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JP
Mar 26, 2024, 12:31:09 PM3/26/24
to Session Buddy Discussion
Hi Hans
Let me start on a positive note and start by praising the work you put into developing this extension over the years and that even in the midst of your professional tasks, apparently, you still managed to keep it alive. And also for being able to keep an open mind towards constructive criticism.
I have been a user of session buddy since almost the beginning, when it was released on the Chrome store, and it has been an important ally in the way I organize my browsing sessions, and I even made a donation a few years ago.
The initial state of version 4 appears to be a little devoid of important features that existed in the previous one. And from what I saw the launch was a little rocky. That's why it can't be stressed enough how important pre-launch testing with users/testers (alpha, beta, canary, ...) is.
Maybe in hindsight you could have had a separate release and kept v3 available for now as well, in the chrome store; but hey, what's done is done. Instead, let's look forward, because v4 is a very solid start with its new foundations. A little bit rough and unpolished in terms of features, but still solid, nonetheless.
I think that you have shown openness to contributions, so that the community can do localizations and that is why I would like to make myself available to carry out the localization in Portuguese, which is my main language, if you consider it appropriate.
Let me also mention that I will be able to make another donation, after I have a clearer idea on the direction of the extension's development.
Having said that, I would like to address what I think are some issues with this new release; and I would like to express from now on my desire to always maintain a cordial and constructive communication, and anything I express here will never be on a basis of personal outrage, as I don't even know you personally. And I also think it's possible to always have a civilized talk.
I know that currently you have a lot on your plate but, nevertheless, I would like to point out what I think may be necessary to fix, add or even rethink, wherever relevant.
Minor tweaks
****************
I would like to start by pointing out small things that I think are urgent to address, low in complexity and, therefore, easy and quick to deploy.
1) A lot of times the browser crashes or I close the browser abruptly but don't open it again immediately, sometimes I just even do it on another day. And so, with v4, I often end up forgetting to save the previous session which, despite being saved in history, ends up in a place that is even a more temporary and hidden location than the "previous sessions" in v3 which I made use extensively as a buffer area until not saving them permanently.
*** Solution: An option (toggleable in settings) to save "browser closed" entries not only in the "history" section but also in "collections", when the browser is closed/crashes; the session's title could be in the same style as they were in the "previous sessions" of v3 (date and time).
In this way a compromise is maintained between history's "time travel" purpose and a more permanent safeguard of the previous sessions. In the future, an idea is that when you have implemented tags/labels you can also append the "browser closed session" tag (or something like that) to those sessions.
2) I am aware that for now the Chrome API does not allow reading windows' names assigned through the browser interface. However, I think it would be a good idea to also be able to change windows' names of the current session (Now) in Session Buddy, it would be extremely useful and practical. Whenever a session is saved or overwritten, the names can already be assigned beforehand, and kept throughout the session, and you can save them again and again already catalogued.
3) In v3 it was possible to show the date of each collection, on the sessions/collections list, as standard, relative and custom. Now in v4 you can only view it as relative. Relative has very little accuracy. I think a lot of people would much prefer other ways to view the date. I much preferred the standard or some other custom style one.
*** Solution: Bring back that feature.
4) Clicking in a window title or a link title it selects it. But, if one clicks in other window title or link title the selection is reset. Specifically, if you click on a window title then on another only the second one will be selected. I now that you can make use of the Ctrl key. But again, this is a windows file explorer paradigm. It's a little cumbersome to achieve a selection successfully using a touch screen, just to name a use case.
*** Solution: Let the user click and select freely full windows or partially.
When a title of a tab is clicked the selection should be kept, whether you click other tab title or other window title.
When the title of a windows is clicked you should assume that all tabs are selected and so have all of the check marks of that window's tabs' active. And never reset the selection if the title of other window is clicked but instead assume that the user also wants to add that window to the selection. Then, you can also unselect individual tabs from the full windows selections.
