If I have more than one window open, with two or more databases open in the sidebar, the following behaviour occurs and seems to me to be counterintuitive.
Selecting File -> Close Database closes the selected database and leaves the window open. So far, so good. However, selecting Close Database from the contextual menu when clicking on the active database also closes the active window. I don’t want the window to close, I only want the database to close. Perhaps I’m using it wrong, but achieving separate results from the same command is confusing. It adds another wrinkle to the experience of using the sidebar to navigate both the context and the content of my databases.
Is this expected behaviour, and if so can I change that preference?
In case of the contextual menu the database which is to be closed is probably the selected & active database in the window and therefore the window will be closed, in the other case (closed via the File menu) a different database was probably selected & active. Is this correct?
Yes that is correct. I don’t understand why the same command would do different things, though, or why DT3 assumes I want to close a window when I actually want to close a database?
If the closed database is the currently active & selected one, then DEVONthink assumes that you want to close the window too in case of multiple windows as you might have opened the window just to view this database.
Thanks for the explanation. The behaviour strikes me as counter intuitive, as said above. Especially now that the sidebar has to be used to navigate between databases and their content, and in light of the decision to remove much of the functionality of 3 pane view, and the decision to do away with a dedicated search window. Please consider making the command consistent between menu bar and contextual menu in that it only closes the database.
The behaviour should actually be already identical as long as the selection in the sidebar is the same. Therefore after right/control-clicking on a not selected database and closing the database via the contextual menu the window should remain open.
