Options for Features

It's a "secret" of mine that I don't add a bunch of options for new features on purpose. The reason is two fold. The first reason is to see if and how people use the new features. The second reason is to not invest too much time in an unpopular feature. The goal is to guide new options and features based on how people are using the program, not just how I use the program.

I added a feature to draw pictures directly on the popup a few versions ago. I had a few ideas for options of this feature, but ultimately only focused on issues that were reported. One unexpected result was that I ended up completely reworking how clips were stored in memory for massive performance gains. While I toyed around with an option to draw a scaled image on the popup, I ultimately stopped because of technical problems and no feedback on the subject. I've guestimated that most people only use picture clips in a single program and don't have much need for past picture clips, since this is also my experience.

In the current beta, I do plan on adding more options for the Popup Clip "sets" feature and possibly the Clip Menu submenus. Currently, I've only had one feedback about the grouping feature, but I know from previous emails that more people than expected use a large number of clips on the popup. My current idea for options are the number per set and an option to disable sets. Right now, sets are arbitrarily enabled when more than 22 clips are shown on the popup. I'm toying with the idea of only turning this feature on when the popup won't fit on the screen. I'm also toying with an idea for only adding shortcut keys for the first few Popup Clips, since it's easy to run out of keys to use.

More ArsClip Tweaks

When the current program is set for Clipboard Only mode, there is no visual cue. It can appear that ArsClip is not working. For every other mode, the cue is that a clip is pasted in the target program. To visualize what's happening, the program now shows a quick "Clipboard Only" tooltip when the target program uses this mode.

The Clip Menu, the right-click menu for the popup, has always been awkward. It needs to appear on top, like a popup menu, but a true popup menu would close the main popup. While I do plan on doing more experimenting to come up with a better window, I've updated this current Clip Menu to get rid of the clunky submenus.

When adding a new feature, the user needs some way to know it exists. I tend to not add features that are difficult or impossible to discover in the program. In the current test upload, I've added some preliminary help text to the "Permanent Clips / Macros" window to describe the current set of Commands available.

The Add A Step Problem

In v3.5 of RM, there was a major issue when adding a new step to the Renaming Script. This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that the Default script seems to be doing its job. The bad news is that the error was not caught by a user until after the official release, since the issue only occurred during a specific set of visible conditions.

After already releasing 2 hotfixes today (3.06 and 3.06 B) that only partially fixed the issue, I tracked the error down to a single typo. Version 3.06 C contains the corrected code. Unfortunately, 1000 users already downloaded v3.5 in the past two days.

More Status and Such

Version 3.5 of Rename Master is now an official release. The major feature of this release, beside bug fixes, is the new Swap Step. This makes swapping parts of the filename much easier to understand. I've left the swap example script in the archive just to show how to do more detailed scripting using cut-and-paste type operations. The only idea rattling in my head at this point for RM is a help screen for new users to describe how to work with MP3 and JPEG files, since this is the most common use.

At this point, I've one experimental idea in mind to mess around with for ArsClip. This is the "grouping" idea. I've had a few feedback emails that prove that more than a few people want a lot of popup clips available directly from the popup. Currently, the Popup Clips and the Recently Removed clips can almost function this way.

Basically, when a large number of Popup Clips are available, the program would automatically use expanding menus to display clips 1-20, clips 21-40, etc. What I need to figure out is when to use it and how to split up the group. For example, this could trigger only when the popup is taller than the screen. This feature could also always be on when more than 20 clips are set to display on the popup. Currently, the popup will automatically scroll when the mouse is moved towards the top or bottom of the screen on the popup. There's no visual cue for this event and it's different than the Windows popup, so it's not quite intuitive.

The only usability issue I can think of is that drag re-ordering wouldn't function. I'm guessing this isn't a big issue, if I'm correct that few people use this feature. Also, it would probably be a good idea to automatically remember and show the last group that was expanded. By default the newest clips (1 through X) would be expanded.

Swaps and Whitespace

The current Public Beta of Rename Master adds three new features (mentioned in the post below).

