topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Monday March 18, 2024, 11:52 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Author Topic: Compendium Goes Beta (list of changes)  (Read 3919 times)

Paul Keith

  • Member
  • Joined in 2008
  • **
  • Posts: 1,989
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Compendium Goes Beta (list of changes)
« on: June 17, 2010, 05:38 AM »
To be honest, I don't really know where to post this since it isn't exactly news so I'm posting it here as a sort of "Now you can slightly get more organized" using Compendium if you haven't switched to this new version yet.

This is the release notes btw and you may prefer heading straight for this as I'm omitting some things I didn't test like Movie Maps (think Movie annotations except offline and layered inside Compendium itself) - http://compendium.op...-notes-2.0-beta1.htm

*Links are now easier to modify - Used to be you have to right click on a line after selecting it. Now there's a toolbar that allows you to modify several settings at once.

Cons: As far as I know the curved link is the default and there's no setting to change this. (Used to be compendium's line is straight only. Now it added 4 new settings - short dash, long dash, curved, squared)

*Linked Files browser - Used to be when you drag a file into Compendium and leave it, you don't really have an overview of every file you put in and therefore may have no idea how to mass-remove some leftover files.

Cons: From what I can see, it's still just a list node that auto-detects the location of all the linked files and the number of times it has been read.

*Pre-Set Templates

Cons: The templates are extensive but unless you understand what the purpose of those templates are, you won't be getting any of it just from browsing the title of the templates.

*Button based location bar - This is totally new in Compendium.

Cons: It's not exactly a tab bar but in a way a tab bar would be too intrusive and the way this is set up would be great...if it functioned like a tab bar.

Instead this allows you to quickly switch back and spot what sub-map your nodes are located. I appreciate the change because Compendium used to have a problem with switching back from the previous location and switching back from the previous window. Still...I think an up button would have just as been good for that purpose if it means the location bar functioned like a tab bar.

*Cleaner more visual lay-out - For the most part, it's the same default look but many options have been simplified and additional cues have been added like when you select a node, there are 4 arrows indicating that it can be moved in any direction

Cons: For the most part, the look isn't to my taste but it's more of a personal issue. I really don't like seeing 4 arrows when selecting a node. Dropdown arrows are kind of annoying in that most of them only try to hide 2 additional menus. I can't spot the icon set change and it might have been removed.

Conclusion: For the most part it's not a necessary upgrade since there are still bugs. On the other hand, it may be worth it to test ride the new Compendium just because it might be more stable now although I didn't really test how good it is at importing and exporting and I don't really know HTML to test those features.


Paul Keith

  • Member
  • Joined in 2008
  • **
  • Posts: 1,989
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: Compendium Goes Beta (list of changes)
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2010, 04:07 PM »
Ok, after prolonged use, I can definitely not recommend the beta.

It's not so much one feature or not but the feel of the original Compendium is gone. I think text previewing is also slower.

Generally the current state feels more like a hacked version of the Alpha and while it may not bother new and general users, the snappiness of Compendium despite the Java requirement was it's strongest suit. Now I'm further confused with how to properly position the mouse arrow on the nodes for example and the arrows in general... it all just feels like a diagram program instead of an Argument Mapper now.