Uploaded version 0.0.38 of StoryBox today. This adds some more options for default document views, and also enables the remembering the last view of a document. Version 0.0.37 added left, right, and view buttons to the index cards, as well as some performance improvements.
I’m preparing things to be able to put the settings data wherever you want so that you could, potentially, install SB on a thumb drive or put the settings and your documents in DropBox and have the same settings on every computer where you use StoryBox.
I’m getting some good feedback from people that are using StoryBox, and I’d just like to thank everyone that’s reported a problem. It’s really helpful in finding the things I missed or forgot about or plain just didn’t think about. Keep it up.
Thanks, Mark, for such an awesome program and such consistent improvement and development. I’ve happily bought it and will happily pay more when it hits a v1.0. I hope you don’t lose interest in the project, as I predict as you get closer to v1 word of mouth will spread news of your product across the net and you’ll end up with a lot of business. It’s potentially so much better than any of the alternatives currently available on the PC. My only advice (feel free to disregard, I’m not an expert!) would be to prioritize polishing key features over general feature creep – programs like Liquid Story Binder, in my opinion, have become too incoherent and unfocused, whereas Scrivener benefits from being polished within a reasonable scope.
One feature which might be tricky (and others might have asked for) but which would massively elevate the full screen text editor above alternatives would be the ability to fix the vertical cursor – ie. the line that you’re typing – so that it always appears in the middle of the screen, and the rest of the text scrolls up and down around the cursor. At the moment when you type a full page you have to either live with the cursor at the bottom of the screen or continually scroll up manually. It would be great if there was an option for the text entry point was fixed to be the middle of the screen when typing, so your eyes can sit at one point even as you insert carriage returns etc.
I think other developers have avoided this due to difficulty so I understand if it doesn’t make it in, but for me, it would make a HUGE difference in usability. 🙂
Thank you!
I agree with you in your observations on apps like Liquid Story Binder. There’s almost too much there, and none of it is very coherent or easy to understand. The StoryBox v1.0 feature set is pretty much complete, at least as far as major features go, I think. Of course, your definition of “major feature” may deviate from mine a bit. I want to add annotations, footnotes, and links between documents before v1.0. But they may all be put off until afterward because I can’t decide on how I want to implement any of them.
I too want that middle of the screen cursor feature, but there’s no simple way to scroll the window beyond the end of the document programatically. I think there’s a complex way to do it, but I have to find some time to figure it out, and I’d like to keep getting the easy stuff done first.
Is it possible to at least have the option to jump up a page when you hit the bottom of the window? As in rather than scroll down one line, scroll down a larger number? It’s not that critical, I guess, just trying to think of simpler ways to address the issue.
Thanks for your awesome response time and all of your help! One suggestion with links between documents might be to implement a pseudo wiki system where you can mark up a word so that it links to another document. There’s plenty of online examples of how to make this work – wikipad does something a bit like this and is open source I believe. Word has an OK footnotes system that you might be able to look at for something similar, although it might be a bit complicated for the scope you’re looking at.
Also a forum would be awesome for discussing some of this stuff and how other people are using your software, as it currently provides enough scope for several different working practices and I’d be interested to hear how others are using StoryBox! 🙂
A forum is on my To-do list. I’m right at the tail end of finishing up a game for my “day job” and I’m trying to squash out all the bugs there, while keeping up with updates on StoryBox and trying to prepare for NaNoWriMo. How am I supposed to catch up on the Wheel of Time, let alone read the new one I have on preorder? 😉
There is a temporary discussion forum I’ve set up at the same place I do the bug tracking: https://laughingd.fogbugz.com/default.asp?storybox
It’s not very lively, though, probably because I haven’t linked it from anywhere. The website needs a lot of work.
Awesome, I’ll use that in future. Thanks again for putting so much time into the product. I’m also in the games industry so I know what it’s like, I sympathize. 😉