resource exploration: 14 ways to get an onscreen reminder
Tuesday, 8. July 2008, 18:19:36
(green links are button-installer tags)
This is a little inquiry triggered by a request on the Opera forum for a "you have notes!" reminder visible up front on the interface (because notes generated during browsing need processing, but one can forget that they exist). Challenge is: how do you put a conspicuous and easily-toggled reminder on the interface?
It's an exploration exercise, using the goal to prod thinking about how resources can be used outside their obvious roles. Some options are simple; some are elaborate to set up but easy to use; and some are clunkers, because even blind alleys are on a complete map.
This is a little inquiry triggered by a request on the Opera forum for a "you have notes!" reminder visible up front on the interface (because notes generated during browsing need processing, but one can forget that they exist). Challenge is: how do you put a conspicuous and easily-toggled reminder on the interface?
It's an exploration exercise, using the goal to prod thinking about how resources can be used outside their obvious roles. Some options are simple; some are elaborate to set up but easy to use; and some are clunkers, because even blind alleys are on a complete map.
Solutions:
-
button to toggle title (on titlebar) using "set preference". This is what I offered the poster: button appends "check notes!" on the titlebar (and also has a checkbox that toggles). Here it is: Remember!. The code:
[url=opera:/button/Set preference,"User Prefs|Title=%t Check Notes!",,,"checkbox skin.selected" > Set preference,"User Prefs|Title=%t",,,"checkbox skin"]Remember![/url]
- actually, just the checkbox somewhere prominent would do it - really only need a button that toggles its icon. I started out with that idea, trying to think of a preference one could harmlessly toggle, but then came across the title preference (in Tomu's encyclopedic button pages), and decided to throw in the titlebar note for good measure.
- in fact you don't even really need an icon toggle: you could just drag your reminder button between two positions - say to the right of the address field for inactive, left of it as reminder. Shift+drag works without going through customize menu - pretty easy toggle.
- and once you're thinking minimal intervention: don't actually need a button at all. Instead of adding a feature to the interface, you can move one that's already there. For example, Shift+click anywhere in the address field, and drag it to the extreme left of its toolbar as your reminder: easy to do, impossible to miss - and you won't forget what it means. Elegance!
- returning to the title bar, here's a way to write on it: invoke Opera:config#title. The preference rumbles into view - takes a couple of seconds, but this isn't a high-use action; type in a few spaces, then your note, hit Enter - it appears immediately. You can assign this to a keystroke, using the Go-to-page command - or you can make a link button, by dragging a link to a toolbar. Here it is: click it here to try it out, drag it to a bar to install: TitlebarNote (Background: if you specify a setting using the section | setting format, the section is opened (which in the case of user prefs is much longer than a screen and generally puts the SAVE button out of view where it's easily forgotten) - but the briefer form shows only the single pref, with the save button right below it).
-
reminder on the menu bar. This can be done by adding a line at the end of the Browser Menu Bar section of your menu.ini file:
submenu, " Reminder!"
(the several spaces before the word are to separate it from the rest of the menu bar and make it more conspicuous). Two sub-options: first is to edit your INI file each time to effect the toggle: make an action which opens the INI file, goes to sourceview (include delay to let tab come up), uses Find to move the insertion point to the right spot, makes the needed change, Applies Changes, Closes Tab, summon Preferences dialog and reloads the INI. For example, you could leave the line intact and just add and remove a semicolon which disables it; or you could write and delete the line each time. (Detail: inserting quotes requires use of the Convert-Hex-to-Unicode function. Hex for quotes is 22. So: Insert, "submenu, 22" & Convert hex to unicode & insert, "Reminder! 22" & Convert hex to unicode.) - sub-sub-option: you could break the switch-Reminder-on action into two actions, with the first one leaving your cursor inside the quotes, typing a note right to the menu bar, instead of just putting up a flag.
