Nifty Box News

Friday, October 27, 2006

Nifty Box 1.0

Ok, this is 1.0.
It was hard to stay away from implementing new features and just to work on the payment and licensing stuff. I have some nice ideas for improvement of Nifty Box but these will all go into version 1.1 (at least some of them), which should be ready in December, I think.

That's all for now.
Have fun with NB 1.0!

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posted by Tim Scheffler at 10/27/2006

18 Comments:

  • Hey Tim,

    I'm evaluating Nifty Box and it's looking pretty good. It definately fills a niche. Curious though, is there a keyboard shortcut for tagging an item?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 10/28/2006 12:30 AM  

  • Wow Tim!!

    This is exactly the kind of application I thought I definitely am in need of.

    And voila! I find link to your app at tuaw.com. Thanks a lot for making such a useful and beautiful app.

    Just downloaded version 1.0. Will send in my comments soon!! :)

    cheers!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 10/28/2006 6:47 AM  

  • Wow Tim!!

    This is exactly the kind of application I thought I definitely am in need of.

    And voila! I find link to your app at tuaw.com. Thanks a lot for making such a useful and beautiful app.

    Just downloaded version 1.0. Will send in my comments soon!! :)

    cheers!

    By Anonymous smart talky, At 10/28/2006 6:48 AM  

  • Hi!

    Thanks for your comments! Since tuaw.com has posted a review Nifty Box is getting quite some traffic, which is nice.

    anonym: I am sorry, right now there is no keyboard shortcut for tagging. But this might be good feature for V 1.1 though.

    smart talky: I am looking forward to your comments.

    Cheers,
    Tim

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 10/28/2006 2:50 PM  

  • Hi Tim

    It's a really interesting application. I'd be very interested to know what features you are planning for version 1.1. There are some features that I would like to see to make this something I would use regularly:

    - autofill so I don't end up having to retype the same tags over and over;
    - a way to nest tags
    - a way to show untagged items
    - folder-watching so items from certain folders are automatically imported.

    Good luck.

    By Anonymous Andy Miller, At 10/28/2006 2:56 PM  

  • Hi Andy,

    Thanks for your comment!

    Autofill is there: when you enter a tag just hit the ESC key and Nifty Box will present a list of possible tags. On the other hand to tag a new item with the currently selected tags you only have to drag it into the into table and all tags are added automatically. Or you can drag tag names from the left table to the tag list in the item detail view... many of the interface elements in Nifty Box are drag & dropable: feel free to experiment (after all there's an "Undo" ;-)

    I tried to implement nested tags in the past, but somehow it did not work well. Can you specify how you would like nested tags?

    To find untagged items just select the "Library" and sort the item table by the column "Tags". For that you might add the "Tags" column first: just right-click on the table header.

    Folder watching might make sense. I'll put it on the list for feature requests.

    Cheers,
    Tim

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 10/28/2006 4:10 PM  

  • Very nice app dude!!

    What i like to see: Find tagged files with spotlight by enter a specific tag.

    Go on with your excellent work

    Greets

    By Anonymous Maix, At 10/28/2006 4:52 PM  

  • maix: Thanks! Spotlight support is definitely planned for version 1.1.

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 10/28/2006 6:12 PM  

  • This seems really nice. I have just started to play with it, so apologies if I have missed something, but one thing that would be very useful for the next version is the ability to filter and sort by date added/modified, as well as by tag and note info.
    Often one can remember that some item was found 'last week' etc. but can't remember all the details on it.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 10/29/2006 2:43 AM  

  • The functionality is already there ;-)

    Chose the "Library", there you find all your tagged items (excluding the trash). In the item table you can right-click on the table header and chose what table columns you want to see. For example, chose "Updated". Then you can click on the new "Updated" table column and you'll find all your items sorted by date.

    I always wanted to keep the UI free from too much "clutter", but it might be that I have hidden some functions too well. Maybe I will introduce some new toolbar buttons in the next version, so that the app's features are found more easily.

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 10/29/2006 1:20 PM  

  • Hallo Tim!/Hello Tim!

    Really like Nifty Box so far. I don't know what you have planned for version 1.1 but here are some ideas.

    When you are in the library and no entry is selected the search field remains how it is currently, but if you select for example a PDF file, it would be cool if the search field changes it's function so whatever you enter in the search field is searched inside the PDF file. It also would be nice if you hover with the mouse cursor over the PDF you get a magnifying glass so you can quickly have a better look at the PDF without opening it first.

    For web bookmarks it would be cool if you could show a thumbnail of the webpage instead of the generic icon. Maybe drag an image onto the generic icon and it changes to that image for that specific bookmark.

