Research, web page features: 2 suggestion

[mrlowry]

Sorry if this has been covered, but a few things about importing web pages:

1. The feature is great, but if I import a site, I lose the URL of the site. I would like to have a "Open in {default browser}" in the contextual menu for the imported sites. I downloaded one site and can't get to it anymore, and although I can surf it a bit in the context of the program, I don't have the same navigational capabilities as in Safari.

2. I would like to be able to annotate web pages, so that I could keep notes and markup certain web pages for my research.

Hope these are helpful. Thanks!

[KB]

1. In the next version, clicking on a link will open your default browser. I like the contextual menu idea and will add it to the "to do" list.

2. Don't quite know what you mean by this. There will certainly be no way to annotate a web page inline. For this, you should go to Compose View and open the web page and a blank text document alongside one another. Then you can copy and paste from the web page into the text document and annotate to your heart's content.

[mrlowry]

Hey Keith--

1. cool!

2. I should elaborate a bit. I was imagining that the web page I was viewing (via WebKit?) under my "research" section was actually locally stored, working like a web archive. If that's the case, I would find it very handy to annotate it. Obviously, if I tried to do that to a site that's online, I'd imagine the program would simply inform me that the site is online and I can't annotate it--then maybe ask if I'd like to store a local copy and annotate that?

Maybe difficult to do, but that would be a very handy feature. So far, I'm enjoying writing in the program very much! :-)

[KB]

Although the program does store web pages locally, it uses Apple's default viewing system to display them, and there is no easy way I know of to annotate the pages using this system.

*However*, I could include a "Convert to text document" option that would convert web pages to text. If you open an HTML file in TextEdit under Tiger, it makes a pretty good job of it. That way, you could annotate them...

[mrlowry]

I would be for something like that if it didn't lose the page formatting, but I have to say that I love being able to view the pages as html.

You could do it with style sheets and html, possibly some simple javascript to get a pop-up when you hold the mouseover the text. That info could be stored easily in the .webarchive. Of course, it would look and feel a bit different than through the rest of the program, so that would be a drawback.

Of course, this is a wish-list feature, and wouldn't be a deal killer for me.

[amberv]

It seems like it would be a lot easier to just allow notes on a web page object. In fact, I am starting to wonder why everything does not just have notes? I mean, generally you are going to be putting a picture or whatever for a reason, and that reason may not be obvious in a year. It would be nice to be able to explain why it is there, and what bits of it are interesting.

[KB]

Good point. I've added it to the "to do" list as something to look into.

[mrlowry]

I agree with amberv, having notes on a webpage would probably sate me. I could copy and paste notable things and add my thoughts.

[annik]

Yes, yes, YES!!!! please add the ability to see the actual URL after importing the web page, *and* the ability to add notes to these items. :-)

While I've gotten practically *nowhere* on my Nano during the last week, I've given Scrivener a great run doing some research essays the last couple of weeks. I've had to put everything into an actual word processor for final formatting, but I *love* using it to collect and analyse misc. stuff I'm needing to research before writing the document itself.

In the past, I used Framemaker in a similar manner, but as it is no longer available for Mac, that isn't an option. And my version of Framemaker didn't have the ability to bring in webpages for research files, which is proving to be *absolutely fabulous*!!!

As my kids would say, sweet! :-D

[KB]

Hmm... I am currently pondering on the whole "notes for every document" idea and, after much thought, I am not so sure it is such a great idea after all - I will explain why and then would be glad to hear users' thoughts:

The argument in favour of adding the ability to add notes to all document types has been expressed best by amberv and mrlowry - mrlowry first:

I could copy and paste notable things and add my thoughts.

The trouble is that adding notes to supporting documents gets very messy. Suppose that you import a web page. You open it up in Scrivener, open the notes drawer and starting typing away your thoughts and copying and pasting quotes or parts of particular interest. But then what? You switch to Compose mode, open your web page in the top view and create a new document in the bottom, ready to incorporate all of your ideas. But - d'oh! - you can't actually see the notes to the web page whilst you are working on the text document, because the drawer on the right can only show the notes to one document at a time. So all those notes you made can't even be accessed easily while working on another document.

Now, you may say that the solution to that is to rejig the Compose mode interface so that you can see the notes to two documents at any one time. But that is heading down ugly valley - the interface would get horribly cluttered. Imagine two index cards and two sets of notes all trying to cram into one drawer - not good at all.

