Two Other Minor Suggestions

Tell us about your wildest feature dreams. Or just harmless suggestions for improvement.
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njan
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Two Other Minor Suggestions

Post by njan »

Bookpedia Suggestions

Minor Tweaks
1) Star Ratings: Allow a Right Click option to change star rating (from contextual menu) and a short cut (shift-command 1 - 5).
To accommodate half stars, shift-command # twice. Alternatively just pressing 1 - 5 gives star rating (shift 1 - 5 for half). Or pressing a plus minus option cycles through rating. Perhaps putting this in the toolbar

2) See Collections: Selecting a record highlights the collection/s it is in so one can see at a glance where ones books are (as a supplement to right click “Show in Collection”). The current collection, is already highlighted in grey. Perhaps a lighter grey or faint pastel color to show which other groups the record is located in.

3) Wish List button in toolbar. Sold and Bought too?

Major Changes ... previously Mentioned
1) User defined criteria for duplicate finding (eg All those that Match title and Year, or just Author and Year … ignore punctuation in title, etc) I see that there is an option for stricter matching in the terminal, but Im referring to something more flexible. In a later update you might think of including auto duplicate merge… or some kind of customized duplicate merge.

2) Search and Replace functions (which I have mentioned in an earlier post… but listing here because important).

Thanks for considering these and all the feedback you've given already.
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FineWine
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Re: Two Other Minor Suggestions

Post by FineWine »

1) Star Ratings: Allow a Right Click option to change star rating (from contextual menu) and a short cut (shift-command 1 - 5).
To accommodate half stars, shift-command # twice. Alternatively just pressing 1 - 5 gives star rating (shift 1 - 5 for half). Or pressing a plus minus option cycles through rating. Perhaps putting this in the toolbar
Why! the easiest method is already built in. If you hover your mouse over the 5 dots in the My Rating area and click on each Dot a Star will appear and if you second click on the Star it will change to a ½ character. You can also do this in the List View when the 'My Rating' column is displayed.
2) See Collections: Selecting a record highlights the collection/s it is in so one can see at a glance where ones books are (as a supplement to right click “Show in Collection”). The current collection, is already highlighted in grey. Perhaps a lighter grey or faint pastel color to show which other groups the record is located in.
Great suggestion
3) Wish List button in toolbar.

Why - there is already a Wish List collection in the Left Side Bar.
3) Sold and Bought too?
Have you looked at the Statistics facility. Or you could create two other Collections in the Left Side Bar.
Major Changes ... previously Mentioned
1) User defined criteria for duplicate finding (eg All those that Match title and Year, or just Author and Year … ignore punctuation in title, etc) I see that there is an option for stricter matching in the terminal, but Im referring to something more flexible. In a later update you might think of including auto duplicate merge… or some kind of customized duplicate merge.

2) Search and Replace functions (which I have mentioned in an earlier post… but listing here because important).

Thanks for considering these and all the feedback you've given already.
Yes Conor has partially answered these and he may expand on your reiterations a bit more. :)
njan
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Re: Two Other Minor Suggestions

Post by njan »

[/quote]
FineWine wrote:Why! the easiest method is already built in. If you hover your mouse over the 5 dots in the My Rating area and click on each Dot a Star will appear and if you second click on the Star it will change to a ½ character. You can also do this in the List View when the 'My Rating' column is displayed.
True but only if your in list view... if your in Grid view, you will have to ensure a details view is open and then do a lot of mouse moves and clicks to rate books...
Obviously not an essential feature but convenient while viewing cover art instead of lists. Sometimes its easier to do things with the keyboard rather than mouse (especially useful for folks with repetitive strain or arthritis :)
Why - there is already a Wish List collection in the Left Side Bar.
Again to avoid frequent drag and drop.... which is more annoying for trackpad users (as apposed to mouse users)... more fingers and strain (click hold drag). Move and click is easier as would be a short cut keyboard. The contextual menu is nice too for this.... but again, its right click, scroll down (search through contextual menu).... of course all these things are about improvement in mere seconds, so no big deal.

On balance a key board short cut for rating and wish list... would be simple to implement and most effective.

Also some kind of small non intrusive badge or something to show star rating and wish list tags in Grid view under books ... I have a suspicion that this feature is available but I can't find it except for borrow banners. The tag could appear ontop of or below the cover art window in the categories list column on the left... or I suppose one could design a details view that shows the status icons (but for users who don't want to learn HTML... I'm trying ... that might help... still would be nice to see the tags (small ones) under the book images in grid view (with options to turn on and off for folks who don't need to see that info) Coming from Lightroom or iPhoto its a key feature for sorting / ranking images.
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FineWine
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Re: Two Other Minor Suggestions

Post by FineWine »

With the Wish List Toggle Button (Yellow Star) in the Toolbar or Keyboard Shortcut exactly what action do you want it to do ?
  • a - Switch to show Wish List only in List, Grid or Cover Flow depending on current view
    b - Add selected entry/s to Wish List
    c - Add a Wish List icon (Yellow Star) Badge to an individual cover or a selection of covers
    d - Toggle On & Off the Wish List icon/s (Yellow Star) Badge/s on covers no matter the View
    e - OR here is an idea :idea: Just generically display all the different Collection Icons as small Badges on the Cover/s, say, top left corner with a Toggle Button in the Toolbar or Keyboard shortcut and if you have an entry in multiple collections then you get multiple Badges
With the My Rating Star/s Conor could code them to be displayed as a circular Badge (red dot with white numbers & ½ symbol) on the Covers, say, top right corner but I think just leave it as a display and not editable. Again with a Toggle Button in Toolbar or Keyboard shortcut.

But what we have to remember is the; List, Grid & Cover Flow views are just that, for Display purposes and Editing is done in the Edit window.

Now what we also have to remember is that with the next full iterations of macOS, tvOS and iOS Apple will be introducing, gradually, Marzipan which is a UIKit that will make it easy for developers to port iOS apps to the Mac and maybe visa versa. This of course wont be in pedia version 6 but could be in version 7 but Apple is laying the ground work, so the old adage of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is important as we are talking about having to accomodate four very different display sizes.
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