5) When importing a v3 session you chose to directly insert the "previous sessions" into the history list. Now, all imported "previous sessions", where I already had give titles to some of their windows, lost all of those titles because the history list does not support windows' names/titles.
And on top of that, those old "previous sessions" now reside in an area (history) where it is not possible to perform a multiple save, and therefore to save them in the collections it is necessary to do so one by one.
*** Solution: The ideal would be, when performing an import from v3, to ask the user, perhaps through a checkbox in the import dialogue, if they want the old "previous sessions" to be placed in the collections list instead of history. This way, the relevant sessions that users had in "previous sessions" would be placed in collections and thus saved. Once again, these "previous" sessions would maintain the title they had in the v3 listing, the title based on the timestamp.
6) Introduce buttons for "unselecting all" and "invert the selection"
After starting a selection those two options should be available in the interface.
I think that a selection shouldn't be reset just by clicking outside the area of the selectable items. This is very error prone and leads to a lot of frustration. A lot of times I have a complex selection already in place with several different tabs and windows selected and inadvertently I click on a blank space and the selection is immediately trashed. It's discouraging. I get that you are using the windows file explorer paradigm for the selections, but this is not windows file explorer and I think that web browsing paradigms should be used instead, like the one I propose.
As for the "invert selection" option: I think it is very beneficial in multiple use cases, for instance, when you want to select most of the windows except a couple of them. For that matter, you only select two windows and then select "invert selection".
*** Solution:
The button to reset the selection (unselect all) could be conveniently placed at the top right of the interface next to the save button.
The "invert selection" button could be placed next to the aforementioned "unselect all" button and/or on the right click menu.
7) Ability to filter duplicates only from a window or a selected set of windows
Selecting duplicates session/collection wise is useful. But sometimes you want to have a much granular control on where to apply the duplicates filter. Sometimes there are windows where you want to keep duplicate links.
8) Should be possible to "Unify Folders" not only for a full collection but also for a given selection.
9) Tab count should always be visible and not only when the window title is overed.
Other more complex features
***********************************
a) For now, the collections' list is being sorted by "modification date". But I think it would also be interesting to sort it according to other criteria, for instance “title” and “date of creation”. The latter would be extremely important, because sometimes it is needed historical context of when some collection(s) was(were) added to the list.
*** Solution: A sorting feature for the collections list should be devised
b) Session Buddy v3 had the ability to export and import multiple complete sessions, in multiple formats, and the ability to do it just by using the clipboard.
Now with v4 there is no ability to export except to a file and furthermore, when copying, it is not possible to paste in another session buddy instance in another browser, because the paste is not carried out using the information placed on the clipboard but through any internal process and data structure; And on top of that, we can only copy a bunch of links without their respective windows and sessions. And it is not possible, for instance, to import 'plain text' links. This was all possible with v3 and was huge.
*** Solution: Bring back that feature from v3. That was an extraordinary feature. Being able to select multiple sessions, then select "export", "copy to clipboard", and then on another browser - another session buddy instance - you could easily and quickly have everything you copied before. You could even paste it directly to an email or an opened editor to change something on the fly and then easily (re)import it.
c) Cut-and-paste or 'Send links to' new or existing collection / new or existing window
Adding the ability to copy and paste links between windows/folders and/or sessions/collections was a feature I had long desired. Although it is still a little clunky and has room for improvement it is a good first step.
I think that you should also consider to devise the ability to cut-and-paste to a collection / window. There are more times I want to move links than those that I just want to copy them between elements.
*** Solution: This could be achieved by a new menu item (cut). Or, additionally, with a new feature of dragging-and-dropping a selection to a new or existing collection / new or existing window.
