Feature requests - display options

Hi, I'm not sure if these have been mentioned before, as I couldn't see them with a brief search.

1) Can the displayed list of resources be selected by category, either as a dropdown selection of one category, or select all, or alternatively checkboxes to select which ones to display. This would help when trying to sort out books, when lots of other category entries make it hard to see what is what.

2) When resources are shown in a search, it seems that all resources are opened to show their child items by default. Can on option be given so that those that all child items are not shown by default, except where they contain search results? That would help navigating past some items that have multiple child items (e.g. notes) without having to minimise them each time.

Z. is great - and getting better. Many thanks for the software.
  • 1. You can sort the middle pane by Item Type by clicking the "type" column header. If that column is not displayed, you can add it by clicking on the sheet icon and add it. This will put all the books together, all the journals together, etc.

    Alternatively, you can do an advanced search specifying Item Type.

    2. Pressing the minus (-) key will collapse all entries at once and the plus (+) will expand them. Make sure that the focus is on the middle pane by clicking in it because this also works for the collection pane.

    Is that what you are looking for? If not, please post back.

    Oh, I just re-read you post before sending... re: 2. you want just the search hits to be open? I'm not sure on that. I don't think so.
  • Child items are not shown by default unless they match the search (or, possibly, were open previously).
  • arggem, thanks for your tips.

    1) What you suggest is better than what I'm doing at present - I hadn't got the Type column visible beforehand. But if I'm working on journal articles through a lot of collections, I have to navigate down past all the books to get to the journal articles each time I change collection. It would be better, for me at least, to be able to filter what type of resource is displayed.

    Searching by type doesn't allow me to navigate and work as normal, nor can I limit my search by type and at the same time search for text in the title, etc.

    2) I know what you mean about - and + in general. I suppose that what I'm looking for is what is possible already in the advanced search, where showing only child items that match, or showing all, or only parent items, is possible. It would be great to have these options available as preferences for the normal search in the middle pane.

    But 1) is the feature that I would be most intereseted in seeing. At the minute, I'm greatly restricting the number of webpage entries, preferring to use bookmarks in FireFox. This is because in the long run the volume of webpage entries would make it hard to see the book and journal entries which are generally of far more interest to me, most of the time. I think that this would be helpful also if it applied to searches, because sometimes it would be good to display only results that matched the search criteria for books, or again only for journals, and possibly again return only results for webpages at times. It looks like I'm asking for an advanced search in the middle pane instead of separately, with filtering by Type. But in the absence of these, I'll use the tips mentioned.
  • There are all types of strategies to handle 1) - you can used tags to filter, you can used saved searches to filter (saved searches would also allow you to work with searches as usual), perhaps most typically you would use separate collections for webpages typically saved as bookmarks
    -- always remember that additional features have a real cost not just to implement, but also in terms of maintenance, gui clutter, documentation etc.
  • adamsmith, thanks for the tip on saving searches. However, that doesn't allow me to look at only books (or journals, etc) while I'm navigating from one collection to another. All results appear together.

    I understand the costs etc in adding features. But these are just suggestions. If they seem worthwhile for enough people, then I'd be glad to see them. But if they're only helpful for me, I understand that they would take up far too many resources to implement.

    Again, thanks for work on Z so far - I love it.
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