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Hot Topic (More than 5 Replies) BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs (Read 9380 times)
Leo of BORG
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Re: BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Reply #7 - Jan 27th, 2010 at 7:59pm
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I've been using .98 for a bit with the dlog off... and it's much better on my hands.. have to keep them on the keyboard and away from the mouse. Thank you very much for doing this, Jerry....
  
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conejo23
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Re: BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Reply #6 - Jan 4th, 2010 at 2:59pm
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awesome.
  
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Jerry Krinock
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Re: BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Reply #5 - Jan 4th, 2010 at 12:56pm
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conejo23 wrote on Jan 4th, 2010 at 12:01pm:
give us an option to not show them on future launches. If you do that, make sure you allow a preference setting to turn them back on if so desired.
That's what you'll have when 0.9.6. is out.
  

Jerry Krinock
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conejo23
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Re: BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Reply #4 - Jan 4th, 2010 at 12:01pm
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yep, I agree with Leo. I’m OK with keeping the dialogues as they are but give us an option to not show them on future launches. If you do that, make sure you allow a preference setting to turn them back on if so desired.
  
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Jerry Krinock
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Re: BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Reply #3 - Jan 4th, 2010 at 6:51am
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OK, BookMacster 0.9.6 will have a "Show Welcome if no Documents open" checkbox, and the window is no longer modal.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
The modal dlogs are too small.. If it was a bigger welcome screen, I could "see" what's holding me back from using Cmd-O or Cmd-N. Right now on my busy desktop with open b/g Windows these smaller dialogs get lost in the clutter..
Well, it's a little bigger now because we added the checkbox.  Not as big as Flux', but bigger than Sandvox'.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
I have to blow thru 2 of these 'little modals' to get to where I want to go, which is Cmd-O. Why, because, at this point I'm using individual bookmarkshelves per browser/service and I may not want to 'default' to one of them.
Um, not really.  As with all well-behaved Mac dialogs, the esc key is your friend!  But, I agree, that's not known by all users.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
This is just my 2 yen, but if you must use a Welcome screen (and you should for beginners) take a look at Flux, which follows a common model.  Except instead of recent projects, try putting 'Recent BookmarkShelves' in there. If I had something like that it'd be big enough not to get lost, and it's one dialog, not two, to get the user where he needs to go.
Thanks for the screenshot.  I agree it's very nice, but we're going to plead "business decision" on this one.  I believe the improvements we made today, based on your input, bring it up to Mac standards.  A beautiful Welcome would be nice, but there are other things we need to work on.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
And it has that funky checkbox so that power users don't feel like they're being blindered into one way into the app.
You've got your checkbox, and one in Preferences to change it back, in 0.9.6.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
Concerning your point #1, Um, I may not know which recent shelf I want to work on beforehand. Do I need to set all 5 to open at runtime? Or one that I do not want, have to dismiss? Ummmm right now when I hit Cmd-o I end up in the recent shelves that I've been working on...
Whoops -- sorry I missed this question last week.  I just pasted your whole comment into a bug report and didn't read it too carefully.  The answer is that, yes, it you want all 5 to open when you launch, then yes you'd need to set all 5 of them to do that.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
Aside; I'm probably not your typical user.
Indeed, I don't believe most users would appreciate 5 windows opening all at once every time they launch the app.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
Depending on which machine I'm on I prune dead bookmarks,and sync back. Also  I don't want to 'consolidate BMs across all browsers' just yet. That's why I have 5 *.bkmshlf files sitting in a Dropbox ... that I just want to hit Cmd-O to get to. From whatever machine.
Ah, the Dropbox trigger ... you see that's one reason why we're not taking all day to make a beautiful Welcome Window.

Leo of BORG wrote on Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm:
Sorry for being long winded... thanks for reading..
Thanks for the feedback.  We'll publish 0.9.6 within the next couple days.

Remembering that Flux does not have a feature to automatically open certain frequently-used documents at launch (which always bypasses the Welcome), I think ours is acceptable now.  And another little nicety we added is that, since the window is non-modal in 0.9.6, if you ignore it and open a Bookmarkshelf "manually", it goes away by itself.  I'm often irritated by Sandvox, when I go to shut down, that I see the useless Sandvox Welcome window (which doesn't have a button for Recent Documents – arghhh), that has been sitting there since I launched Sandvox two weeks ago.