In fact, the solution is much simpler. The whole reason that Scrivener allows you to import images, web pages, movies etc, is so that you can use them as a reference to your research. So instead of copying and pasting into a notes view, you would copy and paste and add your thoughts to a separate text document. Then, when you come to create the actual text, you just open the supporting text document with all your thoughts in the top pane of Compose mode rather than opening the actual web page or image... And this is why you can have two different documents open next to each other in the first place.

In essence, the notes pane is there so you can make notes about what you want to do with your text document. Having notes panes for other types of documents (excepting perhaps groups) only causes a whole load of problems...

That said, I do think amberv's argument in favour of note panes is valid:

I mean, generally you are going to be putting a picture or whatever for a reason, and that reason may not be obvious in a year. It would be nice to be able to explain why it is there, and what bits of it are interesting.

However, there is no way to force the user only to use the note pane to remind him- or herself of why the document is there. The user could use a notes pane to make lots of notes and then find themselves irritated by the lack of ability to access those notes when editing another document. Anyway, a decent structure in the binder can always tell you why an image is there - by including it in a directory with supporting documents, for instance.

So I am veering against this idea. Though like I say, I would be interested to hear users' thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Keith

[amberv]

I think the best way to "herd" the user into an intended usage is to change the terminology and the visual intent. Perhaps on media, PDF, and web documents, keep the notes area disabled, but leave the index card available. Index cards are a natural way of making notes to yourself -- at least that is a large part of what I use them for. I track references and staple them to original documents all of the time. It is a nice way to remind yourself of details. So the name of the media file is on the heading line, and the default text is changed from "- No Description -" to "- No Comments -".

The form factor of the small card, combined with the slightly altered terminology, would naturally herd the user into keeping things simple and specific to describing what the purpose of the media is.

This would at the least, allow us to remind ourselves of why the media file is there. It would no longer address the issue of annotation, but honestly I think there are better applications (and methods) for this. Using notes was just a bit of a fall-back, because true inline annotation would be a lot of work for you. If you want to do real annotations to a web page, there is an app that does this very nicely (I forget what it is called at the moment, I am pretty good at HTML, so I just annotate the source file itself when I need to), and then when you are done annotating -- dump the result into Scrivener. The same goes for PDF, since we are all using Tiger, just open it up in Preview and you can annotate the document there, then save the copy (or a new one) and drag that into Scrivener. The annotated version is now available for your notes.

The edit process isn't perfect, but frankly, Scrivener is for writing -- annotating research documents, editing images, and such is really out of its realm, I think. Just my opinion. If you want to change an image in Scrivener, you'll have to go through a similar process anyway.

[KB]

I think you hit the nail on the head there. Scrivener is indeed about the writing. Adding fully-fledged annotation features to web documents and PDF documents would be taking it in a different direction. What would be next? Allowing the editing of movies and the touching up of pictures? Before I knew it, my "to do" list would look like this:

* Give full Safari/Firefox capabilities to web view
* Media view doesn't allow editing; needs to do everything iMove does. Fix that!
* Hmm. Implement all PhotoShop features into image view
* There really should be a toaster in there somewhere

And so on.

More seriously, there is also the issue of interface "cleanliness". When you look at a text document in Binder view, the main text looks fine with the notes and index card on the right because text looks natural to us in an elongated rectangle, because that is how we are used to seeing it on the page. Moreover, the text wraps to fit. However, with an image, a movie or a web page (which may have a complicated layout or contain images), squeezing it into space next to a notes panel (even disabled) and index card just doesn't feel right. All that space should be allowed for the image/web view/whatever.

That said, I think that Scrivener should allow for basic index card notes on images/web pages/whatever, just to remind you why it was there. The question is, how to get that into the interface elegantly? Perhaps there needs to be an "info" button on the image, web etc views that will pop up a panel in which you can insert this info? Unlike with text, this isn't really acting as a synopsis, so a different way of entering the info will show the different purpose. (In the next version, comments/synopses appear in tool tips in the outline view, so you would be able to see the reminder just by hovering your mouse over the doc.)

Any more thoughts would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Keith

[amberv]

By the way, somewhat off-topic, but I came across a really cool extension for Firefox. If you use that browser, you can install this tool which will allow you to archive web pages easily into its own offline storage system. Once it has been saved there, it provides a number of annotation type tools that you can perform on the page. You can select some text, and highlight it with a colour, or insert a block of text. Once you have commented on the page, you can then save it out and import it into Scrivener.

The extension is located here: amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/

It is not quite as "slick" as another tool that I came across for the Mac, but this one is free, and the other was kind of expensive if I recall correctly.