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General brainstorming for Note-taking software
actitrend:
Vadim, I can see you have a lot of creativity and good ideas. Tao Notes shows a lot of promise. But I fear you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater in your app's UI design. We're all used to certain conventions in the UI of an application. It's OK to break those expectations once in a while, if there's a definite benefit. But Tao Notes breaks so many of them, and in such unexpected ways, that it becomes inscrutable. Yes, it's faster to mouse over a part of the screen to close a window rather than clicking a small X box or a button, but it's also easier to do this accidentally and interrupt your workflow. And the first few times it happens, the user gets hit with a "what just happened?" experience where it looks like the data they were working on just vanished.
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Haha! I know exactly what you're talking about. That one little strip on the side of the dialog where if the mouse hovers over, the dialog automatically closes. That's exactly the reaction I had the first couple of times. I'm like "what the heck did I just do?!" Too funny.
-superboyac (June 13, 2006, 04:33 PM)
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Actually there is option to turn this mouse gesture off.... but because it is not documented... it's really hard to figure out how to use it :O) Tools->Options->General->Use Mouse Gesture On Item Saving
Vadim
actitrend:
> If you don't have the time to really document the app, perhaps you could just be a little more judicious in your default settings. Turn off as much of the "gee-whiz" as possible by default. Let your users get used to the basic features. Then, IF THEY WANT TO, they can track down and enable the more "out-there" kind of stuff.
I already release new update 3.18....So, I've added options to disable what you do not like..... see Tools->Options->Notifications->... and see Tools->Options->General->Use Mouse Gesture On Item Saving....
Now I have some spare time and I will use it to write the proper manual.... ;)
> BTW - I still can't quite figure out how or why you'd "execute" an item. :-[
May be it's not obvious but you can store your URL bookmarks here and effectively use them.... Set Link type for those items and they are ready to be used as bookmarks for quick launching..... Just select the items you want to browse in outline or in the Navigator (they are grouped by context there).... and press F9 to launch them....
>And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add an option to disable those balloon tips! :D
Already done! :O)
Vadim
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-Jimdoria (June 13, 2006, 04:10 PM)
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aignes:
If you want, you can open different notes in their own tabs. And when you have a bunch of tabs open, you can save that configuration as a "group". I don't know how useful this is but it's kind of cool. However, even though it has this tabbed feature, it's not like you can open different databases up at once. In fact, AM can only have one database open at once.-superboyac (June 13, 2006, 04:33 PM)
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superboyac, you're right, you can only open one database at once (what means you display the note list in a specific directory location), but you can open notes from different databases in different tabs at the same time, also via the mentioned Group functionality.
We use this feature a lot when opening related notes from the local database and the network database, they can all be opened via the Group functionality with a single operation.
In AM, you can encrypt the whole note. The only problem is that once it's unlocked and you go to another note and you come back, it's locked again.
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If you want to keep it opened, you can open it in a separate tab. But for security reasons, it is locked as soon as you minimize AM-Notebook.
There's a clip/templates feature on the program that I have no idea what it does and I couldn't find any documentation for it. But I'm curious...
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Found this in the help file:
"The clip collection allows you to store common blocks of text and templates for quick repeated reuse. You can create clips manually with the New button, or you can save the selected text of a note as new clip.
To insert the contents of a clip into the note you are editing, simply double-click it or drag&drop it onto the spot where you want to insert it.
Clips can be renamed via the context menu and moved to other folders by drag&drop. To move a clip to a parent folder, simply drag it to the "folder-up" button in the toolbar."
superboyac:
Ah! aignes is the author of AM himself! Welcome!
Thanks for the clarifications. It's a nice software you have made there. No wonder; you are also the author of Website-Watcher, which tops one of DC's official reviews.
As far as the note encryption, Evernote also does it that way where anytime you leave the note, the note becomes locked again. I feel there should be an option to turn that on/off because some users might want the encryption to remain off for the remainder of the session. Mybase does it this way.
I still can't figure out how to open multiple databases even when using groups and tabs.
I forgot to mention another unique feature about AM that I liked:
--You can save custom "styles" for text. Style means you can set the font, the font size, italics/bold, and save it so that you can select a text and just apply the style to it. This is similar to the standard html styles (normal, heading 1, etc.) except it's more flexible because you can set it to be whatever you like. Very nice, indeed.
aignes:
Ah! aignes is the author of AM himself! Welcome!
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thanks. Oh, I didn't mention that I'm the author :P
I still can't figure out how to open multiple databases even when using groups and tabs.
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1) Open database #1
2) Open a note from database #1 in a new tab
3) Open database #2
4) Open a note from database #2 in a new tab
Then you have notes from different databases opened.
5) Save opened tabs as group
Opening this group will re-open these tabs/notes from database #1 and #2
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