    Are their more features coming to the index drawer? Right now I don't find it useful, could be done in the main window also.

    Hope this was clear, if not I could write this also in german language.

    I'm going to play around a little bit more with the application, thanks.

    Markus

    By Anonymous Soul Monkey, At 10/31/2006 3:05 PM  

  • Hi Markus,

    Thanks for your comment!
    I wont include too much PDF functionality in Version 1.1 as Nifty Box is not specifically aimed at PDF management. I will try to focus for 1.1. on features that would improve the handling of every file type. There's another tagging program out there called yep (formerly known as kip or pik), that does exactly what you describe. I think it's a fine piece of software and if you need to handle mostly PDFs you should go with yep.

    That said, I will definitely improve the web bookmark functionality as this is one thing I am missing the most too. But it wont be in 1.1 I think. But I haven that up a schedule and feature list for 1.1 and 1.2.

    The basic idea behind the index drawer is, that in the main window you see only tags associated with the current view and in the index drawer you always have access to all tags.
    I am not quite sure what will happen with the index drawer as I am going to add a new tag organisation (the infamous tag cloud, yes!) for version 1.1.

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 10/31/2006 5:58 PM  

  • Thanks for pointing me out to yep, I tried it but somehow I don't feel comfortable with it. Working with it just don't give me the feeling I need to work with the software every day - sounds strange yes, also a bit hard to explain.

    The PDF features would be nice but are not really necessary, it's not to hard to doubleklick a PDF and search there, also with tags and descriptions I can organize them good enough I guess.

    Do you have plans to implement some sort of smart lists? Could be useful if files have more than one tag like tag A and tag B and I only want to see all files that have tag A but not tag B and also were updated in the last 7 days or so.

    Another thing, the small size for the toolbar icons is not working for me, I don't need this but saw this when I tried out options.

    By Anonymous Soul Monkey, At 10/31/2006 7:54 PM  

  • Sorry, smart lists are not planned for the next release.

    You are right: the small toolbar icons do not work properly right now. I must have missed that. I will fix that in the 1.0.1 release.

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 11/02/2006 3:03 PM  

  • Would it be difficult to create a user preference allowing Nifty Box tags to appear in Spotlight Comments?

    By Anonymous ronaldjohn, At 11/03/2006 10:16 PM  

  • ronaldjohn: I am currently working on that for version 1.1! Still I am in a bit of a fight to make the Finder react a little faster to insert or update Spotlight comments, but I am quite optimistic that this will be in Nifty Box 1.1

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 11/03/2006 10:23 PM  

  • Hi Tim

    I see what you mean by autocomplete.

    As far as selecting untagged items is concerned could I suggest that as well as the contextual menu that you have a View Options item in the view menu to determine which columns are showing in the table - that's what programmes like Photoshop and iView Media Pro do - so where people will be likely to look for it.

    As far as nested keywords are concerned what I had in mind was say i had a number of items taggged with one or all of 'Latin America', 'Chile', 'Patagonia'. I would like to be able to nest the buttons in the left-hand column - like nested folders in iTunes etc with the little triangles (forget what they are called). Select Latin America and I get all the items with that tag, toggle the triangle and I can then select all the items about Chile. Toggle the Chile triangle and I can select the items with the tag 'Patagonia'.

    I've been looking at yep as well. It would be really, really neat if Nifty box recognised yep tags (though asyep only allows single words that could be a bit of a problem).

    And finally, I just did a quick check to see whether Nifty box would recognise existing Spoltight comments. Doesn't seem to - something I'm doing wrong?

    By Anonymous Andy Miller, At 11/04/2006 1:31 AM  

  • Hi Andy,

    Yes, I think including a "View Options" menu would be a good thing. Most people are looking for something like that, so I should include it in the main menu.

    I am not so sure about nested tags however. One thing I like about tags is that they allow a "flat" organization in contrast to a hierarchical organization with nested lists. The example you are giving (Latin America -> Chile, Patagonia) good be solved with related tags too. I am thinking about an additional tag organization view for 1.1 that would handle the related tags in a better way.

    Another way to tackle this problem would be something like "saved searches" for Nifty Box. Then you would define a saved search "Latin America" that will display all items that are tagged with "Chile", "Patagonia",... but "Latin America" wont be a separate tag. Some kind of grouping for tags.

    Currently there is not consistent way in using Mac OS-X for tagging. A good work-around is taking the Spotlight (or Finder) comment field. I plan to export NB tags to this field for Version 1.1, but an import is a bit more tricky.

    By Blogger Tim Scheffler, At 11/05/2006 3:06 PM  

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