Bookends 9.0.2 beta2

[Jon]

The second beta is available (see the Announcements forum for details and links).

This beta fixes problems with importing BibTeX and adds color highlighting to search words found in the Info Drawer (Concise view). We're debating whether to keep this or not, so feedback is welcome.

Jon
Sonny Software

[niklas]

The second beta is available (see the Announcements forum for details and links).

... and adds color highlighting to search words found in the Info Drawer (Concise view). We're debating whether to keep this or not, so feedback is welcome.

Although I haven't tried the beta, I vote for this. Provided the implementation is good (and why shouldn't it?), this is a great feature.

[Jon]

Hi niklas, give it a try (the first upload of beta2 was the wrong build, but the current upload is OK -- you can tell because the Title in the Concise view is now a dark blue instead of orange).

Jon
Sonny Software

[niklas]

Hi niklas, give it a try...

OK, now I have. It's great. The highlighting really helps when you are scanning refs for a specific term. Having said that, I realize that there is a trade-off here, because many times you are not necessarily interested in finding the exact occurrence of a term, only the refs that contain them.

For this reason it might be worthwhile tweaking the highlight carefully so that search items are easily found but still not too obtrusive. In my opinion bold red might not be the best choice, actually. Mostly because making text bold breaks the flow of text in many fonts (because the word becomes bigger). I suppose this may also give an unnecessary performance hit as text needs to be redrawn all the time? Red is perhaps also a little too "alerting".

I would prefer using a background color highlight. On the other hand, I think Apple's choice of color in for example Preview (light grey) is a bit too discrete. It can be really hard to see the highlights there. I think Firefox does a good job at this, using a green highlight background color that clearly marks a word without breaking text flow.

Just my opinion. I do like the feature though!

Niklas

[Jon]

hi Niklas,

I agree with you about the highlighting. However, changing the background color would take a complete redesign of the way the text is displayed, and wouldn't be an easy task. But I can remove the bold facing...

Jon
Sonny Software