CintaNotes Forum

Oct 13, 2014 - Version 2.8 Beta3

In this version:
(in green - changes since 2.8 Beta 2)

Features:

• Forward and backward filter navigation on the search bar
  
  
  • Use absolute history instead of relative
    
  • Unify back and forward menus into one
    
  • Add View/View History command (Alt+BkSp)
    
  • Don't store empty states in history
    
  • Make history menu available even when one can't go back or forward
    
  
  
• Filter history on right click on back and forward buttons
  
• Add option Tags/Autodeleted by default

Enhancements:

• Tag sidebar: tags font is now configurable with "app.mainframe.tagsidebar.font" settings file option
  
• Improved notebook loading and switching performance
  
• Improved section switching performance
  
• Improved notes list scrolling performance
  
• Improved tag renaming, splitting and merging performance
  
• Improved import performance
  
• Don't reset filter to keep just edited note visible by default (will affect new installations only)

Fixes:

• Editor: fixed outstanding stateful text formatting issues
  
• Tag sidebar: scrolling should stop when mouse button is released
  
• Editor: "Insert Link" command is disabled when selected text is wrapped
  
• Editor: vertical tabs are treated as paragraph separators
  
• Editor: inconsistent behavior of some text formatting shortcuts
  
• Fix possible crash on import
  
• Notebook file name in app title turns to lower case
  
• Tab scrolling sometimes can freeze
  
• Simplenote sync: catch potentially unhandled exception
  
• Simplenote sync: some notes didn't get downloaded by CN
  
• Simplenote sync: fix parse error
  
• Simplenote sync: fix text formats crash
  
• Simplenote sync: fix recycle bin uploading error
  
• Fix sporadic tag deletion
  
• Fix tag count display error

Download:
Installable: CintaNotes_2_8_Beta3_Setup.exe
Portable: CintaNotes_2_8_Beta3.zip

WARNING! BETA SOFTWARE! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK AND ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATA!

Hi Alex,

i have started my tests with some results i'd like to share. Expect my post in the next 1-2 hours.

Thomas

* Don't reset filter to keep just edited note visible by default (will affect new installations only)

Can you tell which setting controls this behaviour? Thanks.

Thomas

* Fix sporadic tag deletion
* Fix tag count display error

I did not run any tests to verify the changes. I'll trust your implementation.

Thomas

Alex,

thank you for the latest beta 3 release. In general the changes are a move to the better. Having one unified menu with absolute items was the correct design decision. After doing some tests i noticed some minor effects, that did bother me. Some of the issues are affected mainly by my testing procedure. In real life it proably does not affect usability. For example you can not use Ctrl+F or Ctrl+Shift+Space, when the history menu is shown.

Remarks:

• Make history menu available even when one can't go back or forward
  First time i right clicked on one of the disabled history icons i thought this is a bug. I understand there is nowhere to navigate to, when you're on top of the list already. On the other hand it is strange to have disabled icons, which can still be used to start some action.
• The shortcut Alt+Backspace takes the ability to undo. Ctrl+Z can not be used as a replacement, since it only functions within a single word.
• Compared to our discussion section names are always shown in the history. With your last proposal you said, that this will happen for multiple sections only. It will not be done for the active section though. What is the background to this change?
• After a switch from 'all' to a specific section the search text is used, which is by design. However it also appears in the history of that section right away. To me this was unexpected.

Bugs (?):

• Empty states still get inserted to the list. This affects both 'all' and single sections. I can reproduce by pressing Ctrl+F.
• I did search for 'javascript' and waited up to 4 seconds, before extending the search to 'javascript blogs'. After pressing ENTER to search tags, i noticed this will result in one item "javascript blogs" only, rather than having two separate "javascript" and "javascripts blogs" items. This happens even after switching between various searches. What is even more confusing, in case you have a typo, which you immediately correct, it will result in two history items. Definitely not what i expected.
• After switching back from one section to 'all', the items of the 'all' history were gone and instead replaced by the items of the last section. Doesn't 'all' have its own history?

