2 more shaggadelic features in the oven: Auto-tagging wizard + Hierarchical tabbles

HELLO WORLD,

ok guys, I admit I'm recycling from the forum here, but since I wrote a looong post there, I'm trying to summarize the thing a bit here :-)



Auto-tagging wizard

The idea behind this is to help the user (presumably at his first installation) to categorize his files/folders based on his folder structure and file names (no, we're not going into the files... at least not yet).

Shortly, the wizard will work in 2 steps/layers

1) the user will tell Tabbles "look a this folder, create a tabble named after it and put the whole folder's content into that tabble". This would work whenever there are folders with a meaningful names, anything like "Documents", "Projects", "2008" or "Customer Smith" would work fine.

2) When the user has already pointed out his meaningful folders (and some tabbles have been created after them), then Tabbles will go through all the files and folders contained into the folders listed above, parse (read) the names and assign files and folders to those tabbles whose names (or partial names) match with the file/folder name.
E.g.: if a file is named "invoice_smith.2008.pdf" it will be placed into the tabbles "Customer Smith" as well as "2008", no matter where it is (as long as it's in a folder that Tabbles is looking into).

Sounds messy? Well, if you have some folder structure this should work ok - ok doesn't mean perfect, but hopefully it should help getting things sorted a bit, and I bet 1€  that you'll be surprised of how much serendipity you can get out of this.
The wizard will open by default the first time Tabbles is launched, but the user will be able to open it again whenever needed.

Read the whole story on our forum.




Hierarchical tabbles

Hierarchical tabbles mean: being able to put a tabble into another, as you do with folders.
This matter has been discussed maaaany times before. It took us a while to get convinced (special thanks to mrdna here! :-D) but we finally found a good recipe of reasons, technology and GUI, so here we go.

Read more here, check the discussion here, and check this impromptu mockups from rasty.g here.

That's all folk! :-D

Andrea

Hierarchical tabbles? (updated)

These days I am puzzled whether it is a good idea to introduce a hiearchy of tabbles.

The problem I am trying to solve is the following: as the number of tabbles keeps growing, how do you find the tabble you need? In other words: suppose you already have a tabble in mind. How do you find it among 200 tabbles?

The obvious answer is "you type it". This can already be done in the quick-open dialog box (shortcut ALT+c), so we already provide a solution to the problem.

OTOH, with Explorer you don't have to type anything to find the folder you need. So we too have to offer a way to locate the tabble that you need which does not require typing and which helps locating a tabble reasonably quickly.

In version 1.1.7, we have provided various "tabble arrangements" which should help locating the tabble you want.

However, this may not be enough. Take the arrangement by "color name" for example. This arranges tabbles into several groups. If you arrange tabbles into groups, it is easy to find the tabble once you have found the right group. But how do you find the right group? It is clear that, if the number of tabbles starts growing, the number of groups will grow too. So locating the right group at a glance will not be easy. And we are back to the previous problem. In short, grouping tabbles cannot be a solution to the problem of defeating complexity.

Creating hiearchical groups does not seem a good solution either. This would be like reinventing folders. (folders which contain tabbles instead of files, in this case). But folders are exactly what Tabbles strives to eliminate. In other words: we are using tags because we didn't like to have to open folders in order to locate files. But now, we are reintroducing folders in order to locate tags! That can't be a good idea.

So what I am thinking about is to add the possibility to put one tabble inside another. Here is how it would work: Once you drag tabble A inside tabble B, tabble A disappears from the ground floor. So the number of tabbles in the ground floor decreases. If you repeat this a number of times, you will be left with only a few tabbles in the ground floor. So now you will be able to find tabble B more quickly. (However, you will only be able to see tabble A after opening B. So there is a drawback.).

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Example:

In the ground floor, you drag tabble A onto tabble B. As a result, tabble A disappears, and tabble B stays visible.

Now, if you want to locate tabble A, you have to double-click tabble B. Tabble B opens. Along with the files linked to tabble B, now you also see tabbles contained in tabble B. Among these tabbles, you see tabble A, and you click it.

Comments on the desirability of such a feature are welcome. :)

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Update: it occurred to me that there is a better way to do this: we could allow the user to manually enlarge some tabbles. This way, some tabbles would be easier to locate at a glance, even if you haven't hidden any other tabble.

To get back to the previos example, instead of dragging tabble A into tabble B, you would make tabble B bigger. This would make B easier to locate at a glance, without forcing you to hide A to get this result.

Explorer integration

Integration of Tabbles with Windows Explorer is finally working. Now you can categorize files by right-clicking in Explorer. Here is a demo video:

There is much more that could be done with regards to Explorer integration (e.g. we could add a column in Explorer showing, for each file, the tabbles to which it is attached), but this first feature is by far the most useful.

Before I can release a version with Explorer integration, I will have to work a bit on the installer (which needs to be able to install and uninstall the Explorer plugin, aka shell extension).

Revamped quick-open dialog

Today I made a (much needed) major rewrite of the "quick-open-tabbles" and "quick-link" dialog boxes. You can now arrange tabbles in many different ways (by name, by color, by color name, be recent usage, etc.) in order to find the tabbles you need more easily without typing anything. (Previously, the dialog was very oriented towards typing. Not so anymore.)

Here is a video of the new arrange feature:



The dialog boxes are also faster and more responsive now. Previously, when you typed a letter, you had a slight lag which could be annoying.

You can find all this in Tabbles 1.1.7,

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What now? Well, the next major feature, as announced in previous posts, should be automatic tagging rules.

The "arrange tabbles" feature is here - 1.1.7Beta1

As promised, a new arrange feature is available in Tabbles 1.1.7 beta1 (download it here).

Here is a video of the feature:

Arranging tabbles in different ways can be useful to quickly locate a tabble by eyeballing. For example, if you want to quickly locate the tabble you have opened ten minutes ago, you may want to sort tabbles by recent usage (i.e. with the "recently opened tabbles first" menu option).

If you used to like categories, the "group by color name" arrangement is for you.

The video cycles the available layouts (more layouts are coming).

I am planning to offer the same arrangements in the "quick-open tabble" dialog box as well.

New shaggadelic feature in the oven - auto-tagging rules based on folders

Hello world,

The issue

Many people have been asking things like "but does it tag the files by itself or do I have to do all the work by myself?". So far we've been answering "no, because it wouldn't be possible to understand what a file is about, without the user telling it to Tabbles...".

This was true until a couple of hours ago.

The Man(uelo)

Maurizio has a very good friend named Emanuele. For some reason Maurizio found it funny to bend his friend's name into the somewhat comical "Manuelo". Apart from getting names and getting mocked for his legendary rebellious haircut, Manuelo is also a kickass developer and - most important - sometimes he has ideas. This time it wasn't actually him who had the idea, it was a friend of him (whose identity has not been disclosed yet) but we suppose that it was indeed an elaboration of the two characters together. Thanks go to both!

The idea

The core of the idea is the following: we are all used to categorize our files into folders and subfolders. Example:

C:

-\ 2009

--\ Customer Alfa

---\ Project Beta

----\ Brochures

(I apologize for being a marketing guy, I can't think of anything else than brochures, but I guess you got the point).

When the typical user starts using Tabbles, he/she is overwhelmed by his folders, by their complexity and by how hard and how long it takes to find a file or to get files grouped in a bit of an elastic way. I believe this is assumption is pretty realistic in most of the cases.

So, in the structure above, if a file is in that "Project Beta" folder, you may well assume that all the files in that folders are linked to the Project Beta, right?

You may also assume that all the files in that particular "Project Beta" folder (there might be more than one in your HD with that name) are also linked to the Customer Alpha and to the year 2009...correct? I believe you see already where I'm heading to :-)

The idea goes into Tabbles

What we're implementing right now (it should take a day of work or so due to our file-system watcher technology) is a set of rules allowing the user to auto-tag a file based on where it is on the HD.

C:

-\ 2009....................-> tabble "2009"

--\ Customer Alfa..........-> tabble "Customer Alfa"

---\ Project Beta..........-> tabble "Project Beta"

----\ Brochures............-> tabble "Brochures"

And subfolder will inherit the tagging rule of their parent folders: in the example above, a file called myfile.pdf inside that "Brochure" subfolder, would be automatically tagged with all the tabbles coming from the folders (rules) above, in a waterfall style:

C:

-\ 2009

--\ Customer Alfa

---\ Project Beta

----\ Brochures

.......|_ myfile.pdf -> tabbles "2009", "Customer Alfa", "Project Beta", "Brochures"

...because tabbles are not folders

Now, some of your might be thinking: "ok, what's the deal here?". Well, the deal is that tabbles are not folders. Tabbles are both a tag and a virtual folder, depending on what you're doing in that moment. Let me elaborate. Let's say that on your HDs (or on a USB stick or on network drive!) you have:

C:

-\ 2009

--\ Customer Alfa

---\ Project Beta

----\ Brochures

.......|_ myfile.pdf

F:

-\ 2008

--\ Customer Alfa

---\ Project Beta

----\ Part 1

-----\ Brochures

.........|_ myfile_2.pdf

\\fileserver\shared_docs

-\2009

--\Customer Alfa

---\ Project X

----\John

-----\ Brochures

.........|_ myfile_3.pdf

So:

- the file myfile.pdf will be tagged with the tabbles "2009" "Customer Alfa" "Project Beta" "Brochures".

- the file myfile_2.pdf will be tagged with the tabbles "2008" "Customer Alfa" "Project Beta" "Brochures". (I omitted "part 1" to show that you don't need to tag everything)

- the file myfile_3.pdf will be tagged with the tabbles "2009" "Customer Alfa" "Project X" "John" "Brochures".

The benefit

This means that:

-if you Combine the tabbles "Customer Alfa" and "Brochures", you will get the files myfile.pdf, myfile_2.pdf and myfile_3.pdf.

-if you Combine the tabbles "Customer Alfa", "Brochures" and "2009"you will get only the files myfile.pdf and myfile_3.pdf.

Yeah! :-D

Cool, isn't it? :-)

This is what we call Horizontal browsing: it allows you to browse an sort files independently on their physical location...which in return is what a virtual file system is about.

Well, the only thing I can comment is: why in the world we didn't think of this before? :-O

And then I should add: thank you Manuelo, your electric haircut made our day! :-D

Andrea

Tabbles 1.1.6 with auto-align available

A new version of Tabbles (1.1.6) is available. You can download it at our web site.

Here are the changes:

• Due to popular request, a tabble alignment feature was added. You can choose two alignment modes: auto-alignment, where tabbles are aligned automatically after each drag; and manual alignment, where tabbles are aligned when you press ALT+q.
  
  Auto-alignment is enabled by default. You can find the new alignment functions in the "misc" menu.
  
  
• You can now delete tabble colors even if they are being used by some tabbles. This way it is much easier to reduce the number of colors. (And, due to the recent changes, you are likely to have many more colors than you want.)
  
  
• The "quick-open tabble" dialog was slightly modified. Now, in the left panel, tabbles are sorted alphabetically and grouped by first letter. (Previously they were grouped by color.)

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We have also planned the next major feature: we are going to make it possible to auto-arrange tabbles in many ways:

• spatial (the current arrangement - tabbles stay where you put them);
  
  
• alphabetical (tabbles are sorted alphabetically);
  
  
• recently opened tabbles first,
  
  
• recently linked tabbles first,
  
  
• frequently opened tabbles first,
  
  
• tabbles with more files first;
  
  
• group by color,
  
  
• group by color name (similar to category view).
  

The last arrangement will layout tabbles as they used to be in the old "category view" (present in previous versions of Tabbles), but in a less invasive way. So, if you used to like category mode and dislike the current spatial arrangement, stay tuned!

Auto-align, another video

Here is a new video of the upcoming auto-alignment feature:



In the previous video, I was executing the auto-alignment manually. In this video, auto-alignment happens automatically, each time I drag a tabble or a group of tabbles.

You have the option whether to execute auto-alignment manually or automatically after each drag.

Auto-align tabbles is here

As promised, an auto-alignment function is ready.

Here is a video of the feature:



We are currently testing the feature and will release it as soon as possible.

Scalable tabbles

Last night (well, five hours ago :P) I said that today I would have added an auto-align feature and a snap-to-grid feature. I still want to do it (if Andrea and Irma approve it), but I realized there's a complication.

We are planning to make tabbles scale automatically according to the number of files they contain. (Think of an ordinary tag cloud, where some tags are bigger because they are more important.) So tabbles will all have different sizes. That would make the alignment features almost (if not completely) useless.

Why do I want to make tabbles resize automatically? Because this could be useful when browsing someone else's tabbles. When you don't know what tabbles are present in a database, and want to learn it, it is very important that the most important tabbles are more evident. So auto-scaling is an important feature, especially because we are about to create a collaborate feature with which users in a LAN will be able to share their tabbles (and files).

So we have two conflicting features, and it is not yet clear to me how to solve the conflict.