[Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

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[Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Sep 28, 2015 12:29 pm

Hi all,

Thanks a lot for your feedback last time with 2.9.5 Beta 1!
Now we are ready to present Beta 2, and if there are no showstopper problems,
will soon proceed to the final release!

Probably you're wondering why it was 2.9.5 before and is 3.0 now.
We considered it to be not fair to make only a 3rd digit version increase for such
a big feature as file attachments and their syncing.
For a while we considered releasing it as 2.10, but this would break all file
sorting orders.
One of our forum activists recommended us to "think big". So current plan
is as follows: CintaNotes 3.0 will be about file attachments, and the new UI
will be in CintaNotes 4.0 (just simple renumbering).

Sep 28, 2015 - Version 3.0 Beta2

In this version:

Features:
  • File and image attachments in notes.
  • Tracking of attachment viewing and editing: temp files are automatically removed, warning upon opening attachments from encrypted notebooks.
  • Synchronization of attachments (100MB limit)
  • Added used server space indicator to the File/Synchronization window.

Enhancements:
  • (since Beta 1) Automatically run "Open With" command for files which have no association

Fixes:
  • Editor: links to files in note text didn't always open
  • Wrong tag counts after batch tagging
  • Simplenote sync: fix possible creation of note duplicates
  • Wrong tag counts after renaming hierarchical tags
  • Wrong notes list state after deleting the last note having selected tag
  • Notebook encryption: CN prompted for a password on manual note saving
  • Fixed possible crash after waking up from sleep
  • Clipping: note is not tagged with active tags if current section is not inbox
  • Notes list: wrong tab distance rendering
  • Tray icon was not recreated after Explorer restart if CN was started minimized
  • Fix crash possible when saving notes manually and then quickly closing the edtitor
  • Recycle bin: note preview didn't render formatting
  • Regression: F3 search in editor doesn't work for multi-term searches
  • (since Beta 1) Inconsistent behavior and wrong message when opening attached lnk file
  • (since Beta 1) Attachment list repaint issues after tooltip hiding in WinXP and classic theme
  • (since Beta 1) Not all usual shortucts for multi-select were working in att. list
  • (since Beta 1) File attachment sync: sync happens when limit exceeded by < 1MB
  • (since Beta 1) File attachment sync: not possible to download attachments after deleting on server
  • (since Beta 1) "noteedit.attach.key" displayed in hint of "attach file" button
  • (since Beta 1) Error when trying to delete section with attachments


Download:
Installable: CintaNotes_3_0_Beta2_Setup.exe
Portable: CintaNotes_3_0_Beta2.zip

WARNING! BETA SOFTWARE! USE AT OWN RISK AND ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATA FIRST!
Alex
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:44 pm

Hi Alex,

my congratulations. Your finally on the road to end this trip of implementing and releasing the attachments feature!!

:D

Comments:

* Wrong notes list state after deleting the last note having selected tag
I confirm this is fixed.

* Fixed possible crash after waking up from sleep
Not sure which one is this one. Nevertheless i did set back my disconnect timeout value to 30 seconds.
(notebook.disconnect.timeout.seconds = 30)

* Fix crash possible when saving notes manually and then quickly closing the edtitor
I confirm the bug is no longer reproducible.

* Recycle bin: note preview didn't render formatting
I confirm the issue is fixed.

* Regression: F3 search in editor doesn't work for multi-term searches
I confirm the issue is fixed.

Thomas
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Tue Sep 29, 2015 4:41 am

Thomas, thanks a lot for confirming the fixes!

I'd also like to ask people who is using SN sync, and who is willing to help,
to try out attachment syncing.

On the server I can see that there are only a couple of new user accounts
now, and this is too little for being able to state that the functionality is bug-free :)
Note that upon syncing all files are encrypted with your own SN password.
This makes simple downloads of your files not possible, but here we chose security
over convenience.

Thanks a lot in advance!
Alex
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Tue Sep 29, 2015 9:55 am

Nice, a new release :) Just quickly tried it - more extensive testing to be done - and there is one thing I immediately noticed. The attachments pane - the sizing specifically. It's odd. What I did was this:
1. Opened CN (totally new portable install, so no interference by other installs).
2. Created a new note, added 4 attachments.
3. I noticed the attachment pane was quite narrow, so I tried to make it wider - it would not drag wider. I could make it narrower by dragging it smaller though, so I did.
4. Clicked Ok, re-opened the note. Attachments pane is now half the width of the note editor (not what I made it earlier) and still can't be made wider.

So I see three issues really: The attachment pane not being able to be made wider, the attachment pane not saving its size (I thought the intent was to make this so that it would save as what the user set it to, as least that is what I understood from the discussion in the last beta thread), and lastly, the odd resizing of the pane that CN did by itself (was really small when I first created the note, and then just resized itself to be half editor window size the next time I opened the note - not a big problem by itself, but it does cause me concern there may be a bigger issue there that hasn't manifested itself as yet).

