Dive Log DT Fixes and Nice to Haves

[mattgrace]

After manually entering 258 dives and 126 dive sites with GPS coordinates, here are a couple of things that could be fixed and a few things that would be nice to have:

FIXES

1. When duplicating a dive, the dive shop does not copy over and the field is left blank.

2. On the Details tab, Max Depth and Dive Time both have a zero already entered in the field. If you tab over to that field, the zero is highlighted and you can enter your depth or dive time with no problem. But if you just click in that field (which I normally did), the zero is not highlighted and any depth you enter will have an additional zero on the end (my stats showed a dive to 830 feet which I was pretty sure was incorrect).

NICE TO HAVE

1. On the dives page, it would be nice to be able to customize the column headings to display different information or only certain information.

2. If possible, make all the field editable all the time instead of having to click on edit each time.

3. It would also be nice if the program reopened in its previous state. If I move a column to hide the time of the dive or if I collapse the import options, the program always opens to its default settings.

Thanks for your time and thanks for such a great program. The integration with my iPhone and iPad are great.

[support]

After manually entering 258 dives and 126 dive sites with GPS coordinates, here are a couple of things that could be fixed and a few things that would be nice to have:

I think that gives you some "cred"

1. When duplicating a dive, the dive shop does not copy over and the field is left blank.

Yup, you are so right. This is a bug. It just got overlooked. Will be fixed in the next release.

2. On the Details tab, Max Depth and Dive Time both have a zero already entered in the field. If you tab over to that field, the zero is highlighted and you can enter your depth or dive time with no problem. But if you just click in that field (which I normally did), the zero is not highlighted and any depth you enter will have an additional zero on the end (my stats showed a dive to 830 feet which I was pretty sure was incorrect).

This is going to be a longer answer than you expected. Apple takes user interface issues very seriously and they have a document that outlines what developers should do as far as user interfaces are concerned. It's called "Human Interface Guidelines" or more affectionately, "The HIG". The concept is good for users because it means that no matter the application you are running, they all behave essentially the same so no surprises, easier to use, etc etc. So for any MacOS application, if you single click in a field, it will insert your cursor where you click. Take your Safari URL line above. If you single click anywhere inside it, you will insert your cursor in the line. Double click selects a word. Triple click selects the whole line. So Dive Log DT does the same thing in all of it's text fields. This is the default behavior that Apple gives you and there would need to be a really good reason to try and change it.

One "power user" thing that you can do is tab to the field instead. That way you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard and can just keep typing. When you "tab" to a field, all the previous text is selected so that when you start typing, that old text is completely replaced by what you're typing. That's another Apple default. (Also, some fields have auto complete so if you type an escape character in it, it will give you a list of options you've used before. eg: try this in Dive Suit)

One thing that you *can* do with eg: the Safari URL line is click on the border around field (wait till your cursor changes from a carrot to a pointer and then click). This selects the entire line with a single click. There are currently no "borders" in Dive Log DT so that makes that operation rather difficult it turns out. I'm testing adding these borders to Dive Log DT so that it will be possible to do this, and hopefully it'll be in the next release.

1. On the dives page, it would be nice to be able to customize the column headings to display different information or only certain information.

Yeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh. Honestly, that's hard to implement so it may not happen very soon. But what other fields would you like to see there?

2. If possible, make all the field editable all the time instead of having to click on edit each time.

If you mean for a particular dive, you can go between tabs and stay in Editing mode. You only exit Editing mode if you change dives or change panels. If you mean that you'd like to always like to be in Editing mode all the time, ie: no such thing as Editing Mode, then this is a conscious decision that we made at the start. For applications that are all about viewing data, it's too easy to accidentally change data while you are looking around if they are always editable. The other thing that that may imply is "Save Panels" so if something changes, the user needs to actively *Save* their changes or you need to put a popup up that says "Did you want to Save first?" or something like that. We decided that we would *always* save so that the user didn't have to remember to save or lose changes.

3. It would also be nice if the program reopened in its previous state. If I move a column to hide the time of the dive or if I collapse the import options, the program always opens to its default settings.

I will look at saving the column ordering between application launches. The latter preference setting is already done and will be in the next release.

Thanks for your time and thanks for such a great program. The integration with my iPhone and iPad are great.

Thanks for taking the time to give us feedback. We really appreciate it and it gives us insight into what our customers want and how to prioritize our development.

Cheers,
Janice
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[mattgrace]

Thanks for your response. I'm very familiar with the click, double click and triple click methods, but maybe you could just remove the zero from the box and there would not be any issues about having to tab around everywhere. And regarding tab use, on the Locations page when you create a new location, it only tabs between the site name and the max depth, it does not go down to the lat/longs.

With regard to customizing the column headings, primarily I would like to rearrange the current information and not necessarily display different information. I always hide the time column so if the program opened in its previous state that would be great.

Thanks again.