- second sub-option: toggle between two INIs, to set/remove a fixed flag. (Option: put a function on the new submenu which links to something editable - e.g., open notes panel, put ^rem in Quickfind to show only ^rem-tagged notes.) Drawback: creates versioning hazards: you have to remember to duplicate edits you make to the INI file in its partner.
- bookmark on Personal Bar (names showing). The next four options repurpose link objects - bookmarks and link buttons - to serve as notes. You never launch the links, and the URL becomes irrelevant: it's the name and description fields that are being used. In the first case, bookmark on PB with name showing, short notes can go in Name field, and longer notes can go in Description (with just a title in name field), which is in the tooltip that comes up on hover. Leave it on PB permanently, using Edit Properties to edit: icon with no text means there's no reminder. (A flaw in Opera affects this: changes to Description show up in panel tooltip, not PB tooltip. So to be sure of seeing current description you'd have to view using rightclick / Properties, or do your editing in the panel & toggle "show on PB" off & on afterwards to refresh.)
- bookmark on PB (names hidden): note in description field (because of a slight Opera flaw: PB tooltips omit name, even if names are not displayed on PB). Toggle off by deleting bookmark from bar (stays in panel). Toggle on by opening panel, dragging to personal bar or using Edit Properties to check "show on PB".
- disposable link button made from master bookmark, kept in bookmarks panel or on personal bar. Make-note procedure: use Edit Properties to put note in as bookmark name. Set-flag procedure: drag from bookmark to non-PB toolbar to create button; it inherits bookmark name, displayed as tooltip on hover. Remove-flag procedure: delete link button.
- link button made using Ayush's SetTitle button (see Aliaser blog item for description; here's the button) to briefly rename a tab: type note in as alias, then drag tab to non-PB toolbar; note is name, visible on hover. (This technique is more broadly useful, for giving short names to any link buttons - the names they come with being generally much too long to display on a toolbar, but a bar full of uncaptioned icons quickly becoming cryptic. If you make yourself a link bar, as suggested by Shoust and Wandering Electrons, the ability to rename links as they're added is a boon: reason enough to keep the SetTitle button handy, for example right on the link bar.)
- note generated by data URL. (There's no real benefit to this - it's overkill. But data URLs are magical, so for lesson value...) Sample: make a bookmark, and put this in as the URL: data:text/plain,Remember Jenny's birthday! (Really, try it!) This is a bookmark which doesn't link to anything, but creates a page when clicked, generated from the data in the URL. Clicking it is your note-viewing procedure. Just use it on PB if you keep that up, with name insertion/deletion as toggle; for non-PB toolbars, keep the bookmark (accessed via panel or PB) as a master, and drag from it to the toolbar create a link button. That's your flag-on toggle; flag-off is deleting the button. Change note by editing bookmark's URL field.
- note as local page: similar to the data URL: master bookmark; toggle-on by dragging from bookmark to toolbar to create link button, toggle-off by deleting link button; click link button to view note. To create the local page and master bookmark: click here or type Opera:blank in the address field & press Enter, open source view (Alt,v,o), edit, save to disk under a name you choose, open that local page and bookmark. To edit: click link button, open source view, edit, Apply Changes to save the edits, close source view. (Again, overkill for this purpose: but becoming fluent with creation and use of local pages is a good thing.)
Ideas that didn't work:
- exploit "show window menu" Preference: one can relabel the window menu " Remember!" by changing the LNG file entry which is its label, and move it to the end of the menu bar; then make a button to toggle the pref. This didn't work, for some reason: toggle-off failed. Also turns out that this pref requires a restart to take effect - unacceptable.
- write to the title bar, using an edit field on a toolbar whose action is "set preference | user prefs: title=%t %s". This would work if %s represented field input in that command, as it sometimes does with edit fields. Would have been elegant, but it doesn't work.
WIDGETIZE
dapxin # 27. October 2009, 12:38
bpm # 27. October 2009, 13:10