Tab Titles

[bkonia]

It would be very useful to be able to assign a permanent "Title" to a tab that would not change, regardless of which Info Item is selected. For example, I have a tab that I use for my To Do list. I want the title of the tab to always be "To Do". However, if I click on an individual Info Item within the To Do list, the tab title changes to the name of that Info Item. This makes it confusing when switching around between different tabs, because it's not easy to locate my To Do list at a glance.

[janrif]

Originally posted by bkonia
It would be very useful to be able to assign a permanent "Title" to a tab that would not change, regardless of which Info Item is selected. For example, I have a tab that I use for my To Do list. I want the title of the tab to always be "To Do". However, if I click on an individual Info Item within the To Do list, the tab title changes to the name of that Info Item. This makes it confusing when switching around between different tabs, because it's not easy to locate my To Do list at a glance. Why not assign your todo list a favorite icon so it's easy to access?

Make sure favorite option indicates open in a new tab.

When you click on favorite, entire todo list will open in a new tab. All todo items will be in listed in related items/search result pane.

You can open individual items in new tab via keyboard shortcut or context menu.

HTH

Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA

[bkonia]

Originally posted by janrif
Why not assign your todo list a favorite icon so it's easy to access?

Jan,

I appreciate the thought, but it makes more sense for the way I work, to have a tab permanently designated for my To Do list.

I think of tabs as "active" projects. When I'm looking at my UR screen, I like to be able to quickly flip around between the different items I'm working on using tabs. Having the To Do list in a tab keeps it in the forefront of my mind, so I actually work on the items in the list. Having it setup as a favorite would mean that I would have to remember to click on the favorite icon. The same is true of various other items that I use tabs for. Bottom line is anything I'm actively working on, I want to have open in a tab.

Even if I used your approach, it wouldn't solve the problem. After I click on the favorite, then I would have my To Do list open in a tab. Great. Now what? As soon as I click on one of the items in the list, the tab title changes to that item. Now the phone rings and it's someone asking me about some other project. I open a new tab and navigate to the information I need for that person. By the time I finish with the call, I forgot what I was originally working on, so I want to go back to my To Do list, but I can't find it because the tab title is no longer "To Do". Rather than clicking around on all my open tabs to try to find the list, I click on the favorite icon again. This opens my To Do list, but now I have two copies of the list open in two different tabs. I've tried this approach before and found that after a few hours, I would often have three or four different tabs all open for the same item. It turns into a big mess.

I find myself constantly torn between using UR and using PersonalBrain as my primary information manager. As I mentioned in another post, I'm currently leaning toward UR because of the fact that it allows for user-defined attributes/forms and because of the way it stores all information in a single database. However, I find PersonalBrain's user interface to be far more elegant and intuitive. For example, PersonalBrain allows you to create "Pins" at the top of the screen. A pin is like a tab, except that it's permanent. If you create a "To Do" pin, the title of that pin is always "To Do". You could KIND OF simulate this in UR by only using a single-tab and using favorites INSTEAD of tabs. However, favorites can only appear on the toolbar as icons. If you want to see the title of the favorite, you have to go to the favorites menu. Another problem is that this would create more confusion, because you would probably open additional tabs for other reasons, and then you would end up with another tab mess. UR allows you to use two different approaches to switch views (tabs, favorites) but neither one is well-implemented. I would much prefer to have a single method that's consistent and intuitive. The existing methods are too confusing, because you constantly have to think about which tab you're currently on and what will happen to that tab if you click on a favorite. Argh! The more I think about this, the more it makes me want to go back to PB!

[janrif]

Originally posted by bkonia
[B] After I click on the favorite, then I would have my To Do list open in a tab. Great. Now what? As soon as I click on one of the items in the list, the tab title changes to that item.
Not necessarily. As posted you can open each item in a new tab via keyboard shortcut <CTRL>+ENTER or via context menu "Open in New Tab"

Originally posted by bkonia
[B] Now the phone rings and it's someone asking me about some other project. I open a new tab and navigate to the information I need for that person.
I have contacts set up as a favorite search so when I click on contacts, it automatically goes into search mode. As I type in a few characters it finds the contact & opens it in a new tab. I do not disturb other open tabs.

Moreover, there is a request in to kinook to allow locking of tabs which would help solve your issue. But I think part of the problem that you have expressed is based on familiarity w UR tricks.

The Brain is a totally different approach & I can understand your atrraction to it but I think it is apples & oranges, i.e. totally different approaches to data gathering & usage. And, IMO, much of the decision on which approach to use will depend on what you want to do with your data, what kind of data you collect, etc.