You could also implement it as a 'send to' feature. A good idea is how it is done in an old extension called Cluster (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/cluster-window-tab-manage/aadahadfdmiibmdhfmpbeeebejmjnkef) if you want to take a look. But it's just a suggestion.
d) Tags/Labels and nested Tags/Labels
This feature speaks for itself. Is one of the most important ones to have when you need to deal with organizing multiple objects, lists, etc. and really helps for them to be categorized.
e) Some sort of undo is very much needed. You can even make use of history to save previous collection states when some changes happen.
f) Session/Collections URLs
In v3 you could link directly to a session. Extremely useful.
g) The Collections list should show total tab count for each collection, like in v3.
h) Firefox version :)
Now, I will have a go with the new 4.0.2 version, when available, and then, eventually, report back about the new search functions and fixes and other relevant issues.
Thank you for you time, Hans.
JP
Let me start on a positive note and start by praising the work you put into developing this extension over the years and that even in the midst of your professional tasks, apparently, you still managed to keep it alive. And also for being able to keep an open mind towards constructive criticism.
I have been a user of session buddy since almost the beginning, when it was released on the Chrome store, and it has been an important ally in the way I organize my browsing sessions, and I even made a donation a few years ago.
The initial state of version 4 appears to be a little devoid of important features that existed in the previous one. And from what I saw the launch was a little rocky. That's why it can't be stressed enough how important pre-launch testing with users/testers (alpha, beta, canary, ...) is.
Maybe in hindsight you could have had a separate release and kept v3 available for now as well, in the chrome store; but hey, what's done is done. Instead, let's look forward, because v4 is a very solid start with its new foundations. A little bit rough and unpolished in terms of features, but still solid, nonetheless.
I think that you have shown openness to contributions, so that the community can do localizations and that is why I would like to make myself available to carry out the localization in Portuguese, which is my main language, if you consider it appropriate.
Let me also mention that I will be able to make another donation, after I have a clearer idea on the direction of the extension's development.
Having said that, I would like to address what I think are some issues with this new release; and I would like to express from now on my desire to always maintain a cordial and constructive communication, and anything I express here will never be on a basis of personal outrage, as I don't even know you personally. And I also think it's possible to always have a civilized talk.
I know that currently you have a lot on your plate but, nevertheless, I would like to point out what I think may be necessary to fix, add or even rethink, wherever relevant.
Minor tweaks
****************
I would like to start by pointing out small things that I think are urgent to address, low in complexity and, therefore, easy and quick to deploy.
1) A lot of times the browser crashes or I close the browser abruptly but don't open it again immediately, sometimes I just even do it on another day. And so, with v4, I often end up forgetting to save the previous session which, despite being saved in history, ends up in a place that is even a more temporary and hidden location than the "previous sessions" in v3 which I made use extensively as a buffer area until not saving them permanently.
*** Solution: An option (toggleable in settings) to save "browser closed" entries not only in the "history" section but also in "collections", when the browser is closed/crashes; the session's title could be in the same style as they were in the "previous sessions" of v3 (date and time).
In this way a compromise is maintained between history's "time travel" purpose and a more permanent safeguard of the previous sessions. In the future, an idea is that when you have implemented tags/labels you can also append the "browser closed session" tag (or something like that) to those sessions.
2) I am aware that for now the Chrome API does not allow reading windows' names assigned through the browser interface. However, I think it would be a good idea to also be able to change windows' names of the current session (Now) in Session Buddy, it would be extremely useful and practical. Whenever a session is saved or overwritten, the names can already be assigned beforehand, and kept throughout the session, and you can save them again and again already catalogued.
3) In v3 it was possible to show the date of each collection, on the sessions/collections list, as standard, relative and custom. Now in v4 you can only view it as relative. Relative has very little accuracy. I think a lot of people would much prefer other ways to view the date. I much preferred the standard or some other custom style one.
*** Solution: Bring back that feature.
4) Clicking in a window title or a link title it selects it. But, if one clicks in other window title or link title the selection is reset. Specifically, if you click on a window title then on another only the second one will be selected. I now that you can make use of the Ctrl key. But again, this is a windows file explorer paradigm. It's a little cumbersome to achieve a selection successfully using a touch screen, just to name a use case.
