Scapple Beta - New Users Please Read

[jennydiski]

I've just found Scrapple beta, and I'm in love. It's simple and flexible and exactly what I want to muck around with for thinking ideas through. Thanks so much.

[KB]

I've just found Scrapple beta, and I'm in love. It's simple and flexible and exactly what I want to muck around with for thinking ideas through. Thanks so much.

Great, thanks Jenny! (And nice to see you around these parts again.)

[maza]

To piggy-back off of others, I'm so in love! This has given me so many new and fresh ideas for my manuscript I can hardly type fast enough. Thanks, and I will def be buying.

LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!

And that's just the beginning of my second page.

[KB]

LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!

Wow, that looks really cool! Thanks for sharing your screenshot!

[ProfessorTom]

I can't open the Inspector. When I use the keyboard shortcut or click the option in the menu, nothing happens. I expect that there will be some kind of window open like Page's Inspector?

For what it's worth, I'm running OS X 10.8.2. I did put the app into fullscreen mode. Can't remember if I had attempted to open the Inspector previously or not. Tried opening the Inspector in Fullscreen mode and got bumpkis. Left fullscreen mode and still nothing when using either the keyboard shortcut or the menu. Tried closing the app and restarting. Still nothing. Tried selecting a note and then opening the Inspector. Still nothing.



Addendum: It looks like the only way to change the background (yellow) color is through the Inspector. Perhaps that option should be in some other place as well; because I can't open the Inspector, I can't change the background color.

[ProfessorTom]

New bug: On page 17 of the User's Guide, the word "and" has an extra "d" on the end in the first line of the Note under the iCloud heading.

[KB]

New bug: On page 17 of the User's Guide, the word "and" has an extra "d" on the end in the first line of the Note under the iCloud heading.

Thanks! The manual hasn't been proof-read at all yet, actually, because it isn't even finished yet, so there are bound to be a fair few typos and errors in there. I'll finish it off and get the team to proof-read it once the beta testing is further along (although I have fixed the typo you picked out of course).

All the best,
Keith

[Sean Coffee]

Keith:

Great job! Your refinements all make perfect sense. I was up and running with Scapple right away, and (as with Scrivener) I found that when I needed a bit of complexity, it was there waiting for me.

One little quibble: When you change the font size of a note in the inspector, then apply a Note Style through the contextual menu (like "Red Text"), the font size jumps back to the default 12 pt. Not preserving that font size pretty much obviates the one-touch simplicity of using a contextual menu to make, for example, a bunch of headers in red.

This problem persists when using Apply Note Style in combination — if I want to apply Title Text and Red Text, it's an either-or proposition — I can use the contextual menu to make a note red, or make it Title sized, but not both (without going into the Inspector.)

Not sure if this is a bug or a quibble. It might just be me, but I always think of contextual menu items as quick, stay-on-the-main-page shortcuts.

(Note: The Steve Jobs answer to this issue, of course, is, "We did a lot of research, and we discovered that our users don't need big, red notes." )

[ProfessorTom]

Hey Sean,

What version of Scapple are you running? I can't get the Inspector to open in 0.9 (2110).

[ptram]

Just a suggestion to help 'slow' people like me: add a 'Plain Text' note style, to return to the default note style after having applied one of the other styles. Yes, I know you can just:

1) Create a new 'dummy' note,
2) Create a new 'Plain Text' style from the selection.

But it took me a bit of time to figure how to remove a style, and maybe having this base style would help.

Paolo

[Sean Coffee]

ProfessorTom: 0.9, same as you. Opens fine for me.

[KB]

Just a suggestion to help 'slow' people like me: add a 'Plain Text' note style, to return to the default note style after having applied one of the other styles. Yes, I know you can just:

1) Create a new 'dummy' note,
2) Create a new 'Plain Text' style from the selection.

But it took me a bit of time to figure how to remove a style, and maybe having this base style would help.

Paolo

This has already been added for the next beta - a lot of users have requested this. Thanks!

[ProfessorTom]

Not to be a dick, but I can't open the Inspector on my Retina Macbook Pro. I even removed the app from the Applications folder, re-downloaded and reinstalled. I can, however, see the inspector on my 27" iMac.

[xiamenese]

Have you tried going into what used to be Exposé mode — three finger upward swipe — and seeing if on your Retina display it's coming up hidden by something else? Or could it for some reason be coming up but off the screen area?

Just wondering.

Mark

[KB]

Not to be a dick, but I can't open the Inspector on my Retina Macbook Pro. I even removed the app from the Applications folder, re-downloaded and reinstalled. I can, however, see the inspector on my 27" iMac.

How does reporting a bug make you a dick? I'm confused about that one! And there is still no console error anywhere in /Applications/Console.app? The inspector opens fine on my MacBook Pro Retina (well, as fine as anything can open on it - the screen has a loose connection so that everything is washed out and in inverted colours - it's being picked up for a trip to AppleCare tomorrow).

Have you tried going into what used to be Exposé mode — three finger upward swipe — and seeing if on your Retina display it's coming up hidden by something else? Or could it for some reason be coming up but off the screen area?

Unfortunately this won't help because the inspector is a panel, and panels don't get shown by Exposé. Scapple should move the inspector into the visible screen area when it's closed and reopened even if it did get moved off the screen area, though.