Obviously there is no right & wrong here. And I am not trying to convince you to choose to URp over TB. All I am saying is:

(1) I don't think you are using URp to it's fullest potential
(2) Which program to use ultimately should be based on your usage. Unlike the OJ Simpson trial, one glove does not fit all. :-)

There are some very, very expereinced URp users on this forum. Usually they have senior next to their names. These people are URp smarter than I am & hopefully if you post specific questions... like how do I....? they will jump in here & demonstrate some of URp's more interesting capabilities.

HTH

[bkonia]

Originally posted by janrif
[B]Not necessarily. As posted you can open each item in a new tab via keyboard shortcut <CTRL>+ENTER or via context menu "Open in New Tab"

Jan, of course I realize that items can be opened in new tabs! The point is, I don't want to end up with a million tabs on my screen. I want to have my To Do list in one tab, and be able to flip around to different items on the list without the tab title changing.


Obviously there is no right & wrong here. And I am not trying to convince you to choose to URp over TB. All I am saying is:

(1) I don't think you are using URp to it's fullest potential
(2) Which program to use ultimately should be based on your usage. Unlike the OJ Simpson trial, one glove does not fit all. :-)


You don't need to convince me to use UR, since I've been using it for years. In fact, I was one of the original beta testers for UR and I purchased a license for version 1.0 the very first day it came on the market. I also own a PB license and have used that application for years as well. Despite your apples/oranges analogy, the two applications are in fact extremely similar, with the main difference being in the user interface design. UR definitely has more features than PB, but I find PB's user interface to be more intuitive.


There are some very, very expereinced URp users on this forum. Usually they have senior next to their names. These people are URp smarter than I am & hopefully if you post specific questions... like how do I....? they will jump in here & demonstrate some of URp's more interesting capabilities.


Thank you Jan, but as I mentioned, I've used UR on a daily basis for years and I know pretty much everything there is to know about it. When I post a feature suggestion, it's not because I don't understand how to do something, it's because I'm trying to make suggestions to the developer for ways to improve the product.

I feel that PB is UR's main competitor in this space and it's the only other application I would consider using for information management. As I mentioned, I prefer UR for its feature set, but I think the developers of PB have done a better job of thinking about how users actually interact with the application and designing the application to accommodate the user, rather than the other way around.

[janrif]

Originally posted by bkonia
Jan, of course I realize that items can be opened in new tabs! The point is, I don't want to end up with a million tabs on my screen. I want to have my To Do list in one tab, and be able to flip around to different items on the list without the tab title changing.



You don't need to convince me to use UR, since I've been using it for years. In fact, I was one of the original beta testers for UR and I purchased a license for version 1.0 the very first day it came on the market. I also own a PB license and have used that application for years as well. Despite your apples/oranges analogy, the two applications are in fact extremely similar, with the main difference being in the user interface design. UR definitely has more features than PB, but I find PB's user interface to be more intuitive.



Thank you Jan, but as I mentioned, I've used UR on a daily basis for years and I know pretty much everything there is to know about it. When I post a feature suggestion, it's not because I don't understand how to do something, it's because I'm trying to make suggestions to the developer for ways to improve the product.

I feel that PB is UR's main competitor in this space and it's the only other application I would consider using for information management. As I mentioned, I prefer UR for its feature set, but I think the developers of PB have done a better job of thinking about how users actually interact with the application and designing the application to accommodate the user, rather than the other way around. Well, I'm glad we got all that clarified. Now I know I can turn to you as a long time URp user for advice & suggestions as I'm new to the program (v3).

So while I'm at it can you help me figure out how to sync my firefox scrap book with a URp folder? See
http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3027

Thanks

[quant]

The starting point is that the thing you want is not possible at the moment, that's why you suggested it, ... so as with any other thing, there is some workaround in UR as a temporary solution :)

Originally posted by bkonia
As soon as I click on one of the items in the list, the tab title changes to that item. Now the phone rings and it's someone asking me about some other project. I open a new tab and navigate to the information I need for that person. By the time I finish with the call, I forgot what I was originally working on, so I want to go back to my To Do list, but I can't find it because the tab title is no longer "To Do". Rather than clicking around on all my open tabs to try to find the list, I click on the favorite icon again. This opens my To Do list, but now I have two copies of the list open in two different tabs. I've tried this approach before and found that after a few hours, I would often have three or four different tabs all open for the same item. It turns into a big mess.

