Beta Spread Creation Wizard and Management Utility

[purple_scorp]

Richard,

I love, love, love, the ability to connect a deck to a spread. It even shuffles the deck before it lays out the spread. So cool. Thankyou!

Last night I got to play a fair bit with the Spread Creation Wizard and the Spread Management Utility in the latest Beta (21 Nov) as I spent a considerable amount of time sorting out my Spreads.

One of the things I noticed was that it was difficult to determine what each spread was for, because you can’t actually see the General Notes, unless you go in and individually edit each spread through the Spread Creation Wizard.

The second problem I found was that a lot of the Spreads that have been uploaded to Orphalese didn’t have General Notes.

Richard, for a future release, would you please consider:

1. Including the General Notes field in the bottom frame of the Spread Management Utility (so that you can easily view this information along with the Spread Author, Spread Name, and number of cards)?

2. If the General Notes field is blank, display the card position notes instead?

I only just now found a button in the Spread Creation Wizard that opens Notebook with the above information. (Wish I’d seen that last night, lol.) This kind of information would be handy to have accessible in the Spread Management Utility.

Also, in the Spread Creation Wizard, can you please put a “Back” button on the first page that you see after you have clicked the Edit button to Edit a Spread? The only options there at the moment are Cancel or Next. Clicking Cancel actually takes you back to the first screen that asks whether you’d like to Create a New spread, or Edit or View an Existing spread. It would be better if you were returned to the first Edit/View screen so that you can select a different Spread. If you want to Edit or View several Spreads in a row, the way it is at the moment means it’s another step that you need to do to move between Spreads.

Keep up the great work.

Regards
purple_scorp

[purple_scorp]

Ah, I found one catch with associating a deck to a spread.....

Following Marvin's lead, I created a 64-card note editing spread to use with the Tao Oracle deck and, if I associate the Tao Oracle deck to the spread, it won't lay the cards out in Ascending Order.

Hmm! :-(

Regards
purple_scorp

[Programmer]

Hi Scorp,

The idea of including the general notes in the Spread Management Utility makes sense, I will add that. I am not sure about the position notes (it could be a lot of notes) but I guess there is no harm in that.

I am a bit perplexed about the back button - it has always been there and I think it still should be - could you double check?

Cheers
Richard

[purple_scorp]

Nup, definitely no Back button.

Let me show you by listing step-by-step instructions (otherwise I could email you a .jpg of the screen).

1. Open the Spread Creation Wizard.

2. Click Edit.

3. Click on the Drop-Down List and select a spread (the spread loads to the screen).

4. Click the Edit Spread Button. It will display a screen that says....The author of the current spread. Defaults to the current Window user.

It is on this screen that there is no Back button. If you click Cancel, it takes you back to the opening Edit/Create screen.

There is a Back button on the screen after this one though.......

Regards
purple_scorp

[Programmer]

Hi Scorp,

It is really just a question of wording. The screen you are talking about is the second screen, and the cancel button takes you back to the first screen. I can label it back though if you think that is less confusing.

Richard

[Programmer]

Hi Scorp,

I see what you mean now - I have fixed it so that it cancels out in two steps, first stopping the editing, then when you press cancel again it goes back to the start screen.

I won't upload it yet though since this is non-critical. I am going to try and go two or three days without uploading a new beta!

Richard