[added] Multiple Attachments per Document

Tell us what could be improved in MyInfo
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gcoulthard
Posts: 49
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2005 9:02 pm
Location: Coldstream, BC

[added] Multiple Attachments per Document

Post by gcoulthard »

The one issue that I have with MyInfo is that the program cannot handle multiple attachments per topic.

As a professor, I gather and compile various media files for a single lecture or topic. For example, I could have my own notes in a DOCX, a PowerPoint file (PPT), a video to play (MP4 or FLV), an interactive Flash file (SWF), or multiple PDFs. I would like to store lecture notes in a single document and then attach (embed and/or link) files to this document. MyInfo makes this cumbersome.

For example, if I try to attach a Word document, it imports all the RTF in the notes window. Okay, that's not what I wanted to happen. If I try to add an Excel gradebook, I can no longer just click on the document in the tree item without an Open, Save, or Cancel dialog appearing. Yeah, that's quite annoying. If I click on a PDF document in the tree, the file is displayed similar to a weblink using the internal browser/viewer window. Wondeful, that's what I want for this file type. So you see -- different approaches for different files is necessary.

Preferably, I would like a list of files that I can simply "attach" to a document and have MyInfo manage them for me (like MyNotesKeeper does.)

What do other people think about this feature? How would you handle the above scenario?

Any help is appreciated.
Glen
mfelix
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:54 pm
Location: Basel, Switzerland

Post by mfelix »

Glen, me too, I'm not completely happy with the attachments handling.

Since I'm not a big fan of embedding external files into a topic (the files just bloat up the topic file and they are difficult to search), I'm more interested in linking to external files.
Today I just drag & drop the files into the editor pane and MyInfo creates a link for me. That's great ! Clicking on the link will open the file externally, which I think is the best solution anyway.
Clicking as such is a bit cumbersome: I'm under the impression that I have to click twice, whenever the editor pane does not have the focus. This happens very often, because I usually select the document from the tree pane first. Probably Petko could check this out.

Ideas that I have for generally improving the handling:

Display a paper clip icon in a separate columns just as it is done for tags. When clicking on the paper clip a window opens and shows all attach files. You can select a file and open or delete it, or attach another one.

For linking to files I would find it nice to have a special custom attribute just like the current yes/no attribute. Within the attribute I would specify the link target. When I would display this attribute as a column within the tree, a link symbol would be displayed. Clicking on the symbol would directly launch the external file.
pjmiller
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2013 10:16 am

Post by pjmiller »

There is another similar program called MyBase.

MyBase creates a table at the end of a document which contains a list of the files attached to the document. Clicking on one of these will select it, double clicking will open it.

Perhaps something like this might be useful for MyInfo.
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