Anyway, will keep testing.

Chris
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Tue Sep 29, 2015 1:18 pm

One other thing I noticed - to be fair, I think this has always been in CN, but it just seems slightly more noticeable in this new version (though that is just my impression and may actually be wrong). It involves CN's startup. If you create a new DB, and just add a single note to it (with a heading text and maybe one attachment), then close and re-open CN, you may notice a slight visual disturbance (visual disturbances are something I am quite sensitive to - they bother me a great deal, even the minor ones - and as such, I notice them when a lot of people may not).

The visual disturbance was too quick for me to work out what it was, so I took a screen capture video of the CN opening process, and by poring over it frame by frame, I think I have worked out what is happening. When the CN window first opens, the background of the pane where the notes show is completely white. As soon as CN shows the first note - again, as it is opening up - the part of the pane below the note turns a grey colour. That abrupt change from white to grey is what I believe I am seeing. This may be affected by system speed - maybe on a system faster than mine it would not be noticeable - and as I mentioned, it just seems more noticeable now in the new version than the previous stable (though that may just be placebo). Was wondering if anything could be done to stop this effect?

Here is what I mean in screenshot form:
http://i.imgur.com/HIjuKSN.jpg

The image on the left is one video frame before the image on the right. Now, look at the colour of the pane just below the note in the image on the right (it is a dark grey) and compare it to the same area on the left (which is completely white). That jarring transition from white to dark grey is what I am seeing as a visual disturbance as CN opens.

Chris

Edit #1: Obviously adding more notes to the DB will decrease the amount of space that changes colour, and if you add enough notes, there won't be any whitespace to turn grey at all, so maybe I am noticing it more because my test DB only had one note, rather than a significantly larger number as my normal DB's do. Though even when I try that, I still see a visual disturbance on startup, I just don't think it is the same one as there is no whitespace to change colour now.

Edit #2: Worked out what the second visual disturbance is. It is the appearance - and immediate disappearance - of the note counter on the CN toolbar. Here it is in screenshot form:
http://i.imgur.com/77zeh1E.jpg

Image on the left is one video frame before the image on the right. I have highlighted the area in question by a red rectangle. You see the counter in the first image, but it has vanished in the second, which leads to the toolbar slightly resizing itself, and this is what I am seeing.
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Wed Sep 30, 2015 4:24 pm

Hi Chris,

Thanks a lot for trying out the new version!

usbpoweredfridge wrote:there is one thing I immediately noticed. The attachments pane - the sizing specifically. It's odd.

That's right. My mistake - forgot to include the "remember attachment list size" fix. Sorry for that!
In the final version the attachments list pane will remember its size, like the tag sidebar does.
Alex
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Wed Sep 30, 2015 4:27 pm

usbpoweredfridge wrote:One other thing I noticed - to be fair, I think this has always been in CN, but it just seems slightly more noticeable in this new version (though that is just my impression and may actually be wrong). It involves CN's startup. If you create a new DB, and just add a single note to it (with a heading text and maybe one attachment), then close and re-open CN, you may notice a slight visual disturbance (visual disturbances are something I am quite sensitive to - they bother me a great deal, even the minor ones - and as such, I notice them when a lot of people may not).


Wow, this is an excellent analysis! I'll definitely look into the painting code and will do my best to fix this annoying flicker.
One thing - could you tell me which software for video recording you were using?
I think it will be useful for my debugging as well. Thanks!
Alex
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Thu Oct 01, 2015 6:11 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Wow, this is an excellent analysis! I'll definitely look into the painting code and will do my best to fix this annoying flicker.
One thing - could you tell me which software for video recording you were using?
I think it will be useful for my debugging as well. Thanks!


Hi Alex,

I used FastStone Capture:
http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm

The basic process was this:
1. Open CN.
2. Open FastStone, click the Screen Recorder button.
3. Go into Screen Recorder's options and set the video framerate to 25 (default is 10 - I tried 10 to begin with, but I don't believe it was quite capturing the effect properly, so I increased the framerate on my second attempt).
4. Selected the Region Capture option inside Screen Recorder, and drew a rectangle around the CN window (I know the CN window will open in the same spot each time I open it, so using Region Capture in this way will save me having to capture the entire desktop and then later cropping that out).
5. Started the video capture, opened and closed CN a few times (looking at the CN window each time, to ensure that I was seeing the visual disturbance, and making sure the CN window was inside the Screen Recorder rectangle, both of which were true).
6. Stopped the capture, and opened the video in my media player, Zoom Player:
http://www.inmatrix.com/
7. I watched the video play through fully at least one time, to get an idea of where in the video the disturbance occurred (the video was only about 12 seconds long, and I think the disturbance was roughly about the 6-7 second mark).
8. I then used the timeline in Zoom Player to skip to roughly that time, and then used the single frame forwards/single frame backwards function of Zoom Player (Shift . and Shift , respectively) to keep moving forwards and backwards, until I noticed exactly what was going on (it took me a few minutes to realise what I was seeing, I think I was looking at the wrong part of the CN window).
9. At that point, I went to the frame immediately before the disturbance occurred, and used FastStone to capture a still image of that frame. I then went forwards one frame in Zoom Player, and again used FastStone to capture the frame (I could have used Zoom's built-in frame capture function, but I still had FastStone open so I just used it).
10. Lastly, FastStone has an image editor (which can be applied to both still image captures, and handily, also frames from a captured video). So I opened each captured still image in FastStone, cropped out Zoom Player's GUI, and then saved both images. I then used the 'side by side' option in FastStone's editor to place both those images side by side, in the one image (could have used a separate image editor for this, but FastStone was still open and it can do it quickly and efficiently).

