It's time to face the competiton

DEVONthink Feedback
21

I’ve done something similar to what korm suggested, although I’ve skipped the enabling groups for tagging part and just apply a tag to the parent group(s). Then a smart group finds all items tagged with the ‘favorite’ tag. I use ‘Current Projects’ instead of favorites, and ‘cp’ is the tag I apply. Looks like this:

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Edited to add-I forgot to mention that I also have a Smart Group in the sidebar that also searches on the ‘cp’ tag across all databases. This lets me have an aggregate of all my current projects across all open databases-something that is not possible with the Favorites section of the sidebar.

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Meanwhile Eric has posted great news about DEVONthink To Go v2: http://blog.devontechnologies.com/2013/07/an-update-on-devonthink-to-go/

23

Sorry, you are right. I said that part out of frustration. Not to insinuate anything - just to say that this could be implemented really quickly (I have been in software development for 8+ years).

Someone noted that there actually WAS a Favorites feature - I was thinking OMG, I’ll eat my words, I’m so happy it was only me who has missed it… until I tried it :frowning:

It is a half-solution that has the same problems I already described: (a) it is sitting on a separate pane, one I keep closed most of the time, since as someone else also commented, I also only use one database at a time - 2 more clicks, one to open it and another one to close it. (B) the Folder list seems to be like a separate “app within the app” - the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. The Favorites is another example of this: when I add a folder to it, then I click on it, yes, it does open the folder but not in context - the other folders in the hierarchy disappear and you only see the sub-folders in the open folder. So if you don’t have sub-folders in that folder, the Folder pane just shows “No folders”. What a waste of that HUGE space - an entire pane filled with nothing.

To make things worse, I just discovered that the breadcrumbs only show when you select a document - if you select a folder, no breadcrumbs. So if I open a folder from Favorites, I can see what’s in it, but I don’t see WHERE the folder is - so if it is a subfolder somewhere (e.g. the “Urgent” folder inside Project X/Blog articles to write/Urgent) you will have to either use a much longer folder name to identify the folder contents, or wonder later what the hell is in “Urgent” and where does it belong.

I am sorry for venting with some frustration, but I still think that the folder navigation in DT has serious issues and that makes the whole app a lot less pleasant to use and results in endless frustration (for me anyway).

24

@audio8: It seems you are asking to have features modified that fit your specific workflows, including only one view window, with the left Sidebar hidden most of the time.

I don’t use DEVONthink that way. I usually have multiple windows open, including views of more than one database and/or selected levels of a database (a group window), one or more Search windows and perhaps one or more document windows (perhaps with tabs holding related documents). I’ve got a hot window configuration in System Preferences > Mission Control – swoop the cursor to the upper right screen corner to display all open windows for an application.

I always have the left Sidebar displayed on my MacBook Pro with 15" screen. It’s handy for switching database views, and I often make use of global smart groups (which cover all currently open databases).

I have more than a thousand groups among my open databases, none of which I want to list in the Favorites section of the Sidebar, as my definition of ‘favorite group’ changes depending on my current project. When I’m working on a project that involves frequent access to a specific group, I simply open it in its own window.

If I need to examine my organizational hierarchy, the List and Column views may be useful alternatives to the Three Panes view.

If you have selected a group and want to see its location description in your organizational hierarchy, just hover the cursor over it. There are your navigational cues.

As the late Senator Russell Long commented, “There are more ways to kill a cat than by stuffing it with butter.” Generally, DEVONthink is flexible enough to accommodate many workflow variations.

That doesn’t mean that we see DEVONthink as perfect. It has evolved a great deal over the last eleven years, and we will see further evolution in the future.

25

Wow, been a while since I created this thread, and didn’t know there was as much answers.

All the arguments in favor of DT here are absolutely true. I realized after trying other apps that none have the power of DT. It’s transparent when you use the app, but once you face the limitations of the competition you know what you miss. Being able to preview virtually any file format for instance.

Well, it doesn’t remove the fact that some of the UI could be improved. As I said in my first post, preview of text files (any format, from rich text to simple txt, along with web archives) is really hard to read for me. The text is glued to the borders of the window for once, and setting “80%” width doesn’t change a thing.

What I really miss in the UI is something alongside iDocument interface. But of course, it would be really long to change it so drastically without encountering lot of bugs in the process, or having to work really hard so that no features are lost along the way. So I understand why such UI improvements have not been done. Although I think that something easier would be to allow more customization (like left pane or columns colors for instance), something that make DT better to read.

That’s really my only complaint about the app: there’s a lot of informations to read at once, and I find it hard to find quickly what I want on the screen (not search wise, but really what’s in front of me). The theme is white, while I really read better with darker themes (not black, but darker colors).

So here it is, what I miss from the powerful DT :wink:

I’m very glad to hear about DTtoGo v2 btw ! The few previews are really encouraging, and I can’t wait to put my bucks into the app :slight_smile:

EDIT: /I also notice that CSS stylesheets do not work with webarchives… Is it normal ?/ --> Need to restart and it works/ Another bug is that the “actions” button in the toolbar does not work in fullscreen…

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We’re definitely aware of this shortcoming but this will require more time.

Thanks for the bug report, the next maintenance release will fix this.

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Really nice to hear. I really don’t mind if it takes time, I’m just glad that you work on it :slight_smile:
Your app is already really well designed, it’s too bad that UI does not always follow…

Thank you. “actions” button is really important to me as I rely on it to keep the toolbar as clutter free as possible :slight_smile: