Stickies - Stack Actions and "Manage Notes"

Hi

Some feedback and requests based on some extensive use of your excellent program!

A) Stacks

I have several stacks on my desktop.

There are a few useful things I'd like to do with those that aren't implemented yet:

1) Right-click/context-menu: past clipboard as new note into this stack
e.g. faster and tidier than create note, past clipboard, "send" note to stack

2) Option to set double-click on stack to open "Manage Notes" tri-pane on stacks tab than unstack all the notes in the stack

B) Manage Notes tri-pane



1) Closed Notes Icon/Tab



My intutive action is to right click on the closed notes icon and look for "Empty Trash/bin" context option...
That would be far easier and faster than click "closed notes", select all notes, finally "delete"

2) I run a vertical/portrait dual monitor setup (lots of screen real estate!)
The Manage notes tri-pane has text for stack statistics "note count" next to  "Date created"
The preview is suboptimal since previews are too small to read and the statistics text overlaps

IMHO: the counts needs to go on the stack name side rather than note side (perhaps on the header or footer bar) + ability to collapse stack name column so when on that stack the notes previews and actual note preview are much bigger.
At the moment all the info is there but the stack names are big, the note previews are small and can't rescale/resize the note contents preview sufficiently to use it.
I'd love to see a split 3-pane view with notes listed in a pane underneath the stacks pane, leaving a big full-height note review to the right.
the stacks & note panes side by side with the note itself underneath across the full width would also work well.

BTW it IS fine as it is in normal landscape mode:)

C) Max number of Notes/Speed
If I get silly and have over 200 text notes I notice a performance hit within the app itself (note redraws and screen population for stack/unstack). Seems to be from the text database handling. I just take it as a warning start merging and tidying my notes up, then have a clear out, and all is fine.
Probably me just using the program in non-standard way. ( I collect a huge number of snippets into stacks and later repost them to relevant document files). I actually like the current text database file idea, is easy to read/recover from and backup but it just doesn't seem to like hundreds of notes on my otherwise fast (i920 4Ghz,16MB) PC!

Non of this prevents me using it, it could just be easier.

All the best and keep up the great work,
Lee

Hi, thanks for the feedback.  I like some of the ideas you've suggested, and have taken a note of them to look at changing at some point in the future.  I don't want to tweak the current beta any more, as otherwise it will never get released.  Perhaps there's an argument for a "nightly build" at some point, but for now look for some of that in the future.

I've had conversations with other users who also have a very large number of notes.  More specifically, they have large numbers of desktop notes.  Notes which are Closed or Stored simply reside in the database, and so don't contribute to slowdowns, but those which are on the desktop all cause a Windows window to be created as the app loads.  That's also true for those which are stacked, so that when you reveal a stack it happens instantly.  If you have 200 notes in stacks ... then you have 200 extra real-life windows on the desktop, albeit they're hidden.

(the alternative would be to have stacked stacks as windows, but not the contents, meaning as you expanded a stack there would be a delay as Stickies brought the content out from the database and created windows)

My intention was that when you have a lot of notes to keep, they get put into a Store folder ... but of course if you work with the app differently then I guess you'll be limited a bit by that design decision.  Still, it's good to have a tidy up every now and then, eh? 

Tom

Hi Tom,
Appreciate you replying. I never knew what the Stored folder was for and how it "handled" differently.  I have been using the stacks as "stored" folders except as you point out they stay memory resident... I'll wait till I've tried the new version since "Tags" sounds interesting. Perhaps for my usage I'll be able to tag (rather than stack) and drop into the stored. We'll see.

I was a late starter on the stacks and since my post below noticed a couple of other "odd" behaviours of the "manage stickies" window:
1) "Minimise" manage stickies window (to taskbar) is always disabled. Why? IMHO would be nice to have it on the bar sometimes. (The Sys tray icon is NOT available on my second monitor)
2)  When dragging from one stack (A) to another(B) in the manage stickies window then focus/list changes from current stack (A)  to the stack you dropped into (B). Meaning you then need to go back into stack (A) and re-locate your position if you are scrolling through those stickies and re-categorising them. I think it would be much more efficient if the source window retained focus and the note just went quietly to the new stack.

Whereas those two made me go "huh, that's odd, grrr...", it's possible they might be like that by design(?) 

I like your app (a lot!) Really looking forward to the new version coming out of Beta, very much.

All the best,
Lee
BTW - I'm all out of "feedback" and will be quiet for a long while now!