InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by David_H on 2008/12/04 21:40

I just upgraded to the newest version of IQ. I could swear that with the previous version I tried, when I opened a database, the tabs that were open when I last closed the database stay open. Now if I close a database and it has 7 tabs open, the next time I open it, it only has 1 open. Is there a setting somewhere to change this? I really dislike having to keep opening a grid every time I want to use it.

For that matter, I continue to not understand the UI design/usability choice of even having to open and close grids. Every other program I have ever worked with keeps the main tabs/grids/folders (choose your paradigm) open for instant access, just like Ecco did, just like any CRM program does. It's like going into Outlook and having to click on a link to open Contacts every single time. Why not just show all grids and allow the user to hide the grids they do not want to always see?

Think the program is awesome and incredible BTW, I just do not understand this choice. Am I missing something?

Two other suggestions.

1. I would really like to be able to dock the grids on the side without having to read the text for each grid vertically

2. In the old forum there were some requests for a hierarchal tree type grid view, where one grid could contain several "sub" grids. The developer seemed to indicate it was in the works and I wondered if that is still the case, that would have to be my top feature request after the first one I mentioned.

Thanks

Comments

Hi David_H

Automatically opening many grids: There was never an option to open all tabs, but it could be added of course
UI: True that Outlook has a few views which are always open (not on startup, but once opened). But it only has 5 views (today, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes). IQ can have any number of grids. You can even open the same grid more than once (shift-click). It would not be practical and memory efficient to open 20-30 grids. Finally, items in Outlook are task specific. An appointment is not a task and not a contact. In IQ, items can be any/all of these. Outlook also uses SDI (single document interface). IQ uses MDI (multiple document interface)
Grids: you would want the text to stay horizontal?
sub-grids: not impossible to do, but not very high on the priority list. You can use forms to somewhat handle this

Thanks for the prompt response Pierre.

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

Automatically opening many grids: There was never an option to open all tabs, but it could be added of course[/quote]
So to clarify, there was never a way for the program to remember what grids were open on last close and reopen them? I could swear I had it working that way at one point

[quote]UI: True that Outlook has a few views which are always open (not on startup, but once opened). But it only has 5 views (today, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes). IQ can have any number of grids. You can even open the same grid more than once (shift-click). It would not be practical and memory efficient to open 20-30 grids. Finally, items in Outlook are task specific. An appointment is not a task and not a contact. In IQ, items can be any/all of these. Outlook also uses SDI (single document interface). IQ uses MDI (multiple document interface)[/quote]

OK, but I think you are looking at this as a programmer and making it more complicated than what I am actually asking for. This is more of a UI issue than an issue of whether a grid is "open" . All I really care about is that I want to see all of my grids at the same time and be able to seamlessly switch between them. This really has nothing to do with whether they are "open" or "closed". Assume that I have my grids docked so that I can see all of them (as is already possible). From there it's simply a matter of not wanting to click on a grid and have the same grid appear to open again below. This is strictly a UI issue.

Look at the attachment. Here you see all the grids above. You can also see 5 grids that are open below. That is totally uncessessary. Why not just make all the grids on the top look like folder tabs? And when I select one tab, the tab I am in closes and the tab I selected opens. Now instead of having grids always being opened haphazrdly all over the place, my grids are always in the same order and i always see all of them (or again, I see the ones I want to see). You can still give the ability to truly have more than one grid open for when someone wants to compare two side by side etc., but otherwise there would never be more than one grid open, but the user interface would be, IMHO, 10x smoother/better. If anythying I would think your memory usage would now be even more efficientn, because I am guessing most people don't really want more than one grid "open" at a time, they just want to see more than one grid at a time.

[quote]Grids: you would want the text to stay horizontal?[/quote]

If I dock them going down vertically, yes. That is how I would prefer to dock them, but not if I have to twist my head at a right angle to read the text

[quote]sub-grids: not impossible to do, but not very high on the priority list. You can use forms to somewhat handle this

[/quote]

I can understand how this would not be high on the list, I hope you consider adding it at some point, I think it would be pretty incredible.

Many thanks, keeo up the inrcredible work.

>So to clarify, there was never a way for the program to remember what grids were open on last close and reopen them? I could swear I had it working that way at one point

Nope, there was never a way for the program to remember what grids were open on last close and reopen them. It was asked for though, at some point, but maybe not officially. I thought I brought that up in Mantis, but maybe not, after all...

It should be added to mantis IMO.

>All I really care about is that I want to see all of my grids at the same time and be able to seamlessly switch between them [...]é From there it's simply a matter of not wanting to click on a grid and have the same grid appear to open again below. This is strictly a UI issue. [...] Look at the attachment. Here you see all the grids above. You can also see 5 grids that are open below.

