"initial focus" etc

ErikJon
Posts: 23
Joined: Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:45 pm
Contact:

"initial focus" etc

Postby ErikJon » Tue Sep 17, 2013 8:02 pm

Dear Sirs,

It took me all of twenty minutes just to find out how to send you feedback and bug reports on your program. Your home page did not offer any direct links, but rather took me to the Echo page, the Transifex page, and made me jump through loops and hoops and forum registration, just to give you a little "feedback" and bug reports. If I did not know better I would guess that you did not want any feedback.

I recommend putting a direct link on your home page, as the feedback from customers will help you to improve your product, at no cost to you.

In fact, if it had not taken me so long, I might have separated my bug reports from the suggestions, but, instead, I will just leave it all here together, with my apologies.

Anyway...

Thank you very much for allowing me the use of the free version of CintaNotes 2.3. I had been using NotesHolder for two years, not knowing that CintaNotes was a better solution to the same problem, and had already worked out the few bugs to be found in NotesHolder. The two programs were so similar that I assumed that they were two versions of the same program, made by the same programmers. Now, however, it seems, rather that one must have been inspired by the other. Anyway, upon investigating the features, yours seems to be much, much better,.

FEEDBACK

I suppose that my only disappointment was to see that CintaNotes did not offer the auto-hide feature found in NotesHolder; of AUTOMATICALLY minimizing to the system tray notification area once the user clicked outside the CN window; in other words, CN must be closed or minimized manually, as it cannot do so automatically. (Although I must admit that sometimes I want the window to stay open. Nevertheless, this could be an option in a future revision.)

(You may wish also to check out the red-line feature in NotesHolder, by which the window collapses into a red line permanently attached to the edge of the screen, with the option either of opening the window by merely hovering over the line, or else by double-clicking the line to avoid unintentional launching)

While the colors in your interface matter very little to me, it is interesting to see that on my Vista PC the colors hardly change at all; the "red" option is actually a pale pink; the "green" is not much different from "cyan" and "blue," and, consequently, I see little use for the color option.

Incidentally your help file is also well done. I like the fact that it does not require the user to be connected to the Internet, just to get help.

BUG REPORT

A relatively important issue to me is to keep the individual notes in a manually-arranged order; there are certain notes that I modify frequently, which I would like to keep at the top. Nevertheless, after setting and re-setting CN several times, to keep the "sort by" feature to "manual," and the "reverse order" menu item deselected, CN insists on switching back to the default setting regarding this issue. I thought perhaps that my keyboard shortcuts were conflicting, that I was inadvertently resetting the feature from within another program, but no, I hardly use any keyboard shortcuts as it is, besides CTRL+C and CTRL+V, for copying and pasting, SHIFT+ALT, to change my linguistic keyboard layout from Spanish to English, ALT+LEFT ARROW, to turn pages of text in a certain text program that I have, and CTRL+F12, to try your new "clip" feature. Be;yond that, I do not use keyboard shortcuts, as far as I can recall at the moment.

Consequently this seems to be a bug.

I have tried re-booting the computer, starting and re-starting CN without re-booting, and so on, but nothing corrects the problem. Any suggestions will be appreciated, but meanwhile, this certainly detracts from the otherwise excellent layout of the program.

Please let me know if you choose to correct this issue and update the program.

SUGGESTIONS

A suggestion that I have is in regard to the "initial focus." The options include "title" and "text," but that is all. This is frustrating to me, because, when I create a new note, I definitely want the initial focus to be on the title, so that I can create one, but when I am continually updating an existing note, going from one program to CintaNotes, back and forth, I want the inital focus to be on the text. My suggestion, then, is to include a "third" option in the "inital focus" menu: i.e., "title on new note only".

My last suggestion for improvement may possibly be out of the intended scope of your project, but I will share it, nonetheless.

