tag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:/discussions/suggestions/991-clarifying-slide-showThe Mental Faculty: Discussion 2018-10-19T02:24:05Ztag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-14T15:28:36Z2011-11-14T15:28:36ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>Hi David,</p>
<p>There is an intro video on our site, but it doesn't go very
deep.</p>
<p>You may be getting confused because you are trying to map the
new slideshows to the old ones. They are very different. Previously
slideshows were basically disposable, though you could sometimes
resume them. Now, the current slideshow continues to exist, even
between quits, until you make a new slideshow. You only replace a
slideshow when you choose a New Slideshow menu or button. When you
select the second tab at the top, you are simply switching to the
slideshow mode, not creating a new slideshow.</p>
<p>So it isn't really that complicated: there is only one slideshow
at a time, and you can replace it by using New Slideshow.</p>
<p>We have a series of standard slideshows built in. They are
designed to make it quick and easy to make a slideshow, and cover
the most important cases. If you are a control freak, and want to
configure other aspects, you can use the Custom… option, but
it takes longer, and is more of an advanced feature.</p>
<p>There is a reason why we don't allow you to change settings
during a slideshow: the settings are purely for creating the
slideshow. Changing them half way wouldn't make any sense. You
would effectively be making a new slideshow.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.<br>
Kind regards,<br>
Drew</p></div>drewmccormacktag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-14T17:00:43Z2011-11-14T17:00:43ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>Hi Drew,</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification… I think I'd understood most
of that.</p>
<p>But I'm not sure it's quite as simple to a new and in my case
possibly stupid user as to someone who's been living and breathing
it for several months…. For a start, you've chosen the 'most
important cases', which is great, but how do people know whether
they're appropriate in individual circumstances if you don't make
it clear what the defaults are?</p>
<p>Secondly: when I first chose 'New Slideshow / Notes in Selected
Stacks", I'm fairly sure I was given the settings box and chose
various options, including 'Default Grade is Wrong", "Recently
Incorrect First" etc. Those were my best guesses at the time as to
the options I'd like for that occasion. Now, after some use, I'm
not so sure. I'd like to revisit them and perhaps tweak them, for
example, to change the presentation order. But no matter which
stack I choose, even newly created ones, I don't seem to be able to
get the settings dialogue again when I select 'Notes in Selected
Stacks'. That's quite apart from the fact that I might want
different settings for different stacks.</p>
<p>Wait a minute - I've just gone through everything again…
I'd missed that you can reset the settings, but you have to be in
slideshow mode to do it. Click the 'restart icon' (circular arrow)
and you'll be given the settings dialogue. The options you choose
will then persist until you reset them again.</p>
<p>So you can change the defaults whilst in slide show mode, but
not before you select the new slideshow. That's sort of OK, but
it's not what I expected (my fault, no doubt).</p>
<p>BTW, I've included my sudden realisation of what to do above,
rather than rewriting the email, because I think it shows the
thought processes of a new user trying to get to grips with
something that doesn't work the way they expect.</p>
<p>The manual says under Configuring Slideshows "You can customize
your slideshows in many different ways, including which notes to
include, what order they should be shown, and how the facets of
each note should be ordered. Usually, once you have settled on
settings you like, you can leave them relatively unchanged when
starting new slideshows."</p>
<p>It doesn't really say that you can only do this from the
slideshow mode after you restart the slideshow. (Or does choosing a
Custom slideshow change some defaults too? It's not clear.)</p>
<p>I do think it would really help people if you made the process
more explicit in the manual - a walkthrough with pictures / video
really would be helpful - and possibly a note to say that it
doesn't work the same way as before. And I do still think it would
be useful to display the current settings somewhere, instead of
having to start a new slideshow to find out what they were.</p>
<p>Many thanks</p>
<p>David</p></div>David Bertenshawtag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-14T18:34:44Z2011-11-14T18:34:44ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>You can change slideshow settings by refreshing the slideshow in
the slideshow mode, as you found, or by choosing a Custom…
slideshow. I think it should be pretty obvious that if you choose
'Custom', you are saying you want to customize the settings.</p>
<p>We may well make a series of screencasts, but the help pages in
apps have to follow a certain format, and don't usually include
tutorials or walkthroughs. We may put that on the web site.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback.<br>
Kind regards,<br>
Drew</p></div>drewmccormacktag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-14T18:57:52Z2011-11-14T18:57:52ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>Hi Drew,</p>
<p>It's obvious that 'Custom' will customise something, but what
exactly?</p>
<p>When I looked at it, I could see several possibilities:</p>
<p>Custom is a one-off thing. When you choose a New Slide option
the custom changes are dropped in favour of presets.<br>
Custom changes the defaults for some settings (which ones?) for the
previously selected New Slide Option<br>
Custom changes the defaults for some settings (which ones?) for all
New Slide Options</p>
<p>I suspect the answer isn't the first one, but even after your
reply, I still don't know which settings persist or whether the
second or third option is correct.</p>
<p>The point is that there are several 'obvious' things a
Custom… dialogue can do. You've made several no doubt very
sensible decisions and assumptions in designing the program, but
they're not the only ones that could have been made, and unless you
tell us, it can be quite confusing!</p>
<p>I'm not being difficult, Drew: I tried very hard to understand
it before posting my query and I read the manual a lot. I just
don't think it's as intuitive to users as it is to you who've been
so steeped in it.</p>
<p>No problem with a walkthrough being on the web site rather than
in the manual - perhaps a link in the Help Menu as well?</p>
<p>Regards</p>