1.
I personally, don't have favourites opening new tab, cause it creates mess, as you also point ...
2.
when you have a phone call, you could just carry on using the same tab, (for example choose root first, this will help latter as a "terminator") , once finished - use back button list, the item in the very bottom is the "project name" you started the tab with, so you can either choose that, or use the last item you used in the project before you answered the call, (say the one below root, if you used this strategy).
3.
using the back button list you always know what project the tab relates to, so maybe if Kinook sees this as a good suggestion, this could be used as a prefix to the tab name for example if you open it with CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER, instead of CTRL+ENTER.

again, this is just a suggestion ... as I'm sure you know, UR is very versatile, and that's why it cannot be at the same time specialized at something particular ... that's my point of view

[bkonia]

Yes, Quant, I agree. UR is very versatile and flexible. There are all kinds of ways of using it and your suggested workaround is certainly valid. However, I was really just making a feature suggestion that would make UR easier for the way that I like to work. Of course there are a multitude of workarounds one could come up with, such as the ones you mentioned. However, any such workaround requires the user to stop and think about what he's doing and that moment of stopping and thinking is a sign that the user interface is not as intuitive as it could be.

I hate to keep harping on about PB, but it just seems to me that the developers of PB put more thought into how users actually interact with the application. I was one of the users who originally requested tabs and hoisting in UR. If you search back through the forum threads from several years back, you'll find that I had lengthy, heated discussions with other users regarding the importance of implementing a tabbed interface in UR and other related features. Kinook has always been very responsive to feature requests, and I applaud them for that, however, I sometimes think that their development approach is somewhat reactive, rather than proactive. In other words, users request certain features and they implement those features without really thinking through how users will actually use those features.

Anyway, I think this topic has been beaten to death. This is a really simple feature request and I hope Kinook implements it, but I think it's time to move on to something else. 'Nuff said!

[quant]

Originally posted by bkonia
This is a really simple feature request and I hope Kinook implements it, but I think it's time to move on to something else. 'Nuff said!
but ... I think the feature as you requested it would cause a lot of confusion (note that data explorer pane doesn't even need to be displayed) - you'd also had to stop and think "is this a tab name or is it an item name?",

- so maybe this feature needs more discussion than you think, maybe the tab would need another background color or sth else ...

[wordmuse]

I guess I just don't see what the difficulty is from a user's perspective. (I'm not a programmer, so I haven't any idea how hard it is to implement.)

TotalCommander enables the locking of tabs and the name of the tab by adding an asterisk to the tab title. It's simple but it works.

I agree that having a stable, locked tab would enable me to have project named tabs. I think that's very useful from a user perspective - at least for some things.

Hoisting almost gets me there. But because the tab names are dynamic, my poor little brain has to remember which tab is hoisted, etc. Maybe another symbol like a hash sign (#) could be used to indicate a tab that's hoisted?

I have no problem with color coding if that's easier.

Regards,
Bal

[janrif]

And I think the simplest answer is to 'lock' tab as was requested a while ago. The item names the tab so a 'todo list' folder w todos in it would produce a tab that is titled 'todo list' w all the todos listed in related pane. Locked pane can be presented in whatever form is most obvious to everyone, i.e. asterik, hash, color, etc. So maybe kinook will have to weigh the different tab requests as there have quite a few. Bye

[quant]

Originally posted by wordmuse
TotalCommander enables the locking of tabs and the name of the tab by adding an asterisk to the tab title. It's simple but it works.

* is fine there, cause file/dir cannot start with it. Maybe if some special character is used, that would be fine ... I use TC as well, but don't use tabs that often ... hmmm maybe I should give it a try cause many times I find myself using 3-4 instances of TC :)

[kinook]

UR Pro v4, two tab enhancements are available on the Tab menu:
1) Lock tab title: Locks the tab's title to be the title of the selected item (select menu item again to unlock). While locked, the tab title will not change when selecting other items in that tab.
2) Go to locked item: Selects the item whose title this tab was last locked to.

[quant]

Originally posted by kinook
UR Pro v4, two tab enhancements are available on the Tab menu:
1) Lock tab title: Locks the tab's title to be the title of the selected item (select menu item again to unlock). While locked, the tab title will not change when selecting other items in that tab.
2) Go to locked item: Selects the item whose title this tab was last locked to.
Nice one, what I miss is some visual lock indicator on the locked title ab

[kinook]

We'll add to the request list to support a locked tab indicator. For now, you could add the Tab | Lock Title command to a toolbar.
http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/Manual/addremovebuttons.htm