be associated with Type and Action. Thus predefined fields have
schema/meanings independent of the wording of field names.
- Predefined Sections. This
feature provides pseudo fixed fields grouped. In addition, you could define
which predefined sections could be added automatically when adding a new
person or new company.
- Categories.
- Custom print.
Print contacts with specified fields. And with exported CSV files, you may
use 3rd party programs to print labels of different layouts.
- Network mode. With some simple
steps, you may make address book database shareable in Local Area Network.
- Green mode. Run Open Contacts in a
portable drive.
- Many options for your choices. Go to the Options window and find out
which options could better serve you. Most settings in the Options window
are stored inside the address book database.
- Mail Merge. Open Contacts can
provide data source in the form of CSV to other programs like MS Word which
support mail merge operations. In addition, if you have multiple contacts
sharing the same postal address, you may use
advanced management of postal
addresses.
- Publish contacts as
hCard.
- Publish relationships
to XFN (XHTML Friends Network).
For software developers
Being a desktop program, Open Contacts interacts well with other programs
including Web programs. Understanding the big picture
may help you to further explore the potentials of the program.
Open Contacts has a few types of interfaces for software developers to extend
the program, and integrate the program with other applications.