I then just uploaded the side by side image to the image hoster. Interestingly, I used ShareX - another screen capture tool - to do the uploading:
http://getsharex.com/

ShareX also has still image and video capture functions - and probably could have also done the job - but I prefer FastStone for desktop video capture because i. It has a basic video editor built-in (handy for cropping out un-needed bits of a video, though in this case I didn't need to use the editor) and ii. Its annotation tools can also be applied to the videos it captures, so you can illustrate particular parts of a video with lines/arrows/text etc (ShareX doesn't have a video editor, and I don't think its annotation tools can be applied to videos either). Admittedly in this case, I didn't need to draw on the video frames - only on the still image captures which ShareX can do - but if I need to do desktop video capture, my habit is to open FastStone.

ShareX does have a wonderful auto-uploading feature though, which can save a bit of time if you need to upload your captures to a file/image hoster. ShareX supports a large amount of file/image hosters, whereas FastStone's uploading is more limited - it can natively only upload to FTP (though if you have Dropbox or similar installed, you can tell FastStone to save a capture to that file hosters folder where it will probably auto upload - but then you have to manually go and find the URL to the file, whereas ShareX will automatically obtain that for you after it uploads the file, and will put it into the clipboard for immediate pasting).

Regards,

Chris
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby gunars » Fri Oct 02, 2015 1:26 am

Hi Chris

That's an excellent technique. Thanks for describing it. I understand what you're saying about noticing these small display issues. I always used to by annoyed by them also. Lately, I've gotten used to all the twitches, blinks, random scrolls, etc in web interfaces that I don't notice it as much.

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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Fri Oct 02, 2015 1:22 pm

Chris,

Thanks a lot for your excellent tips regarding video capturing!

I was able to reproduce the effect and (hopefully!) fix it.
Also the attachment list pane now remembers its width as well.

Here's an updated version to try (codename beta 3):

http://cintanotes.com/files/beta/CintaN ... _Beta3.zip


Please try it and tell if you still have any problems with it, thanks!
Alex
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Sat Oct 03, 2015 12:03 pm

gunarsr wrote:I always used to by annoyed by them also. Lately, I've gotten used to all the twitches, blinks, random scrolls, etc in web interfaces that I don't notice it as much.


Indeed, I find that a lot of the time, even though I may notice a visual disturbance, I can filter it out with enough exposure to it (so for example, if I notice a visual disturbance upon opening a program, if I open it enough times I will quite possibly learn to not let it annoy me as much). Not sure why I noticed this one - checking the last stable CN version, it does it there as well, so I should have been used to it by now. Maybe for whatever reason, it was just slightly more apparent in this Beta version.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Chris,
I was able to reproduce the effect and (hopefully!) fix it.
Also the attachment list pane now remembers its width as well.


Yep, the new Beta fixes the second of the visual annoyances - the appearance and disappearance of the note/tag counter - and it also does allow you to save the attachment pane size. It's odd - I still do see the first visual disturbance (the change in the background colour below the note), but with this new version, it somehow seems not as annoying. It just seems a straight change from white to dark grey, and for some reason, it does not annoy me nearly as much as in Beta 2. So all in all, I'd call this a win.

Chris
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 3.0 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Oct 05, 2015 12:56 pm

usbpoweredfridge wrote:Yep, the new Beta fixes the second of the visual annoyances - the appearance and disappearance of the note/tag counter - and it also does allow you to save the attachment pane size. It's odd - I still do see the first visual disturbance (the change in the background colour below the note), but with this new version, it somehow seems not as annoying. It just seems a straight change from white to dark grey, and for some reason, it does not annoy me nearly as much as in Beta 2. So all in all, I'd call this a win.


Great to hear that, thanks Chris. I'm sure we'll be able to fix the first visual disturbance as well, it's just that now I didn't have time before the scheduled 3.0 release.
But it's still in my todo list.
Alex

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