<p>David</p></div>David Bertenshawtag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-15T07:46:55Z2011-11-15T07:46:55ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>Hi David,</p>
<p>I do think you are obsessing on it too much. We persist every
setting that we logically can. If you select a standard slideshow,
certain settings change to match that slideshow, but we change the
minimum possible.</p>
<p>In general, basic settings change a lot, and advanced settings
don't, but I'm not sure if that holds in every case.</p>
<p>We designed the app so that you wouldn't have to think about
this. If you want total control, use the custom option.</p>
<p>We can think about whether the table in Help can include a
column for persistence, but I actually think this will just confuse
most people.</p>
<p>Best to choose the slideshow based on your goals. You don't need
to know the ugly details. Believe me, they are ugly, and that's why
we don't want to describe them in intricate detail.</p>
<p>Kind regards,<br>
Drew</p></div>drewmccormacktag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-15T09:13:05Z2011-11-15T09:13:05ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>HI Drew,</p>
<p>I don't think I'm obsessing, I'm trying to help make the program
a little more intuitive for new users, based on my experience. I've
gone into some detail simply because our discussion has moved on,
not because I think all the details should go into the manual. You
keep saying things like "Custom... should be obvious" and I'm
trying to show you the assumptions you've made aren't necessarily
clear from the outside, which can lead to confusion when things
don't happen as the user expects.</p>
<p>Basically, I started off with your 'just press the button'
approach, and it didn't do quite what I thought it would. So I read
the manual, and that didn't quite explain what I was seeing.</p>
<p>It would have saved me some time at the beginning if there had
been a couple of sentences explaining the concepts a little more
clearly. You'd done a good job boiling it down in some of these
posts - why not put them in the manual. All I'm suggesting is a
couple of changes in the Slideshow page, after the paragraph
beginning "To start a slideshow…."</p>
<p>Something like (obviously to be tidied up…)</p>
<p>"Please note: Slide shows work differently from previous
versions. There is only one slide show at any one time, and you
will always return to it when you enter Slide Show mode, no matter
which stack you are currently viewing in Library mode. If you want
to change the settings for the slide show - for example, to study a
different stack, or to change the order of the cards - you must
start a new one, using the Study / New Slideshow menu (also
available from the icon in the bottom centre of the screen in
Library Mode).</p>
<p>"The New Slide Show menu gives you several pre-set options for
the most common cases, but you can make more detailed changes using
the custom option. You can also access the settings dialogue from
the 'Restart' icon in Slide Show mode. Changes you make in the
settings dialogue will then become the defaults for any new slide
shows until you change them again. Your new settings will also
affect the pre-sets, unless this would clash with the logic of the
pre-set. Please see our website for a short walkthrough of setting
up different slideshows for the sample cases."</p>
<p>BTW, the next sentence in the manual, "When you begin a new
slide show, you are presented with a settings panel." was the one
which caused the most confusion to me at the beginning. It's
misleading - you only seem to get the settings box the FIRST time
you create a new slideshow. Every time after that, even if I
changed stacks, it went straight into the show itself. That's why I
started wondering how to make changes and what the relationship was
between Custom and the pre-sets.</p>
<p>Regards</p>
<p>David</p></div>David Bertenshawtag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-15T09:53:36Z2011-11-15T09:53:36ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>Hi David,<br>
I think a lot of the info you mention is already in the help pages.
I suspect you only looked at one or two pages about slideshows, but
there is quite a bit there. For example</p>
<p>"To start a slideshow, you enter the study mode by going to the
second tab in the toolbar at the top of the main window. Once a new
slideshow has started, Mental Case ensures it remains in existence
until you finish it or choose to start a new slideshow, even if you
quit and relaunch the application. You are free to move in and out
of the slideshow as you choose. Your progress will be stored so you
can continue at any time."</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>"You can customize your slideshows in many different ways,
including which notes to include, what order they should be shown,
and how the facets of each note should be ordered. Usually, once
you have settled on settings you like, you can leave them
relatively unchanged when starting new slideshows."</p>
<p>There is a page that you get to from the main page that shows
lists the main slideshow topics.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.<br>
Kind regards,<br>
Drew</p></div>drewmccormacktag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-15T10:21:59Z2011-11-15T10:21:59ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>Drew,</p>
<p>Of course I read those paragraphs - I've read all the slideshow
pages several times. But they're on different pages and they don't
really explain the behaviour I found. To explain why would get me
accused of being obsessive again… ;-)</p>
<p>I've tried in previous posts tried to explain why it caused me a
lot of confusion - I read the help files and actually reinstalled
the program (having wiped out the caches and preferences just to
reset everything back to zero) to try and make the program follow
what the help file says should happen (and it still didn't). I've
suggested a slight tweak to the manual wording that would have
removed that confusion for me and may help others in future.</p>
<p>Bottom line: it's your program, I'm just trying to help…
;-)</p>
<p>Best wishes</p>
<p>David</p></div>David Bertenshawtag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-15T10:43:54Z2011-11-15T10:43:54ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>OK, thanks for pointing out the problem in the wording. That
actually does derive from earlier betas where there were no
standard slideshows. We'll fix that.</p>
<p>Kind regards,<br>
Drew</p></div>drewmccormacktag:mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com,2010-10-19:Comment/113951632011-11-20T09:41:59Z2011-11-20T09:41:59ZClarifying Slide Show<div><p>Hi Drew,</p>
<p>Just installed version 2.1 and seen you've updated the Manual. I
think that makes it a lot clearer, and thanks for listening!</p>
<p>David</p></div>David