Thomas

I'm having problems syncing
I've just installed this version.
When I press sync now it says
downloading new notes 1 of 56, to 56 of 56
and then
downloading updates 56 of 56
it does this every time I press sync now

Nod

Thomas Lohrum wrote:* Fix sporadic tag deletion
* Fix tag count display error

I did not run any tests to verify the changes. I'll trust your implementation.

Thomas

I'm on 2.8b3 also. I'll keep an eye out for tag issues, since they weren't easily reproduciblle.

Gunars

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Can you tell which setting controls this behaviour? Thanks.

It's filters.autoreset.keepeditednotevisible. In version 2.7.2. the default value was 1, after 2.8
it is 0.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:I did not run any tests to verify the changes. I'll trust your implementation.

Probably there are no tests to verify this (yet), since we didn't find a way to reproduce the issue. But I guess just keeping eye on the tags and tag counts should be sufficient.

Thomas, thanks for your comments!

Thomas Lohrum wrote:In general the changes are a move to the better. Having one unified menu with absolute items was the correct design decision.

Good to hear!

Thomas Lohrum wrote:After doing some tests i noticed some minor effects, that did bother me. Some of the issues are affected mainly by my testing procedure. In real life it proably does not affect usability. For example you can not use Ctrl+F or Ctrl+Shift+Space, when the history menu is shown.

That's Windows, not me. The same happens when you press Shift+F10 to display notes list context menu.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]Make history menu available even when one can't go back or forward
First time i right clicked on one of the disabled history icons i thought this is a bug. I understand there is nowhere to navigate to, when you're on top of the list already. On the other hand it is strange to have disabled icons, which can still be used to start some action.

I think the visual feedback of disabled buttons outweighs the surprise factor here. The left click is still not available, so the item is greyed out correctly. However one always can access the history menu, without having to aim for the enabled arrow, and this is IMO good UI.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]The shortcut Alt+Backspace takes the ability to undo. Ctrl+Z can not be used as a replacement, since it only functions within a single word.

But CN doesn't have Undo yet. Or do you mean undo in the search edit box?
Which other shortcut would you suggest?

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]Compared to our discussion section names are always shown in the history. With your last proposal you said, that this will happen for multiple sections only. It will not be done for the active section though. What is the background to this change?

I thought that always displaying the context is not a bad thing after all. The current model with independent sections is clearly too complex, especially given the ability to select multiple sections.

Actually like I said in the Beta 2 topic for CN 3.0 I want to completely get away with separate view state and hence history for each section. This will require substantial UI change: sections will need to go under the toolbar (or to the bottom), above the toolbar the notebook tabs will appear. This is too big a change for 2.8 or 2.9, so now we'll just have to make the best of what we have now.

Would be grateful for any comments on this idea!.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]After a switch from 'all' to a specific section the search text is used, which is by design. However it also appears in the history of that section right away. To me this was unexpected.[/list]

I think you misunderstand the current history menu. It displays:
- The forward states;
- The current state;
- The past states.

So what is displayed in bold is not history, it is current state.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]Empty states still get inserted to the list. This affects both 'all' and single sections. I can reproduce by pressing Ctrl+F.

Once again, most probably you're referring to the current state (bold). It does not get recorded into the "back" states.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]I did search for 'javascript' and waited up to 4 seconds, before extending the search to 'javascript blogs'. After pressing ENTER to search tags, i noticed this will result in one item "javascript blogs" only, rather than having two separate "javascript" and "javascripts blogs" items. This happens even after switching between various searches. What is even more confusing, in case you have a typo, which you immediately correct, it will result in two history items. Definitely not what i expected.

I agree this is unfortunate. But I see no way how to correct this, because CN has no way of knowing which is the correct moment to record the state into history. The focus lost and timeout approaches are not reliable. So CN takes this decision based only on filters themselves.
It would be much easier if CN didn't have as-you-type search and had a "Search!" button instead.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]After switching back from one section to 'all', the items of the 'all' history were gone and instead replaced by the items of the last section. Doesn't 'all' have its own history?[/list]

No. There's no single "All" section, "All" is not a section (I wonder how many more times I'll have to repeat this )
Say after All you switched to section "S". When you had all sections selected, a different section was first-selected, not "S". Let's call it "A". So what you think was "All", in fact was "A+all other sections". The history displayed belonged to A. When you switched to "S", the history changed to the history of section "S".