I formerly used an Apple Macintosh, and the older version 7.5 of the OS included a program called "NotePad" (I think it was). The only outstanding feature of this simple program was that it allowed the user to drag and drop any note from the little window, to form an instant, uneditable memo or picture file, in any folder or on the desktop. In other words, if I wanted to include a little "read me" file, in a folder containing a certain document, to remind me that the document should only be viewed by a certain fifteen people in my office, I could have the memo written in my NotePad window, and then "tear" a copy off whenever needed, and drag it to the folder containing the document, and anytime I double-clicked on the memo itself, a tiny text window would open immediately (without having to wait for any text-editing program to open first), with the text of the memo immediately in view, all within a matter of one second. It was not editable text, but the benefit was that one would not have to open yet another text editor, just to view the "read me" file, knowing that this would take another few seconds of time, and, what is worse, that each text editor has its own way of interpreting the text, the formatting, the window size, the tabs, the window-wrapping, etc. Moreover, sometimes the user sets certain types of text files to automatically associate automatically with certain programs (e.g. NotePad++, MetaPad, Write, etc.), which is often desirable, but at other times, not. When clicking on any Apple NotePad text clipping, however, the system itself opened it, (or perhaps an auxiliary file was running in the background, I don't know) and, regardless of whether it was text, a picture, or something else, it opened instantly, and with no surprises.

This whole concept was faster than any other method I have seen to date, for instantly accessing text clippings of mere information with no regard for formatting.

Moreover, while the viewer window was open, I could hit CTRL+C without hightlighting anything, and a copy of the whole clipping was back on the clipboard.

This would be a wonderful addition to CintaNotes.

Anyway, sorry to take your time. I hope my suggestions are useful to you.

Sincerely yours,

ErikJon
P.S. I am using CintaNotes 3.01
Arseniy (CN Support)
Moderator
Posts: 61
Joined: Wed Jul 10, 2013 2:33 am

Re: "initial focus" etc

Postby Arseniy (CN Support) » Wed Sep 18, 2013 3:58 am

Hello, ErikJon!
Thanks for your report!

ErikJon wrote:I recommend putting a direct link on your home page


We really appreciate every feedback from users! Link to this forum is placed on home page under menu item "Run it from your flash drive" same as the link to help page:
Need more information? Take a look at the help page or ask the program authors directly on the CintaNotes forum.


ErikJon wrote:I suppose that my only disappointment was to see that CintaNotes did not offer the auto-hide feature found in NotesHolder; of AUTOMATICALLY minimizing to the system tray notification area once the user clicked outside the CN window; in other words, CN must be closed or minimized manually, as it cannot do so automatically. (Although I must admit that sometimes I want the window to stay open. Nevertheless, this could be an option in a future revision.)


This suggestion currently is under review on Roadmap - you can join the discussion and vote for this feature here: http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/321 ... ing-focus/

ErikJon wrote:While the colors in your interface matter very little to me, it is interesting to see that on my Vista PC the colors hardly change at all; the "red" option is actually a pale pink; the "green" is not much different from "cyan" and "blue," and, consequently, I see little use for the color option.


In future versions of CN detailed color scheme customization is planned (http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/319 ... omization/). maybe it will be usefull for yoг and will solve the problem of pale gradations.

ErikJon wrote:Incidentally your help file is also well done. I like the fact that it does not require the user to be connected to the Internet, just to get help.


Thanks!

ErikJon wrote:My suggestion, then, is to include a "third" option in the "inital focus" menu: i.e., "title on new note only".


This suggestion is also under review on the Roadmap at the moment - http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/163 ... ing-notes/

ErikJon wrote:In other words, if I wanted to include a little "read me" file, in a folder containing a certain document, to remind me that the document should only be viewed by a certain fifteen people in my office, I could have the memo written in my NotePad window, and then "tear" a copy off whenever needed, and drag it to the folder containing the document, and anytime I double-clicked on the memo itself, a tiny text window would open immediately (without having to wait for any text-editing program to open first)


There is similar suggestion on Roadmap - http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/316 ... ing-notes/
Could you please specify is that what you mean?

ErikJon wrote:A relatively important issue to me is to keep the individual notes in a manually-arranged order


There is no problem with that. When option 'View-Sort by-Manual' is enable, you can move notes randomly as you wish and this order won't be lost on next start of CN. But if you mean local manual sorting when automated mode sorting is enabled, there is same suggestion on Roadmap - http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/106 ... sort-mode/

Thanks!

--
Best regards,
Arseniy Slavschik
CintaNotes Support Team
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Arseniy (CN Support)
Moderator
Posts: 61
Joined: Wed Jul 10, 2013 2:33 am

Re: "initial focus" etc

Postby Arseniy (CN Support) » Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:50 am

Arseniy (CN Support) wrote:A relatively important issue to me is to keep the individual notes in a manually-arranged order; there are certain notes that I modify frequently, which I would like to keep at the top. Nevertheless, after setting and re-setting CN several times, to keep the "sort by" feature to "manual," and the "reverse order" menu item deselected, CN insists on switching back to the default setting regarding this issue.


This bug is confirmed. It refers only with main section of installed CN version.
Thanks for reporting.
You can vote for it and join the discussion -
http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/271646-/#icon_up

Thanks!

--
Best regards,
Arseniy Slavschik
CintaNotes Support Team
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ErikJon
Posts: 23
Joined: Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:45 pm
Contact:

Re: "initial focus" etc

Postby ErikJon » Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:43 am

Hello, again.

In response to your question, the "NotePad" program on the Mac OS 7.5, must have opened up in the background automatically during system start up, I suppose, because any note dropped anywhere on the desktop was never editable, but always could be opened INSTANTLY and the content, copied with one click, and all without opening any program. The NotePad program itself had to be opened separately, where all text clips, pictures and other clippings were stored, each in its own "page". Any clipping from there could be selected and copied, or else a copy of the individual page could be ripped off and dropped onto the desktop, or else into a folder, and from there, the item was in "clipping" form. This clipping could be double-clicked to open and viewed INSTANTLY, but the text was never "selectable" or "highlightable", but rather, only "copiable" with a simply CTRL+C style keyboard shortcut.
P.S. I am using CintaNotes 3.01
Arseniy (CN Support)
Moderator
Posts: 61
Joined: Wed Jul 10, 2013 2:33 am

Re: "initial focus" etc

Postby Arseniy (CN Support) » Wed Oct 02, 2013 12:07 pm

ErikJon wrote:In response to your question, the "NotePad" program on the Mac OS 7.5, must have opened up in the background automatically during system start up, I suppose, because any note dropped anywhere on the desktop was never editable, but always could be opened INSTANTLY and the content, copied with one click, and all without opening any program. The NotePad program itself had to be opened separately, where all text clips, pictures and other clippings were stored, each in its own "page". Any clipping from there could be selected and copied, or else a copy of the individual page could be ripped off and dropped onto the desktop, or else into a folder, and from there, the item was in "clipping" form. This clipping could be double-clicked to open and viewed INSTANTLY, but the text was never "selectable" or "highlightable", but rather, only "copiable" with a simply CTRL+C style keyboard shortcut.


ok, i guess i understand what you mean.
Similar suggestion is already on Roadmap - http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/11835-sticky-notes/
You're welcome to vote for this feature and join the discussion.
But unfortunately it seems unpopular.

Thanks!

--
Best regards,
Arseniy Slavschik
CintaNotes Support Team
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ErikJon
Posts: 23
Joined: Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:45 pm
Contact:

Re: "initial focus" etc

Postby ErikJon » Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:59 pm

I think that a simpler solution would be to allow the user to "tear off" any note from the main palette, and drop it to the desktop or any other location, when, all along, CN could simply copy the text to the clipboard, invisibly create a simple RTF file in the background, and then place the RTF file wherever the user had dropped it. This would create the illusion of a "drag and drop."
P.S. I am using CintaNotes 3.01
Arseniy (CN Support)
Moderator
Posts: 61
Joined: Wed Jul 10, 2013 2:33 am

Re: "initial focus" etc

Postby Arseniy (CN Support) » Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:57 am

ErikJon wrote:I think that a simpler solution would be to allow the user to "tear off" any note from the main palette, and drop it to the desktop or any other location, when, all along, CN could simply copy the text to the clipboard, invisibly create a simple RTF file in the background, and then place the RTF file wherever the user had dropped it. This would create the illusion of a "drag and drop."


Ok, i've added your idea on the Roadmap - http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/288442-/

Thanks!
-----------
Best regards,
Arseniy Slavschik, CintaNotes Support Team.

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