I would like to thank all the people who either posted public responses or sent us private feedback on the topic of the main window design. Much of what we heard confirmed our suspicions about how people are actually using Sente. This feedback has given us some confidence that our revised design will be an improvement for many people.
To continue the discussion, I have decided to let everyone see a few screen shots of Sente 6 and to describe some of the changes. Over the next few weeks I will go into more detail in some areas. As always, feedback is appreciated!
Here are some of the bigger changes that you might notice in this screen shot:
First, the window presents data from only one library. This means that Sente 6 will be what is often called a "document-based" application, like a word processor or spreadsheet program, where you double click on the library to open it and that library appears in a different window than any other library. (One side effect of this change is that Sente libraries will no longer live in ~/Library/Sente. Instead, they will live wherever you place them -- most likely somewhere in your Documents folder.)
Second, the source list is closer to the current design of applications like iTunes. I will have more to say about this in upcoming posts.
Third, the lower reference editor has been replaced with a dedicated attachment viewer. This is what most people used that screen real estate for anyway, so most will not notice the loss of generality. And, this approach lets us make more effective use of screen space (notice that the blue bar at the top of the links view from Sente 5 is gone).
Double clicking on a reference in the main reference list will cause Sente 6 to open it in its own tab, like this:
Note that, unlike Sente 5, there is no source list in this window. The source list is only included in the first tab, labelled Library. By making Sente 6 "document-based" we no longer needed to include the source list in every screen because we always know what library we are talking about. Once again, this frees up some screen real estate.
It is also worth noting that "autolinks" (those web links that Sente can generate automatically based on identifiers found within a reference) are no longer presented in the same view as real attachments. In Sente 6, opening an autolink, or any other web page not explicitly attached to a reference, opens a new web browser tab, like this:
We have never before posted screen shots of an upcoming release like this, but we we know that there are a lot of people out there who care about the details of Sente's user interface. Sente 6 will be a major update, and we want to get any feedback we can early so that the software is well received when it is released later this year.
Michael
Any chance you're able to add some "markup/annotation tools" to the PDF viewer (e.g. highlighting, circles/rectangles)?
Without them, I need another app, and the Sente PDF viewer isn't much use to me.
John
Totally agree with John, tap in to those Preview tools dudes!
Another subject regarding autolinks— If I open for instance the DOI autolink, would it open a tab in the same manner as the PDF example above? I sure hope so, as opening the DOI or google book link (or another html link) would be something we would want to make notes on.
If the bottom editor is being taken away, then I'd be relying a lot more on the side editor to flip between the bibliography fields, notes, and summary view to see the essentials (citation, keywords, and abstract). I'm fine with that, but would like to suggest a shorcut for the right editor views, like command>option>1...2...3...4
This would also likely mean more flipping between tabs at the top. The standard tabs shortcut is command>1...2....3....4.... which I think would be a smart reassignment of keyboard shortcuts.
Finally, Do I have to wait until v.6 to get an improved journals list (including importing). This is an essential that has kept this Sente lover using Bookends.
Screens are wider than they are tall. PDFs are usually taller than they are wide. I wonder how many people actually read a PDF in the main view shown in the first screenshot. I can't help feeling the bottom pane could be better used for something more imaginative: a keyword cloud, links to similar references,I don't know... something to help us explore our data more effectively. You could have the righthand pane much wider and have the PDF shown there.
Don't know if these are good ideas or not. But you've got talented people programming and you've got users who are extremely interested in the interface. How about mocking up some alternatives to see what people think?
Will Sente 6 be a free upgrade? I'd hate to purchase the current version of Sente, only to find that I then need to pay for a new version. Also, how close is Sente 6 to being released?
A few things:
1)Totally agree with jaltman - PDF markup tools definitely needed.
2) Could you please add a way to save (either manually or automagically) what is entered in the reference editor? I once lost a lot of notes, which makes me a little nervous to use Sente for note-taking.
3) It would be nice to not have notes automatically sort alphabetically by title when there is no page number.
Michael,
Followed this from "afar" while scrambling to meet a grant deadline and now chiming in. The proposed changes look great! Steve Jobs once described the life-saver-colored iMacs as looking so good you want to lick them. How can I top that in describing the Sente 6 previews offered so far?
A few thoughts :
1. Document-based change sounds like a smart move.
2. One potential benefit of removing the source list pane from PDF-attachment tabs is that the extra horizontal real estate on the left could be used for a "Skim-like" Thumbnail/TOC/Search pane (hide-able, of course!). That would be a natural evolutionary step. (Next comes Skim's flexible markup functionality and associated tool-bar and then I'll feel like I've died and gone to Denver.)