See, too complicated. So the changes for CN 3.0 which I describe above are a good idea Don't you think? Please share you thoughts, everyone.

Noddy330 wrote:I'm having problems syncing
I've just installed this version.
When I press sync now it says
downloading new notes 1 of 56, to 56 of 56
and then
downloading updates 56 of 56
it does this every time I press sync now

Nod

Thanks Nod, I confirm, already investigating this.

gunars wrote:I'm on 2.8b3 also. I'll keep an eye out for tag issues, since they weren't easily reproduciblle.

Thanks Gunars. Please let us know if you notice anything out of the ordinary.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Noddy330 wrote:I'm having problems syncing
I've just installed this version.
When I press sync now it says
downloading new notes 1 of 56, to 56 of 56
and then
downloading updates 56 of 56
it does this every time I press sync now

Nod

Thanks Nod, I confirm, already investigating this.

OK - thanks.
Sorry, should have said I have log file I can supply.
Nod

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]The shortcut Alt+Backspace takes the ability to undo. Ctrl+Z can not be used as a replacement, since it only functions within a single word.

But CN doesn't have Undo yet. Or do you mean undo in the search edit box? Which other shortcut would you suggest?

Yes, i mean the search edit box. How about Alt+Shift+Left / Alt+Shift+Right. This would correlate to the navigation keys.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Actually like I said in the Beta 2 topic for CN 3.0 I want to completely get away with separate view state and hence history for each section. This will require substantial UI change: sections will need to go under the toolbar (or to the bottom), above the toolbar the notebook tabs will appear. This is too big a change for 2.8 or 2.9, so now we'll just have to make the best of what we have now.Would be grateful for any comments on this idea!.

I think that having both notebook and section tabs together on top will give best usability, since it requires the least mouse movements. Sure, having them separated visually might make the difference of both of them clearer. But i vote for usability. Maybe the presentation can help distinguish them. For example using different colors/themes.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]After a switch from 'all' to a specific section the search text is used, which is by design. However it also appears in the history of that section right away. To me this was unexpected.[/list]

I think you misunderstand the current history menu. It displays:
- The forward states;
- The current state;
- The past states.
So what is displayed in bold is not history, it is current state.

Ok, thanks. I got it. Imo the whole issue reflects that the implementation is rather difficult to understand (at least to me).

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]Empty states still get inserted to the list. This affects both 'all' and single sections. I can reproduce by pressing Ctrl+F.

Once again, most probably you're referring to the current state (bold). It does not get recorded into the "back" states.

Ok, this is also caused by the current state. The problem is, that this current state of 'empty' is meaningless (besides being a technical requirement). As a user i am not interested in storing empty states, regardless on what caused their creation. Even if it might be ok to show them as curent state (in bold), it is a fact that they get stored in history. I could show you a screenshot, but as soon as i press Alt+key Windows hides the popup menu. I can make a screenshot with my camera though, if you like.

Thomas

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]I did search for 'javascript' and waited up to 4 seconds, before extending the search to 'javascript blogs'. After pressing ENTER to search tags, i noticed this will result in one item "javascript blogs" only, rather than having two separate "javascript" and "javascripts blogs" items. This happens even after switching between various searches. What is even more confusing, in case you have a typo, which you immediately correct, it will result in two history items. Definitely not what i expected.

I agree this is unfortunate. But I see no way how to correct this, because CN has no way of knowing which is the correct moment to record the state into history. The focus lost and timeout approaches are not reliable. So CN takes this decision based only on filters themselves. It would be much easier if CN didn't have as-you-type search and had a "Search!" button instead.

Yes i understand the difficulties you have in implementing this. This 'little' feature is causing rather high effort to get it right.

An easier and more predictable way of doing this could be:

Save history,

• when the notes list gets the focus (matching note(s) found)
• when a new search starts (saves items, in case the notes list does not get focused)
• when search gets reset (Ctrl+F) (stop searching, start new search)
• when the user clicks [X] in the search edit box (stop searching, start new search)

This detection focuses on creating history when a search starts or ends. The problem is, it does not catch a search, that gets modified, because it did not find the note(s), the user was searching for. One could argue, they are meaningless anyway, since they did not give a result. On the other hand often before i create a new note, i do search for similar notes. In these cases i use the search words to be stored as tags or as part of the remarks.