The first feature replaces a complicated operation with a single simple step: the Swap Step. In previous releases of RM, I included an example of how to swap parts of the filename around a dash. Before the Split and Move step was added, this required 3 or more operations to complete and was very complicated. After adding the Split and Move step, I could do this in 1 or 2 operations. While Split and Move is very powerful, it was designed for people that are slightly familiar with Regular Expressions or can understand a similar concept. The new Swap step fixes these problems and addresses the issue with whitespace needing to be trimmed.

The second feature is a folder monitor. If the contents of the folder change (a new, renamed or deleted file/folder), the program will now detect the change and prompt to refresh the File List. This isn't a common problem, but this feature is used by many programs to help prevent errors ahead of time. For example, some text editors will detect when the currently edited file has been changed outside of the program.

The third feature is a rare problem. When leading or trailing whitespace is used in a file name or as an option in the Renaming Script tab, it's almost impossible to see. For example, if you're trying to replace a double space with a single space using the Find and Replace step, the text fields look empty. The fix for this was to simply change the font to underlined when this is detected. There is, however, one very problematic case - a space followed by an underscore. It's impossible to tell the different between the underline and the underscore.

The fourth feature, a whitespace step, is still in the research phase. I'm not sure if this case is common enough to warrant a new renaming step. The "Swap" was an easy addition, because I've had so many question about it in the past.

Changing Gears

Now that ArsClip v4.9 is an official release, I'm getting ready to start up with new features for Rename Master. I'll still be waiting for any new ArsClip issues that require an immediate fix, so work may be delayed until next week.

So far, I've 3 new ideas to design and possibly implement. As mentioned below, the first idea is a "Swap" Step. The second idea is also a new step, one that deals specifically with spaces. The last idea is a feature to monitor the current folder for changes. Once a change is detected, the program will prompt to refresh the current file list. I do have another issue dealing with displaying spaces, but I've not enough ideas to begin work on any testing.

The Beta Audience and Current Status

There's a strange divide between the Rename Master and the ArsClip beta users. Even though RM is downloaded twice as much as AC, the beta versions of AC are downloaded 3 to 5 times as much as the RM betas. Currently, about 100 users will download new test versions of AC. For feedback, it seems the AC audience are mostly long time users and the RM audience is newer users.

For the most part, RM users only perform a single well-known task. The situation is there's a group of files and they want them renamed for readability or for use in another program or system. While the files and the desired result vary tremendously from person to person, the program either does or does not currently have the ability to perform the task. If it can do the task, there is no reason to update or learn anything else about the program. Only once a bug is discovered or a new uncovered task is desired is there a reason to send feedback or update. For example, the "command line" options in RM broke some time ago, but it wasn't until a few days ago that a new user reported the issue. While it's not a popular feature, I know plenty of users use it. This confirms that they don't upgrade often and there's probably little reason to do so if it "just works" for them.

AC users, however, push the program beyond the limits that I've imagined. Some users exclusively used Permanent Clips for canned responses. Some users create complex Permanent Clip Macros that fill in form data in programs. Unlike RM beta users, it seems AC beta users look at new features to see how they can exploit it (in a good way). For example, the recent performance improvements were designed to make it easier for those that use very large clips (like screenshots). Also, the new [MIMIC] command was designed to make it possible for a Permanent Clip to echo text to a program like the command prompt. Unlike file renaming, AC users seem to look at a new problem as see if AC can help solve that problem.

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Current Status

ArsClip: While there are still some research ideas, I've no plans for new features in the queue right now. I may keep this version small, since so much was changed with the clip format. I'm sure there are some issues that exist that haven't been found or reported. Like last time, I'm planning to leave a few days open after the initial release for immediate hotfixes.

Rename Master: I'm currently only working on reported bug fixes until I'm finished with ArsClip.

ArsClip Clips

The final changes are finished for the in-memory clip for performance in Public Beta Test 4. This required a small redesign, but could effect many parts of the program. This includes Popup, Recently Removed, and Clipboard clips shown on the popup and all the routines using these clips (Tooltips, Clip Menu, etc). This means that a slightly longer testing period is expected overall.

I've been toying with showing scaled thumbnails for pictures on the popup, with limited success. This feature may not make it into this beta, unless I can work around some issues. I'm still testing fast ways for drawing pictures on the popup. For those that want the fastest popup possible, the new option to disable picture thumbnails is always going to be fastest.