*** Solution: Let the user click and select freely full windows or partially.
When a title of a tab is clicked the selection should be kept, whether you click other tab title or other window title.
When the title of a windows is clicked you should assume that all tabs are selected and so have all of the check marks of that window's tabs' active. And never reset the selection if the title of other window is clicked but instead assume that the user also wants to add that window to the selection. Then, you can also unselect individual tabs from the full windows selections.
5) When importing a v3 session you chose to directly insert the "previous sessions" into the history list. Now, all imported "previous sessions", where I already had give titles to some of their windows, lost all of those titles because the history list does not support windows' names/titles.
And on top of that, those old "previous sessions" now reside in an area (history) where it is not possible to perform a multiple save, and therefore to save them in the collections it is necessary to do so one by one.
*** Solution: The ideal would be, when performing an import from v3, to ask the user, perhaps through a checkbox in the import dialogue, if they want the old "previous sessions" to be placed in the collections list instead of history. This way, the relevant sessions that users had in "previous sessions" would be placed in collections and thus saved. Once again, these "previous" sessions would maintain the title they had in the v3 listing, the title based on the timestamp.
6) Introduce buttons for "unselecting all" and "invert the selection"
After starting a selection those two options should be available in the interface.
I think that a selection shouldn't be reset just by clicking outside the area of the selectable items. This is very error prone and leads to a lot of frustration. A lot of times I have a complex selection already in place with several different tabs and windows selected and inadvertently I click on a blank space and the selection is immediately trashed. It's discouraging. I get that you are using the windows file explorer paradigm for the selections, but this is not windows file explorer and I think that web browsing paradigms should be used instead, like the one I propose.
As for the "invert selection" option: I think it is very beneficial in multiple use cases, for instance, when you want to select most of the windows except a couple of them. For that matter, you only select two windows and then select "invert selection".
*** Solution:
The button to reset the selection (unselect all) could be conveniently placed at the top right of the interface next to the save button.
The "invert selection" button could be placed next to the aforementioned "unselect all" button and/or on the right click menu.
7) Ability to filter duplicates only from a window or a selected set of windows
Selecting duplicates session/collection wise is useful. But sometimes you want to have a much granular control on where to apply the duplicates filter. Sometimes there are windows where you want to keep duplicate links.
8) Should be possible to "Unify Folders" not only for a full collection but also for a given selection.
9) Tab count should always be visible and not only when the window title is overed.
Other more complex features
***********************************
a) For now, the collections' list is being sorted by "modification date". But I think it would also be interesting to sort it according to other criteria, for instance “title” and “date of creation”. The latter would be extremely important, because sometimes it is needed historical context of when some collection(s) was(were) added to the list.
*** Solution: A sorting feature for the collections list should be devised
b) Session Buddy v3 had the ability to export and import multiple complete sessions, in multiple formats, and the ability to do it just by using the clipboard.
Now with v4 there is no ability to export except to a file and furthermore, when copying, it is not possible to paste in another session buddy instance in another browser, because the paste is not carried out using the information placed on the clipboard but through any internal process and data structure; And on top of that, we can only copy a bunch of links without their respective windows and sessions. And it is not possible, for instance, to import 'plain text' links. This was all possible with v3 and was huge.
*** Solution: Bring back that feature from v3. That was an extraordinary feature. Being able to select multiple sessions, then select "export", "copy to clipboard", and then on another browser - another session buddy instance - you could easily and quickly have everything you copied before. You could even paste it directly to an email or an opened editor to change something on the fly and then easily (re)import it.
c) Cut-and-paste or 'Send links to' new or existing collection / new or existing window
Adding the ability to copy and paste links between windows/folders and/or sessions/collections was a feature I had long desired. Although it is still a little clunky and has room for improvement it is a good first step.