Maybe a solution to the latter could be to store items only, when the search text changes in whole words. For example when "javascript generators ec6" changes to "javascript generators ecmascript 6".

Thomas

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Thomas Lohrum wrote:[*]After switching back from one section to 'all', the items of the 'all' history were gone and instead replaced by the items of the last section. Doesn't 'all' have its own history?[/list]

No. There's no single "All" section, "All" is not a section (I wonder how many more times I'll have to repeat this ) Say after All you switched to section "S". When you had all sections selected, a different section was first-selected, not "S". Let's call it "A". So what you think was "All", in fact was "A+all other sections". The history displayed belonged to A. When you switched to "S", the history changed to the history of section "S".

Thanks again. I am aware of your statement, that 'all' is not a section on its own. However, from our last discussions my understanding was, that in regards to the history, it would create a state on its own. In most of my use cases i have selected 'all'. It is not self-explaining, that 'all' is based on the last active section, whatever that section was. Especially the user will be presented a completely different history when he enters 'all' depending on his last active section.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:See, too complicated. So the changes for CN 3.0 which I describe above are a good idea Don't you think? Please share you thoughts, everyone.

Yes, that is way too complicated. Especially having a history for each section. I think having just one global history is enough.

Thanks for staying open minded!

Thomas

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Actually like I said in the Beta 2 topic for CN 3.0 I want to completely get away with separate view state and hence history for each section. This will require substantial UI change: sections will need to go under the toolbar (or to the bottom), above the toolbar the notebook tabs will appear. This is too big a change for 2.8 or 2.9, so now we'll just have to make the best of what we have now.

Would be grateful for any comments on this idea!.

What exactly do you mean by 'view state'? I don't make a great deal of use of sections, but when I do, I do appreciate being able to set the sorting order different to the other sections in the notebook. If this were to be removed, I would have to I guess make even more notebooks - which would be painful, at least until the roadmap idea of adding notebooks on the main CN interface (like the section headings now) is implemented (my main irritation with CN is the time it takes to constantly switch between my different notebooks - I have multiple because once you reach a certain number of notes, a single notebook becomes too unworkable).

CintaNotes Developer wrote:See, too complicated. So the changes for CN 3.0 which I describe above are a good idea Don't you think? Please share you thoughts, everyone.

While customisability and flexibility sound good in theory, in practice, there is a considerable downside: a decrease in usability. Having some experience with this with the media play I do volunteer support for, I think CN has hit this point with respect to what has been described. So, yes - simplify it.

Can't offer any feedback on Beta 3 as yet - now that I have returned to 2.7.2, I am still not sure enough that the separate tagging problem I reported with Beta 2 has been fixed (where the tags vanish, and are replaced by that up pointing arrow).

Chris

Noddy330 wrote:OK - thanks.
Sorry, should have said I have log file I can supply.
Nod

Nod, could you please try the attached version - the problem with SN should be fixed (will update notes just once). Thanks!

Thomas, Chris - thanks for your comments, will reply a bit later!

I bit the bullet and tried Beta 3 - problem with the vanishing tags is still not fixed sadly. I know it is to do with CN saving (or trying to) the relative position in the tag sidebar for each notebook (and that relative positioning is screwing up at times), but still can't reliably reproduce (just flicking between my notebooks one after the other will eventually produce it, but that isn't really of any help to you).

Chris

usbpoweredfridge wrote:I bit the bullet and tried Beta 3 - problem with the vanishing tags is still not fixed sadly. I know it is to do with CN saving (or trying to) the relative position in the tag sidebar for each notebook (and that relative positioning is screwing up at times), but still can't reliably reproduce (just flicking between my notebooks one after the other will eventually produce it, but that isn't really of any help to you). Chris

Chris,

from what i see on your screeshot the icon is the scroll button of the tag sidebar (one at the top and one at the bottom). Can you tell please, whether your tag list does overflow. In other words do you usually need to scroll, because your tag list is very large? Or do all your tags fit in the visual area?

Thomas