Well, "Gird tabs" and "buttons/links to open grids" should not be confused. What if you had 50 grids, like I do ?... You would never want to have all these tabs showing, and you'd only want the ones you use... at the moment.

I move grids around all the time. Sometimes I need projects on the right, sometimes on the left, sometimes projects are show together with a todo list and a theroritical analysis below... It changes all the time.

---------------------

Note that you can actually use InfoQube without any "Grid toolbar" (vertical or horizontal). Personally I don't have any toolbar showing all my grids : I use the "Grids" button showing the grid menu. No wasted space and I don't have the problem of having "the same grid appear to open again below", as you expressed it.

Shift-O will open this menu (you can set the way you want it to appear in the options), and typing a letter will bring you straight to the desired button. It's the quickest way to open any grid. It can take less than 1s. (That technique can even be used to switch between grid -- not ideal, but effective)

So, IMO what's missing is

1- (like you suggested) to be able for InfoQube to be able to open the last "opened grids" configuration (in the same order as the grids were opened),

2- a way to easily navigate between tabs (à la Firefox, ie, etc.... and that's coming).

3- and, as I suggested somewhere (mantis I think), a better "type and search" function for the grids menu.

Just want to add one last little thing :

- Yes : grid hierarchies would be great... I'm all for it. I think I was the one who suggested that in the old forum.... It's also in mantis, somewhere.

At the same time, I'm waiting to see how "named filters" will work. That might render Hierarchical grid organization less useful (especially if there's a better "type and search" functionality available for the grid menu).

So... Yes, all of these were mentionned in mantis :

0374 : Open ALL last opened grids

(0314

: Menu to show last opened grids -- variation on the theme....)

0074 ; Shortcuts to switch and close tabs

0150	: An enhanced "Grids" menu/button to open grids more quickly

0636	: Implement "type & search" everywhere the same way : the best implementation is for the dropdown combobox (add item window)

[quote=Armando]

Just want to add one last little thing :

- Yes : grid hierarchies would be great... I'm all for it. I think I was the one who suggested that in the old forum.... It's also in mantis, somewhere.

[/quote]

There are a ton of examples of how this would be increibly useful but here is a major one. I am trying to transition to IQ from Microsoft OneNote. In OneNote it is very easy for me to break things down using a tree or hierachy. This allows me to easily have one OneNote file for both personal and business, which i really like. So my two main hiearachies are "Personal" and "Business" and then all the "grids" (obviously they are not called grids in OneNote, but you get the point) for each fall under them. But with IQ since there is no way to do that, I have to create two separate database files, one for personal and one for business. Yes, of course there are plenty of workarounds if I wanted to put them both into the same IQ database, but none that I would be happy that reflect the way I like to divide my business and personal work, since there is no way to create two primary grids with subgrids so to speak. So I really hope to see this capability in the future. I think it would be the cats meow.

Pierre,

I'd love to see grid tabs acting like (my favourite) browser settings:

expanding on what Armando says above, (& sticking to his numbering)

(1) > to be able [on restart] to open the last "opened grids" configuration (in the same order as the grids were opened)
- a sort of a "session saver"
(1a) Possibly a way of grouping grids and opening as a group ?

(2) > a way to easily navigate between tabs (à la Firefox, ie, etc.... and that's coming)
Ctrl+Pageup move to left tab
Ctrl+PageDown move to right tab

(3) > a better "type and search" function for the grids menu

(4) if a tab has focus, click on a second grid tab:-
Now click on the second tab again - the focus goes back to your original tab (Opera brought this in but it works best via TabMixPlus extension in Firefox)

(5) Default shortcuts to open grid as Armando says his is setup (as a drop-down list)

with apologies for repeating a couple of shortcut requests from the recent shortcut thread

EDIT/ added #2 to Mantis 074

will add #4 to Mantis when I get a chance

[quote=Armando]Well, "Gird tabs" and "buttons/links to open grids" should not be confused. What if you had 50 grids, like I do ?... You would never want to have all these tabs showing, and you'd only want the ones you use... at the moment.[/quote]

Hi Armando,

Thanks for your answer.

Re: above, I think that what I am asking for would allow both of us to have our cake and eat it to. More importantly, it will streamline the interface for most users, which is a necessity as IQ seeks to grow their market. Please see the attached screenshot from Salesforce. Imagine that the tabs across the top represent grids. In this instance the user wants to see their primary girds at all times, and there happen to be 13 of them. There is a tab on the far right with an arrow that triggers a drop down selection that allows the user to select any additional grids they do not want shown at all times. This is a pretty common user interface paradign and IMO it works very well, so much so that it has become almost universal in most business software. Obviously whether the slection mechainism is a "tab" or something else does not matter, but I think tabs work really well if the selections are going to be on top (as opposed to on the side like Outlook does).