I think that you should also consider to devise the ability to cut-and-paste to a collection / window. There are more times I want to move links than those that I just want to copy them between elements.
*** Solution: This could be achieved by a new menu item (cut). Or, additionally, with a new feature of dragging-and-dropping a selection to a new or existing collection / new or existing window.
You could also implement it as a 'send to' feature. A good idea is how it is done in an old extension called Cluster (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/cluster-window-tab-manage/aadahadfdmiibmdhfmpbeeebejmjnkef) if you want to take a look. But it's just a suggestion.
d) Tags/Labels and nested Tags/Labels
This feature speaks for itself. Is one of the most important ones to have when you need to deal with organizing multiple objects, lists, etc. and really helps for them to be categorized.
e) Some sort of undo is very much needed. You can even make use of history to save previous collection states when some changes happen.
f) Session/Collections URLs
In v3 you could link directly to a session. Extremely useful.
g) The Collections list should show total tab count for each collection, like in v3.
h) Firefox version :)
Now, I will have a go with the new 4.0.2 version, when available, and then, eventually, report back about the new search functions and fixes and other relevant issues.
Thank you for you time, Hans.
JP
Session Buddy Support
Mar 26, 2024, 11:11:00 PM3/26/24
to sessionbud...@googlegroups.com
There's a lot of great stuff here. Thank you for taking the time to provide such comprehensive feedback!
Love,
Hans
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JP
Mar 30, 2024, 2:22:25 PM3/30/24
to Session Buddy Discussion
After using the new version of Session buddy for some time now, let me add to the above:
1) When you multi-select collections and then combine them (I still much preferred "merge") the title assigned for the combined collection is the one from the last selected collection. It should be the title from the first one instead, as it was in v3.
2) In the deletion confirmation dialogue box, the initial selected option is "cancel". Usually in most interfaces it is "OK" (see the deletion confirmation dialogue boxes in Windows itself). But if, by any chance, this is how you want to keep it in Session Buddy, I would much like it to be possible to navigate between the "OK" and "cancel" buttons with the cursor keys, to be able to quickly and easily select "OK".
3) In the 3-dots menu there is a "delete" option that, to my understanding, deletes the entire collection.
Today, for the second time (the other one happened two weeks ago, when v4 was released), I deleted an entire collection when I was just trying to delete some links. This command makes it very easy to make serious mistakes.
How it happened: I had a multi-page scroll collection, as I went along scrolling I selected multiple links in different folders and when I reached the end I would need to scroll several pages up to find one of the selected links, right-click it and then select the delete command. That is a very cumbersome action and so that led me to select the "delete" command in the dot menu. I'd forgotten that I'd already made that same mistake two weeks prior; but right after I pressed the "delete" button that old memory immediately came back to me, but it was already too late. There is no ability (yet) to undo and the confirmation before deletion was turned off.
A solution is to rename that command, in the 3-dots menu, to "delete entire collection" so that the command is much less ambiguous in nature.
4) As for selection management (and given my example above in 3.), to improve the way they are managed I think quick access buttons should be added to the top of the interface along with the existing "open selected".
The existing actions in the right-click menu would remain, but the most common and relevant actions would not only be more visible but also more accessible (see Fitt's law [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/fitts-law/]).
Mock-up:
(when showing only the selected links the "show only selected" button should change to "show all")
5) I've also found some obvious issues with Search.
Its not possible to search for a string within a string. If I search "buddy" it finds "session buddy" but not "sessionbuddy" (no space between the two words).
If I do a compound search it finds all of the matches for all of the individual search terms. For instance, searching for "summer vacation" it will show matches for just "summer", just "vacation" and for "summer vacation".
