open web links in Safari not DEVONthink

DEVONthink Feedback
41

Hi, ronsard. You and I go back to the early days of DEVONthink. I started using it in 2002 and didn’t join the forum until a month before you, in 2003.

Back then I used to argue with Christian about his reluctance to add some user-selectable options to DEVONthink. But the longer I’ve worked with my databases the more I’ve come around to his way of thinking.

There are two things wrong with adding more and more options to configure DEVONthink.

The first is growing complexity. I’ve seen hundreds of special-purpose requests, to open this or that filetype in a certain way, or to do various other things. If many of those requests were followed, the Preferences options would scroll though multiple screen pages and many of them would seem mysterious to users.

More importantly - as in the case of your request to have HTML pages open outside the database as a user-selectable default mode - the functionality of DEVONthink would be diminished.

The essential vision of DEVONthink is to help the user work with information. The information content of HTML pages can be viewed outside the database in the Safari browser, of course (and the ability to open any HTML page or URL outside the database is available in several ways). But when that happens, many of the tools within DEVONthink, to compare, relate and make use of that information content are no longer available.

From that perspective, my question to you is this: What’s so unique and different about the information contained in HTML pages or WebArchives, that they should be removed from the rich environment of DEVONthink by opening them outside the database? There are many things I can do with that information content if I view it within DEVONthink, that I can’t do if I view it in Safari.

And back on the complexity problem with user-selectable options, having worked in Support for more than 6 years, I’m leaning to the view that there are already too many Preferences options. Already today I’ve handled four user problems that resulted from either confusion about the results of choosing an option, or a cry for help because the behavior of DEVONthink had changed as the result of an option selection that had been forgotten. :slight_smile:

No, I don’t use the little browser built into DEVONthink as my main browser. It’s not meant for that purpose, but is meant to allow the user to whew and work with HTML and WebArchive documents within DEVONthink, as in viewing documents contained in a group, search result list or smart group. I switch my default browser back and forth between Safari and DEVONagent Pro, depending on the tasks at hand. I use DEVONthink to hold a collection of hundreds of bookmarks, and those can be opened easily in the default browser.

42

ronsard,

You paid for a license to use a software package that is provided “AS IS”. That license fee that you paid does not give you, or anyone else, the right to demand changes or additions to the software that you are using under such license.

You don’t own the software; it doesn’t matter how much you have paid; you only have a license use it.

Of course you can express your opinions and suggest ideas for improvement. And DEVONtechnologies has given you a channel to do just that with these very forums and their contact page.

But please understand that your rationale of “I’m a paying customer and they have to do what I ask them to…” is completely unfounded. You did not pay for that right.

Please stop that, as it only presents you as a very arrogant person.

43

Hello Jorg,

Actually DEVONtechnologies took away the functionality after I bought the software.

What is arrogant is when developers do very unhelpful things, i.e. crippling the software for which we’ve paid, and then hire apologists to cover them for handing us what is now crippleware.

Thanks for coming out.

I have some concrete questions for Bill and Christian:

  • When will this huge lacuna be fixed?
  • When will we be able to have web links open in our preferred browser?
44

Hi Bill,

All I want from DEVONthink is a large and easily searchable database of my notes. I do not want DEVONthink taking over my computer or my life.

DEVONtechnologies is deliberately ignoring system wide preferences here. This is not some request for granular control of some obscure function.

This is a clear cry to respect my SYSTEM-WIDE preferences so I can actually enjoy using the software again. This kick in the shins is particularly galling as I was one of the early buyers and supporters or DEVONthink back when Christian and Eric were still based in Europe and not working for US security agencies or whatever took them to Idaho.

What is so difficult about respecting system-wide preferences?

To be specific, my default browsers have all kinds of plugins and tweaks to allow me to see pages the way I want to and to control processor cycles the way I want to. I do not want to have anything to do with the DEVONthink browser ever and deeply resent how my storage of information with URLs has been crippled.

At this point, I wish I had never bought DEVONthink and never put my information into Christian and Eric’s application. Based on my experience, I must recommend against anyone doing the same. Unfortunately migrating away would also cost me time and money. So I’m stuck owning software I am gradually coming to loathe.

I cannot believe that it is so difficult to give us an option to open all links in our system wide default browser.

This is just rude development, trying to force users to use their computers in the way which suits the developer.

Making the web work for you, Alec Kinnear

45

I hear you captain angry.

I’d also like a option or terminal cheat-sheet for DTPO. The pref pane is complex, making it more complex wouldn’t be a good idea for new users, but since there is such a huge collection of power users here, then presumably adding 100 more options only accessible by doing writes in terminal, wouldn’t confuse the regular users because they would never even know that it’s there. Even Apple which is simplify everything, has mods to almost every single system app that you can do through terminal or tools like MacPilot, Onyx, whatever. It’s not exactly that important and I don’t think anybody is going to make it happen.

I do agree with your feature suggestion, but I don’t feel my blood pressure rising and smoking coming out of my ears when I click the open in browser icon or right-click for same, so I can’t say it’s a huge issue for me. I also don’t really imagine that you haven’t gotten your $250 worth of use out of DT if you’ve been using it for 8 years now. Maybe move on, or keep ranting and raving, whichever, but to anybody even partially normal reading your messages you sound kind of insane and rude, if you’re having a nervous breakdown or something then sorry, don’t mean to be mean to you.

If I hated a app so much that even using it put me in a bad mood, then I’d take a afternoon export my junk out of it and drag and drop it into something else, which will make you unhappy in a different way. You’re not coming to loath it, reading your posts on the forum you’ve been loathing it for years. Free psych 101 advice, maybe your life needs more then a open in browser pref if you stick with things you hate for years and years and years and years, might explain your permanent PMS.

46

What I don’t understand is the reluctance to use a third party application to achieve exactly what one wants to achieve, as I suggested earlier can be done here with a program like Keyboard Maestro. Certainly, Ronsard, you’ve spent more than 40 dollars of your time writing about this, which money could have been spent on an actual solution.

47

Hi guys,

As you enjoy licking Christian and Eric’s toes, please carry on.

Personally I’d like the application fixed to respect the system wide browser preference.

Thanks for coming out.

Making the web work for you, Alec Kinnear

48

Take a deep breath and unbunch yer panties, Rontard. Thanks for staying in next time.

49

Hard to believe 9 years have gone by with no change. I, too, am becoming frustrated by the inability to have regular clicks on hyperlinks open in my default browser. Yes, I can right-click and select “Open Link in Brave”, but do this a thousand times and the novelty wears off. I simply cannot believe that adding a configuration option to DT is more trouble than the discontent this seems to have generated—given the rather long, heated, list of posts above.

50

I agree.