Thanks again for the feedback.
  

Jerry Krinock
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Leo of BORG
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Re: BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Reply #2 - Dec 29th, 2009 at 4:50pm
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Hi Jerry. Just some more food for thought. I think there are two things that would "irritate" a power user like me.

1/ The modal dlogs are too small.. If it was a bigger welcome screen, I could "see" what's holding me back from using Cmd-O or Cmd-N. Right now on my busy desktop with open b/g Windows these smaller dialogs get lost in the clutter..

2/ I have to blow thru 2 of these 'little modals' to get to where I want to go, which is Cmd-O. Why, because, at this point I'm using individual bookmarkshelves per browser/service and I may not want to 'default' to one of them. I'm not using the Agents either, but that may change.

This is just my 2 yen, but if you must use a Welcome screen (and you should for beginners) take a look at Flux, which follows a common model. Except instead of recent projects, try putting 'Recent BookmarkShelves' in there. If I had something like that it'd be big enough not to get lost, and it's one dialog, not two, to get the user where he needs to go. And it has that funky checkbox so that power users don't feel like they're being blindered into one way into the app.

Concerning your point #1, Um, I may not know which recent shelf I want to work on beforehand. Do I need to set all 5 to open at runtime? Or one that I do not want, have to dismiss? Ummmm right now when I hit Cmd-o I end up in the recent shelves that I've been working on...

Aside; I'm probably not your typical user. I also have History Hound to search all my Bookmarks, and Highbrow to open in the last browser used. I'm using BookMacster to sync between a travel lappy and a desktop machine (via DropBox).

Depending on which machine I'm on I prune dead bookmarks,and sync back. Also  I don't want to 'consolidate BMs across all browsers' just yet. That's why I have 5 *.bkmshlf files sitting in a Dropbox ... that I just want to hit Cmd-O to get to. From whatever machine.

Sorry for being long winded... thanks for reading..

-Leo
  

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Jerry Krinock
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Re: BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Reply #1 - Dec 29th, 2009 at 2:06pm
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Since most people will only have one document, we almost made BookMacster a non-document application, but didn't want to start with that limitation.

We wanted to give people some help, though.  We have received many support requests from new Bookdog users who say "I launched your app and it doesn't do anything".  The power-user in me wants to reply with "Well do you want us to splash you like a Windows app??  DUH this is a MACINTOSH.  Don't you know you're supposed to hit ⌘N?"  But many people don't, and this has been changing recently -- as you mentioned even Apple's Xcode has a Welcome window now.

We decided to go with the Welcome after seeing it used in Sandvox, which won an Apple Design Award in 2007.  Let me tout here that we made two improvements over Sandvox implementation:

1.  If you set one or more document(s) (in Settings ▸ Open/Save) to open upon launch, then you don't see this dialog.  It only displays if no document opens.

2.  You are able to choose from Recent Documents instead of getting the standard Open dialog.

But I just checked again and found that, indeed, theirs is not modal.  You are correct -- it shouldn't be modal.  Power users should not be denied the use of ⌘N and ⌘O, and the new Xcode is done better.

Thanks for the feedback -- we'll give it some more thought.
  

Jerry Krinock
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Leo of BORG
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BookMacster should not start with modal dialogs
Dec 29th, 2009 at 2:07am
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Hello folks and Jerry.. I have a minor bug with the current version (as of 2009.12.28) of BookMacster.

I'm sure everyone has seen that dialog that will not go away until you 'pick between two radio buttons' and then 'pick from a list'.

These are modal dialogs. And for a power user they're not needed, as I want to use cmd-n to make a new file or cmd-o to open from the list I have. I don't need to be 'Welcomed' at every runtime.

The point is that power users do not need to be guided, nor do they need their workflow broken up by modal dialogs. For the real oldsters, I haven't seen a modal dialog since OS9.

I apologize, if I sound a little punchy or this can be turned off. It's been a day.

-Leo M
Grumpy Ex-Tester

PS. or edit. Optionally this should become a Welcome Screen with tips (like XCode) with a little checkbox to 'show this screen' that I can disable. See various software products that start with a File dialog/screen like Flux, various image editors, etc.
  

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