6) The way I organized my sessions was by maintaining a separation between more permanent sessions (saved) and current-temporary sessions (previous). With the new paradigm it is no longer possible to maintain this obvious separation. It has a lot of noise now with all those snapshots involved, and it is not possible to easily merge them with the collections, bulk save them,... bottom line, it's just not feasible to use the history the same way I used the "previous sessions" group.
The new history feature has its use cases and may even become quite powerful if undo features are added to it, but this will not suppress the lack of a clear separation between "saved" and "previous" sessions, that I miss so much.
A proper solution, and in my opinion should be a very high priority, involves the ability to create labels/tags and the corresponding filtering capabilities.
7) Another top-top-top-top priority has to be Drag-and-Drop to _MOVE_ things around.
1) When you multi-select collections and then combine them (I still much preferred "merge") the title assigned for the combined collection is the one from the last selected collection. It should be the title from the first one instead, as it was in v3.
2) In the deletion confirmation dialogue box, the initial selected option is "cancel". Usually in most interfaces it is "OK" (see the deletion confirmation dialogue boxes in Windows itself). But if, by any chance, this is how you want to keep it in Session Buddy, I would much like it to be possible to navigate between the "OK" and "cancel" buttons with the cursor keys, to be able to quickly and easily select "OK".
3) In the 3-dots menu there is a "delete" option that, to my understanding, deletes the entire collection.
Today, for the second time (the other one happened two weeks ago, when v4 was released), I deleted an entire collection when I was just trying to delete some links. This command makes it very easy to make serious mistakes.
How it happened: I had a multi-page scroll collection, as I went along scrolling I selected multiple links in different folders and when I reached the end I would need to scroll several pages up to find one of the selected links, right-click it and then select the delete command. That is a very cumbersome action and so that led me to select the "delete" command in the dot menu. I'd forgotten that I'd already made that same mistake two weeks prior; but right after I pressed the "delete" button that old memory immediately came back to me, but it was already too late. There is no ability (yet) to undo and the confirmation before deletion was turned off.
A solution is to rename that command, in the 3-dots menu, to "delete entire collection" so that the command is much less ambiguous in nature.
4) As for selection management (and given my example above in 3.), to improve the way they are managed I think quick access buttons should be added to the top of the interface along with the existing "open selected".
The existing actions in the right-click menu would remain, but the most common and relevant actions would not only be more visible but also more accessible (see Fitt's law [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/fitts-law/]).
Mock-up:
(when showing only the selected links the "show only selected" button should change to "show all")
5) I've also found some obvious issues with Search.
Its not possible to search for a string within a string. If I search "buddy" it finds "session buddy" but not "sessionbuddy" (no space between the two words).
If I do a compound search it finds all of the matches for all of the individual search terms. For instance, searching for "summer vacation" it will show matches for just "summer", just "vacation" and for "summer vacation".
6) The way I organized my sessions was by maintaining a separation between more permanent sessions (saved) and current-temporary sessions (previous). With the new paradigm it is no longer possible to maintain this obvious separation. It has a lot of noise now with all those snapshots involved, and it is not possible to easily merge them with the collections, bulk save them,... bottom line, it's just not feasible to use the history the same way I used the "previous sessions" group.
The new history feature has its use cases and may even become quite powerful if undo features are added to it, but this will not suppress the lack of a clear separation between "saved" and "previous" sessions, that I miss so much.
A proper solution, and in my opinion should be a very high priority, involves the ability to create labels/tags and the corresponding filtering capabilities.
7) Another top-top-top-top priority has to be Drag-and-Drop to _MOVE_ things around.
Cheers,
JP
JP
Mar 30, 2024, 2:24:51 PM3/30/24
to Session Buddy Discussion
One more thing, wouldn’t it be easy to implement a "cut" feature right away?
It would do almost exactly what "copy" is already doing, but when the operation completes the selected links would be removed from where they originally existed. Much of the code from "copy" could be reused, I would say.
On Wednesday, March 27, 2024 at 3:11:00 AM UTC Session Buddy Support wrote:
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