Thanks for your response Steve, great to have some direct answers
from the guy who kicked it all off :o)
Now, naturally, I want more! :o)
In the past I've drawn a distinction between 'nested folders' and a
means to group collections in the sidebar. I see these as distinct
things and I've copied the original post below where I go into more
detail on the issue. My question is, do you see these as one and the
same or would you consider the latter as a different feature request.
To me nested folders means hierarchical organisation and I'd be the
first to agree this is not necessary, I'd be interested in your view
on the matter.
I appreciate there's more than one way to skin a cat and to my mind a
different approach to tag navigation could obviate the need for this,
but as an interface designer myself I'm keeping my cards close to my
chest on that one as I have a particular solution in mind for a
project of my own! ;o)
Regards, T.
Extract from that previous post…
Tag collection grouping
OK, hopefully no one thinks I'm trying to pull a fast one and change
the name of the game from 'nested folders' but on reviewing the
previous threads again I think the debate gets sidetracked into one
of hierarchy vs. tagging - a fine debate in it's own right but not
really what I'm after as a feature request. I'm really very happy
with tag & search approach for many things, but for quick reference
and ad-hoc corralling of tagged information I use tag collections
extensively. I have a lot of them, too many to be easily reviewable
in one long multi-page scrolling list - not (I'll pre-empt the
inevitable response) in some vain attempt to re-impose an old
fashioned hierarchy, but simply to take advantage of the benefits of
tagging for the purposes of browsing (as opposed to searching). It is
a pain to only be able to sort these tag collections alphabetically
(even with alpha-numeric prefixes) in one long list.
The long and short of it is that, for whatever reason, i have a lot
of tag collections, all I really need is a more control over how they
are organised and presented, a single level of grouping would do just
fine. I can see how this could cause ambiguity leading to an
impression of support for deep hierarchy but i doubt this is
insurmountable - perhaps some judicious use of naming to conceptually
divorce 'tag collections' from 'collections' and a visually distinct
icon to further distinguish the concepts might overcome this problem?
Or maybe separating smart collections, collections, and tag
collections with sub-titles in the sidebar as iTunes does would do
the trick?
On 1 May 2008, at 14:20, Steve Kalkwarf wrote:
I'm not singling out Rhet, but there are several ideas embodied in
this paragraph that bear comment:
If someone from BareBones does pipe in, it's usually to say "We're
never going to add that feature. See previous post..." This
compares poorly to several other indie-Mac software lists I'm on
(such as the forum for Leap and Yep, both excellent applications:
http://www.ironicsoftware.com/) where the developer is happy to
get feedback on what users actually want and participates in the
dialogue.
Let me start off by saying no matter what I, or another Bare Bones
representative says, a large number of people will be unhappy. For
years we said "Thanks for the feedback, and we'll consider adding
this functionality". Then, email every time we shipped an update
we'd get a "reminder" email, asking why the feature wasn't in that
version. Other people waited and waited for the feature to arrive,
but it wasn't going to. I thought that was unfair.
Now, if a feature request has a known disposition, we generally
share that answer. Nested folders? No. If you _have_ to have that
feature, you will be better off elsewhere. Does this compare
"poorly" with other companies? I don't know. I prefer the honest
answer, whether it makes people happy or not.
Another assumption (again, not picking on Rhet) is that
implementing every feature request is a good idea. If you take a
step back and look at the types of requests people make, with rare
exception (nested folders, smart collections, better tag
management) they are particular to the requester's existing
workflow. The "one feature I have to have" is not the one feature
you have to have, or Charlie has to have, or probably more than a
couple people have to have.
The implied assumption that tends to go along with almost any
request is that adding feature X doesn't increase the complexity of
Yojimbo. That is untrue.
In a past life, I spent countless hours helping novice Mac users
find the files they had lost, because they had no idea where they
were saving, or because they saved all their files in the Word
folder, and when they updated Word, lost everything. The average
computer user is overwhelmed by choices, and as simple as this
sounds, every feature or menu item represents a choice. By no means
am I the authority on simplicity vs. complexity, but our goal was
to make Yojimbo powerful, yet simple to use.
Another interesting belief carried by most power users (and I
include myself in this group) is that they are representative of
all users. This can't be farther from the truth.
Everybody on this list sees the mailing list posts. I see those,
and tech support inquiries. There are more support inquires than
there are posts on this list. Way more. I can assure you that
everyone on this list is head and shoulders above most customers
writing in for help.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. As your reward, a
summary of the popular requests, and their status:
Nested folders: Sorry, no.
Smart collections: Yes, near the top of the list.
Better tagging interactions: Nearer the top of the list.
Stuff nobody has asked for: At the top of the list. And before
anyone asks why stuff nobody asked for is higher up than the
"one feature I have to have," remember, nobody asked us to
write Yojimbo, either.
Updates to other Bare Bones products: What do you think we've been
doing since the last Yojimbo update? :-)
Steve
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