3. It seems generally reasonable to not include the source list in web-browser tabs, for the reasons you've listed, but one of the nice things about current behavior is that you can easily select a "destination" collection just before clicking a target icon or downloading a PDF. Maybe there should be a way to show/hide the source list in these screens, although quite possibly you're working on other ideas for handling this.
4. Probably already in the works, but the "References," "Attachments," and "Notes" labels in the Source List need attractive icons, which would provide a consistent experience with the design standard for iTunes and other "iApps." (Also, maybe freshen the look and color of the Collection folder icons to match Leopard folders, although Sente is arguably pretty close to that look already, so would be a low-ish priority.)
Can't wait for the next generation of Sente. Keep the blog postings coming.
-Mark
"I wonder how many people actually read a PDF in the main view shown in the first screenshot."
...thrusting hand up high in air and waving wildly to get counted...
I regularly do use that lower pane to see and read PDFs, especially when I'm clicking down through a list of references in the reference table to get a quick look at what's in each. (Of course, when it's time for heavy reading, I either open one or more PDFs in tabs [a wonderful Sente 5.7 addition -- thanks TSS!] or, quite often, in Skim, where I can highlight away.)
The Sente 6 screenshot is exactly how I've long configured my main window, toggling the right-side reference editor pane among various views (Summary mainly, but others on demand). For PDFs opened in tabs, I have the right-side editor set to default to Notes view (again, like the Sente 6 screenshot), and usually open a stand-alone editor window (Cmd-I) to edit Bibliography fields.
Thanks for the screenshots.
-Mark
John and several others, here and on the Sente forum, have suggested markup tools ala Skim/Preview/Acrobat. A big "ditto," with a particular nod toward Skim. (Someone mentioned the open API for Skim notes format.) In particular, I'd like to see the capabilites to:
(1) remove markup as easily as Skim (i.e., select the markup with a click then hit Delete);
(2) "join" discontiguous highlighted segments (shift-click in Skim);
(3) send a clean (i.e., sans-markup) PDF to colleagues at any time;
(4) toggle markup viewing on/off in Sente window;
(5) add margin notes ala Skim; and lastly
(6) maintain Tiger-compatibility (would seem to rule out just tapping into Preview API for annotation tools).
Now, if you can also master "smart column detection," as John has suggested, then cool ;-), but I gather from reading the Skim feature-request forum that that would entail forgoing Apple's PDFKit and rewriting text-selection routines from scratch — yikes!!! (I suppose there's a reason that Acrobat costs $300 vs. Skim $0.) (Hey John, not trying to shoot your idea down; if anyone can do it, it's Third Street!)
Regarding point (1) above, I've previously been corrected (on this forum, I think) re my prior belief that highlighting added in Preview cannot be removed, but it doesn't seem easy at any rate, certainly not like Skim. I had just about every salesperson in the San Francisco Apple Store trying to help me figure it out; what we jointly came up with is that you have to exactly reselect the same text (and spaces) that were originally selected for highlighting, and only then can remove the highlighting. Seemed to take a surgeon's touch!
-Mark
I totally love Skim as well, but would settle for the Preview annotations in Sente as I could combine Sente note-taking with Preview annotation. Another potential problem with using Skim, which I've run into already, is the accompanying "skim" file with PDF's. They have to stay in the same folder and have the same name as the PDF file. If the user, or Sente, renames the file, then it becomes annoying to manage all those stray .skim notes. At least Preview keeps it all together.
Two points:
1) I'd like to support the call to include Skim as the in-built PDF viewer, due to its mark-up tools.
2) In the current version of Sente, I love the fact that you can customise the view and move windows around. This feature is what won me over from Papers and Bibdesk, as it allows me to set up the right pane as the 'links' viewer in order to preview/read PDF's as part of the main page. Seeing only a sliver of the PDF document at the bottom of the page is really frustrating.
It would also be nice to have more space in the web browser window and a more safari like navigation options.
Wouldn't be possible to give informations about the references on the web page in the adress field like in zotero on firefox ?
It seems for me that the web browsing in Sente isn't as quick as the safari browsing so i don't use it that much. Would you use the new Safari engine in this new release as it works better with proxies?
I regreat also that the web browser doesn't support COins or RFD metadata as more and more academic web site use it now.