I think most users are going to have 10 or so tabs/grids they spend 99% of their time in, "projects", "tasks" and so forth. Now again, with regard to Pierre's programming concerns, I do not think (most) users will care from a programmatic point of view if those tabs represent "open" grids. In fact, I'd think he'd want to have the active grid automatically close as the next grid is selected. If someone needs to see two grids at the same time, they can still do so through a purposeful effort. The "new horizontal tab group" and "new vertical tab group" command already quite beautifully addresses that need.

To sum up my thoughts, it appears to me that IQ is already the most powerful PIM that has ever been developed. I know there are other very important priority features for Pierre to add - calendar, some functionality that Ecco had, probably some Outlook and mobile support etc. But it seems to me that soon after that the goal should be to streamline the GUI, which I believe can be made much better without weakening any of the functionality. Even Ecco was too complicated for most people and IQ is WAY more complicated than Ecco. But I don't think it has to be, and the easier it is to use, the more users Pierre will have. I really want to see it succeed, I think it is mindblowing what he is doing with this.

You suggestion is excellent and would make an excellent startup mode. Advanced users would be able to switch to tab workspace as it also offers more options, including multiple views and split views (using tab groups).

I agree that it could work -- like you said. It would make it easier. But might also make it more difficult to understand that grids are views and not containers -- I might be wrong though.

So I'm all for such an option. But I ALSO like the current way.

If IQ could remember the grids tabs setup when closed and restarted, that would be all I need, personally... And it would function pretty much in the same way... Only, grids would always be opened.

(One possible concern around closing/opening grids each time a tab is clicked would be speed. Many grids can take a few seconds to load. Now, if that can be addressed... )

[quote=Pierre_Admin]sub-grids: not impossible to do, but not very high on the priority list. You can use forms to somewhat handle this[/quote]

Pierre, coule you elaborate a little bit?

By sub-grid, do you mean to have different column (i.e. fields) set for sub-items? If yes, a form is basically that, a different set of field.

You can also use the form toolbar button to add a sub-item by form

(Isn't it about the ability to organize grids hierarchically...? )

[quote=Armando]

(Isn't it about the ability to organize grids hierarchically...? )

[/quote]

Yes, we are absolutely talking about gird hiearchies. For instance, I would like to be able to have two "top level" grids, personal and business, and then below those all my other grids. I am talking about two "levels", but if (when Peierre ;-) ?) implemeted I am assuming one could have as many "levels" as one likes. I am trying to put things in quotes because it is so easy to confuse what people are talking about in these discussions and I know that there would really be no such thing as a "top level" grid, you and I are talking about nothing more than a way to oganize grids. And with 60 grids, I can see why you would like this

! I have added parentheses below just to make clear that I am talking about having different grids under each hiearchy, though I suppose if Pierre wants to make it super flexible you could even have the same grids in different hiearchies.

Personal

- Contacts (Personal)

- Notes

- Projects (Personal)

Business

- Contacts (Business)

- Journal

- Projects (Business)

- Reference

Pierre,

I thought I would bump this. I know one feature that Armando and I and others have requested is the ability to organize grids hierarchically. I understand there are other higher priorities such as the calendar, but speaking for myself I think this should be near the top. In one small step it would be a massive UI and usability improvement to IQ. I miss this feature tremendously (I used to use it in OneNote extensively) and forces me to maintain two separate IQ files, which I really dislike having to do, one for business and one for personal. Why? Because without easily being able to create one hierarchy of personal grids and another one of business grids, there is no way I want to have 50 different grids that are a mix of personal and business. It would be so cluttered I would not be able to manage it. But a simple hierarchical grid mechanism would allow me to manage it beautifully. Heck, then you could divide/categorize your grids however you want. Personal, business, financial, etc.

Just keeping this on your radar and voting for it again.

Thanks,

David

Hi David,

The ability to organize grids hierarchically would definitely be good (it's in mantis somewhere).

(Note : The way I get around this lack at the moment is by using specific prefixes for grid names, and with the ctrl-shift-o shortcut showing a list of all grids, I can just start typing and get to the right section.

But even this doesn't work that well because there's something else that could work better : the search as you type functionality starts searching only at the beginning of words, and not in the middle, which makes it hard to reach certain grids instanteneously. This too is in Mantis somewhere. A better search as you type might be easy to implement though as the versions used to search drop down menus in the add item dialog, etc. is more sophisticated.)

How Do I Keep Tabs (Grids) Open?

Comments