What view(s) do you use in DEVONthink?

Do you use List view or column view or …?

  • List
  • Columns
  • Icons
  • Cover Flow

0 voters

Navigate, As List, Widescreen. The best combination.

4 Likes

I often turn off the sidebar. As list, wide preview. I agree, the best.

It’s been a while since I used either columns or cover flow and I find I see some irregularities. This is with a DT database that has no internal documents. Everything is in indexed locations.

DT is version 3.8.3, MacOS is 12.4 on an early 2015 Macbook Air.

Columns view doesn’t always show breadcrumbs/group history, and in cover flow I got an unexpected DT termination.

I have occasionally used icon view. List view is where I live.

Have you reported this to our support ticket system ?

Depending on the kind of database, standard is List view, but for a collection of CD, Magazins etc. I like to use Cover flow

The sidebar would be a whole lot more useful if/when Folders are added to it… the single most important long-ago-requested feature in DT3.

1 Like

Please don’t hijack this thread. Please just vote or comment on the why’s of your choice(s), if you’d like.

3 Likes

I use list all the time in all my databases and groups but I have Global Inbox set to cover flow and I put photos and stuff there I want to ruffle through as it were now and again. Like a kind of desktop actually you might say.

When I saw this thread I experimented with Cover Flow because I virtually never use it. That’s when I got the crash. I’ll try to pin down how to reproduce the problem and open a ticket.

I had a preview window, which is probably not recommended with cover flow, and probably some files that didn’t support preview. Aeon Timeline is one that comes to mind.

List is the irreplaceable view. I like the column view, too. When I use it, I usually have the column pane narrow enough to just see the documents in the current group rather than documents, file info, and parent groups.

The way column view focuses on a group is cool. I shouldn’t have let myself get stuck in list view.

For exploring hierarchies column view suits my tastes better than lists. Nice to have options.

Widescreen/List view (Standard/List rarely). I use the SideBar to navigate, so Columns is TMI (I can always click the Info icon in the toolbar.) Use Widescreen/Icons view for databases with images. Cover Flow thumbnails too big in Widescreen/List view; works OK in Standard but don’t find it useful enough to use; prefer to reduce size of thumbnails in List view.

yes, same here

This is why I love this Forum. (Long-time lurker, 1st time poster). I had always been using Navigate/List/Standard, which worked really well for me, as I use very long file names and liked that the Standard View gave me the full length of the display to see them. Over time I got used to the documents being displayed horizontally.

But after reading this thread, I decided to try Navigate/List/Widescreen for a day, and much to my amazement, I liked it even more. I can read the long file names just fine, and now much prefer the vertical display of each document. I no longer find myself having to adjust and scroll so much to read each document.

So thank you OP for the topic, and thank you all for the advice. It just improved my workflow.

6 Likes

My mom wanted me to let everyone in this forum know: We’ve been a CMD-2 and CMD-5 family since 2008. Our principle: file-listing windows should be dense to provide overview, and text windows should be untethered. To keep things neat, we have a script that tiles all text using key command.

Now, I have an anthropological question that maybe Jim and Christian might want to re-ask as a poll:

Question: Is our preference for a Finder-like experience just habit (since it continues our first imprint from the Lisa and Mac days), or is it intrinsically superior?

2 posts were split to a new topic: Tiling Text Windows

In my case, list view in widescreen, even in my 13" MBP with Inspectors hidden, but I mostly am a “document reader”, as that is the most-showing-document-real-estate option.

1 Like

And as an added plus - you can add columns as desired in WideScreen. For a long time this was not obvious to me - it makes the view even more useful.

I have a strong doorway syndrome, like when you go into another room and can’t remember why you got up. It’s not from bad memory, it’s from context shifting.

The nicest thing about The Brain, to me, was constantly shifting contexts. That drove better focus in thinking.

Column view helps trigger that doorway effect, diving into different holding tanks, so to speak.

By the way, don’t feel sorry for the guy who can’t remember why he got up. Mourn for the guy who can.

If I want to remember to get the vegan adrenalhydrocholine monoclonal chiral mesolithic extract for the family gerbil the next time I go to Walmart, all I have to do is imagine walking into Walmart and seeing “vegan adrenalhydrocholine monoclonal chiral mesolithic extract” spray painted on the floor. It might be weeks before I go into a Walmart, but when I hit that context switch at the Walmart door, the family gerbil gets what he needs.

Try it. Imagine remembering something in a different physical context. It will pop into your head when you enter the context. Great memory trick.

Which reminds me. Column view is pretty cool.

I was today years old when I learned this. Thanks.

It puts DT slightly closer to the column management one has in AVID Media Composer, what I would consider a gold standard of metadata management, for both visualizing and modifying the metadata. There’s a long way to go to get there but I would rather have custom metadata in DTTG before any of that.

1 Like