DonationCoder.com Software > Cheat Sheeter

New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter

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mouser:
i think we are on same wavelength.

the details of how to organize cheat sheets is going to be a little more complicated than your dir structure, but essentially the concept is the same.
the program will autodiscover cheat sheets based on finding them in its Sheets directory; there will be no need to do a separate install/uninstall procedure.

i also thought that the idea of being able to quickly add personal notes would be useful, and i will add that; just have to figure out the best way to show that information.

let me explain why a menu would be better than a drop down.

not only can menus scroll if there are too many, but menus can be nested.

so let me give you an example of what im thinking; its sort of similar to the mac's top menubar.

it would be like this

| FILE | ALL SHEETS | FAVORITE SHEETS | RECENT SHEETS | PHOTOSHOP SHEETS |

so you see, from the menu you can quickly access a hierarchical menu of your favorite cheet sheets, of recently viewed cheat sheats, OR
the set of cheat sheets associated with currently running app (photoshop).

note that im allowing for the possibility of multiple sheets for an app.

so from the photoshop menu you might see a drop down menu like:
 Hotkeys
 Common Functions
 My Notes

the first two would bring up html pages written by a someone else
the last one, My Notes, would be available for every utility and would bring up a simple rtf-like page you could edit and customize.

on the All Sheets menu, there would be an item for Photoshop Somewhere, with again a submenu for Hotkeys, Common Funcitons, My Notes

seems to me this would be a really nice flexible solution, and opens up the possibility of having many sheets for each app.

there are some tricky things that have to be worked out, but i think the general approach is sound.

there is no doubt that i will offer multiple ways to show/hide the info panel,
pop up window, full screen overlay, docked bar (with or without auto-hiding), double click tray.

i dont see any reason why i couldnt add an auto-activate on moving mouse to some corner of screen - the code is not complicated to do this.

i can already think of some other really cool things to add.

for example, i said for the app menu you could have multiple sheets, and then a My Notes page.

might also be nice to have a customizable page of urls related to the app don't you think? linking to 3rd party sites, etc.
seems to be something that would very well be suited for a cheat sheet type of app.

i can see that one substantial part of this project will not be coding per se, but in writing up guidelines for sheet authors, and making some example cheat sheet sets that show a good layout and format, so that we dont end up with each cheat sheet being completely looking different.  i hope i will get some help on that stuff from you guys.

ok, this project is definitely green lighted, and i am working on it now. it will be the next donationcoder.com app.

keep the ideas coming.

nudone:
i'm more than happy to work and collaborate on any cheat sheets related to photoshop and probably a few other adobe products - possibly other things like cubase, soundforge and maybe a few macromedia things but i think there will be someone better qualified for that.

this might not be what people have had in mind but if you look at the visibone www.visibone.com stuff they manage to get a hell of a lot of information onto a page - what are your thoughts on that kind of approach?

personally, i would be trying to make the sheets as easy to understand as possibly - this pretty much means using graphics, whether that just means using little icons or large diagrams i'm all for it if it makes things almost immediate to identify and understand.

of course this would have to be optional - not all programs would need explaining with diagrams and icons and not all people would want to include them when composing a cheat sheet.

maybe we could design the sheets to come in two forms - one with nice graphics were suitable and another similar sheet with the graphics removed but essential the same text (maybe even a bit more text).

i'm just inclined to think that a cheat sheet that was absolutely full of tips, quick keys and other text without any graphics will be hard to glance through - it's not going to be much fun if you've got to hunt for 5 minutes to find the reference to the shortcut key you are after (or whatever cheat you were after).

mouser:
one of the nice things about our approach is that you will be able to install as many or as few sheets for a given app as you want;
i will make sure it remembers that last one you used.

so its fine if 10 dif people make 10 dif cheat sheet sets, and users can install/enable the ones they find the most useful.
i think that will be one of the nicest features.

one of the thing that governs what sheets people will want is how they plan to use the cheat sheeter panel.
ie will be it full screen, in which case it could hold a lot of info, or will it be docked to top or side of window and be small.
i see this as a possible real dilemna.. in that its hard to know how to design a page if you dont know the size of the window the user is going to have open.. im not sure exactly how to solve this.

one thing i was thinking is, we dont necesarily have to support ONLY html.
for example i can see making cheat sheets that are just big images.
or plain text files.

ill try to at least think about providing infrastructure for this when designing the system.
but it still doesnt answer the size of window problem.
this falls into the category of what i was talking about before, namely, standards and styles.
we will have to get together and agree on some suggested standards.
i can see the possibility of having 2 or 3 different styles of cheat sheets depending on how users work; one for people who like full screen cheat sheets, and one for people who like really small pop up window cheat sheets.

Dragonrider:
OK, I'm convinced that menus are just as flexible as drop-down lists.

Will we be incorporating the capability for users to make their own cheat sheets that would go into the cheat sheets folder & the menu'ing system would be able to bring it up the next time CS was invoked?

I have some docs that have the hotkeys for MS Office.  I would gladly make the cheat sheets for those apps.

I would also make the cheat sheet / notes sheet for WinVi.

Maybe a cheat sheet for AutoIt v3 might be nice as well.  The cheat sheets don't have to be hotkeys/notes.  They could be sheets describing a language as well.

BTW: Will user configuration of color and font be available for those of us who might need it?

Regards
Dragonrider

mouser:
i will try to make it as configurable as possible.
of course you will be able to make your own cheat sheets easily, and yet cs will auto detect them and make them available.

as for font/color, this is one of those things thats going to be either easier or harder due to using html.
if we use style sheets in the cheat sheet htmls, then we should be able to provide different stylesheets that very much alter the appearance of cheat sheets, effecting font color, size, style, etc.

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