Contextual Menu Control

[sitenoise]

The DVDPedia Contextual Menu is out of control and I'd love to be able to dump 90% of what pops up. Or clump most of the stuff into submenus.

I'm not saying 'get rid of it', just ... if there is a way to let me turn on/off things I'd rather not have. If I click high and have to go low, you know, it's precious milliseconds and contributes to RSS.

eg., I instinctively right click on something I want to delete. For a while I didn't even notice the "Delete" option because it was so far down there, seeing as most of the deleting is of things "up there." Now I know it's there, but it's farther to go there than it is to the toolbar, making me wonder why it's even there. And that's one item I would like to keep, just get the other stuff out of the way.

I know, and am extremely bummed, that Apple seems to have forced all the user configurables into a "MORE" menu, so maybe it's not something you (or I) can get control over.

I tutor a lot of folks in using a Mac and one of my golden rules is "right-click everywhere", so I'm not hating on CM in general.

[Conor]

DVDpedia has so many features that it's hard to find a place where to put them all. You haven't even tried the contextual menu inside the info view when visiting a web page, you can add text to the summary and set an image as the cover along with many other options. You are correct that the contextual menu for the selected entry is getting a bit out of hand. So we have tried to trim it down for our next version. Try out the beta and let us know.

[sitenoise]

DVDpedia has so many features that it's hard to find a place where to put them all.

Yeah, that's for sure, but not a bad problem to have.

You haven't even tried the contextual menu inside the info view when visiting a web page, you can add text to the summary and set an image as the cover along with many other options.

So I just checked that out and it's way cool, but there are other limitations that prevent me from sticking with it: speed is not as good; I don't have access to my toolbar full of bookmarklets; a lot of the time it acts weird (like opening the page in DVDPedia and whipping up the browser to try and get to a random link attached to the site); but most importantly there's no tabbed browsing. If you could add tabbed browsing, a CM command to choose open in browser or dvdpedia on the fly, and an additional CM to allow for appending or replacing the selected text to the summary field, maybe I'd switch!

(How about "load links in background, the way NetNewsWire loads things)

You are correct that the contextual menu for the selected entry is getting a bit out of hand. So we have tried to trim it down for our next version. Try out the beta and let us know.

I think ditching the Add Manually and Edit Extra Info was a good choice. You get there anyway.
Moving Delete up ...
Other ditches seem sensible, but that's just me cause I never use them. And since I rarely use anything about Amazon, except Listmania, have you considered an Amazon Menu with Open, Buy, Sell, etc in a sub-menu? You could maybe even do that with Cover Art.

Since we're kind of on the subject here, there are a couple things I don't understand: View Links and Go to Site ....
Why is the Links button and CM plural? I thought I read in some article that the command would open all links attached to a selection, but the Links Button Tooltip says it will open the first one. (Help Menu says:

opens the links for the selected entry, if there are any attached to it.

None of that makes sense or works for me at all. 75% of the time I click the button, nothing happens. (Often a movie is my first "link", but ... and I'm using a tweaked version of Matt's IVT and have substituted his Product Info box with a Links Box, so I get them there, but have often wished that the open all links thing was a reality, except it's kind of impossible! How could you open 5 dvdpedia links at once? Restrict it to external links? Forget about this one ... )
Is the Go to Site command there as a way of 'on-the-fly' choosing to open a site in DVDpedia if you've chosen External Browser in Preferences? Again, I could have sworn I read somewhere that that command would bring up a list of all URLs attached to the selection.

I'm probably atypical in how often I tweak my Info View, but I'd like to have 'reload current style' in my CM. I tried to use a javascript refresh button, but couldn't make it work. I guess refreshing and reloading are not the same in this case. I'm having good success using Apple's Keyboard Shortcuts command to choose my Info View template from the Info View Style sub-menu.

I do use the CM menus while clicking on columns frequently. It's fabulous to have Make Default/Use Default commands. Have you considered using a smaller font in that menu, ala iTunes, that would match the font size of the columns text? Then they might all fit on screen.

[Conor]

I thought I read in some article that the command would open all links attached to a selection, but the Links Button Tooltip says it will open the first one.

It's because you have the open external preference checked. With images, HTML, text, pdfs, etc...the links open inline and you have arrow buttons to browse through them. Hence the plural, but with open externally and movies it's more of a open first link command.

Go to Site command was an experiment and most people don't know it's there. But some users really enjoy it. Mostly used to open Google images or similar web pages and then set the cover for the DVD without having to drag it from Safari. But as you mentioned it takes a lot to equal Safari. We now tend to let Safari do what it does best and DVDpedia what it does and integrate with drag and drop and copy paste closely.

I'm probably atypical in how often I tweak my Info View, but I'd like to have 'reload current style' in my CM

Choosing the same style again will reload it, but if you like you can add a link to reload it directly into the info view as you tried with the javascript. The link is:

Code: Select all

href="pedia://bruji.com/changeInfoTemplate=[name of info view]
e.i. href="pedia://bruji.com/changeInfoTemplate=Collection

The command is actually there so templates can be built that play off each other. A tab info view with a template that has the review, one that has the dvd details and one with the cast. With the above link you can create buttons to flip between them. But having the button for the same template will reload it.

Have you considered using a smaller font in that menu, ala iTunes

I will look into it, but I can't get my iTunes to do that. I get the same font size as regular menus. Will also remove the "for selection" text from the contextual menu for the next version making it lighter on the eyes.

Thank you for all the feedback.

[sitenoise]

I can't get my iTunes to do that.

Yeah , well ... cause it was only in my dreams. It's going to bug me until I can figure out what prompted me to think that. I have small font menus in my head somewhere

... the links open inline and you have arrow buttons to browse through them. Hence the plural ...

templates can be built that play off each other.

You are making it difficult for me to remain stubborn about the way I work!