Been gone for the weekend, so I'm just catching up now.
jeff wrote:jawbox wrote:Can you make the search a universal search rather than having to bounce back and forth between the master list and our own personal lists?? Wading through ingredients goes away with the search, but bouncing around sure is a pain.
Possibly. This may work if "My Ingredients" and "Ingredient DB" are placed inside another folder called "Ingredients". Clicking on "Ingredients" would list everything, but there would have to be an easy way to distinguish the two in the list. Clicking on the "My Ingredients" or "Ingredient DB" folders would filter the results accordingly. From an interface standpoint it seems simple, but may prove to be a programming nightmare. I will make a note of it for now.
Jeff, couldn't you just program this so that the 'search' field is not cleared when you jump from one folder to another unless and until you double-click within the search field? (Double-click so that you can single-click to edit the query without completely clearing it.) If double-clicking won't work, then perhaps a "Clear" button next to the search field. I realize that this would mean that when you switch to the hops folder it might still be looking for a malt, but the double-click or clear button would fix that easily. And of course, you could also design BTP so that the term would survive switching to just certain folders; e.g., mineral salts would only survive switching between the two salt folders (ingredients and inventory), and likewise with hops, but searches for "amber" would survive grains, extracts, and adjuncts.
Besides not having to retype the search term when switching from the main ingredient database and my ingredients, please also consider that I still sometimes look in the wrong folder for something; e.g., looking for "rice raw" in the 'grains' folder when it is actually in the 'adjuncts' folder. Also, for users who do partial mashes, they might want to check both extracts and grains for an item -- especially when planning a recipe before a shopping trip. Frankly, it is easy enough to just retype the search team after it clears when switching folders, but it would still be nice to not have to do that, especially if checking several folders looking for something.
Finally, while on the subject of the search function, it would be really cool to augment that with either a 'favorites' button or a 'recent' searches list, either one of which would allow us to very quickly and easily go, with just a couple of mouse clicks, to our most commonly used ingredients without having to scroll for them or use the keyboard. I prefer using the mouse as much as possible.
Cheers.
Bill Velek
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Running BTP v1.5.3 on WinXP 2005 SP3 w/AMD Athlon 64@3800+, 1GigRam, Res 1024x768