InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by Pierre_Admin on 2018/04/05 13:22

Hi IQ Users !

Paul J. Miller, member of this group, has just posted a review of InfoQube. Read it here: https://pauljmiller.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/a-review-of-infoqube/

His overall score is 48 out of 60, so it is not bad at all !

Breakdown is as follows:

Connectivity = 10
Classification = 10
Text Layout and Formatting = 9
A Sense of Time = 9
Ease of Use = 3
Visual Appeal = 7

It seems that we still have some work on the Ease of Use category...

, though he does mention that it is better than it was !

I'll comment a bit more later on, but I wanted to thank Paul for this review !

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

p.s. Paul, perhaps a live call / chat can clear up a few things. Do not hesitate to ask !

p.p.s. I updated the Donation / Licencing page and dropped the minimum donation to get a licence to just $30 USD. Thanks for bringing it up.

Comments

It wasn't a complaint about the price, the price was reasonable, it is even more reasonable now. It was just the ridiculousness of having to pay to get a 'free' license. If you have to pay to get it then it isn't free.

The wording was wrong but that has been changed now. :)

Understood.

Regarding themes, it used to be supported but was turned off a while back. I had enough things on my plate and wanted to create a "standard" IQ UI.

It is still possible to use themes, by editing the Options.ini file (Theme line supports XP, Office2000, Office2003, Office2007 and Office2013)

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Paul,

I enjoyed reading the review, and thought it was quite good. However I found the introduction (perhaps unintentionally) somewhat harsh, and likely to color the view of anyone not familiar with IQ before they get to the meat of the excellent review. As an avid IQ fan I feel the need to at least respond to this part:

[quote]This program has been in development for a long long time, the final version has always been predicted to be six months away. In 2007 it was predicted to be six months away and now in 2018 it is predicted for the last quarter of 2017 but it isn’t here yet, I suspect the website hasn’t been updated and pretty soon it will be six months away yet again.[/quote]

That gives a negative tone to what I think is something that has actually been positive. IMO by the standard of any other software program, we have had a final version for many years now, and Pierre could have chosen to make it so at any time. Instead he has literally let users use the program for free if they choose to do so, as he has continued endless development.

This is a really great review -- it explains very nicely how IQ works, and it's capabilities.

(As David says,) the body of the review is very positive, which clashes oddly with the negativity of the intro.

Dont get me wrong Paul, I agree with most everything said -- I mean including the criticisms. It's just odd that all the negativity is compressed into the intro, and almost all the positivity is in the body. Donating x to get a free license is actually quite an amusing mistake, but not presented thus.

I've read a lot -- all positive -- about Connected Text. Would like to try it sometime, but have never used any kind of wiki, and I see that the website -- and the software, have not been updated since 2015. Before that it was regularly updated. That would be a concern (do you actively use it?).

The intro was copied with minor modifications and a little expansion from my review of lots of different note taking programs called 'A Cornucopia of Programs'.

ConnectedText is still my main note repository.

ConnectedText does a lot of the same things as InfoQube but I think it has come to the end of it's development. The developer Eduardo Mauro has been neglecting the forum for more than a year now and recently he said that ConnectedText has grown too complex and so version 6 will be the last version, but he will still fix bugs when they are discovered. Oh well .... there has been some discussion on the forum about what alternatives there are out there.

The conclusion was ... not a lot !

[quote=Paul_J_Miller]

The intro was copied with minor modifications and a little expansion from my review of lots of different note taking programs called 'A Cornucopia of Programs'.

[/quote]

True, but this extensive review of note-taking software was done more than 3 years ago. IQ has evolved so much in that time, perhaps a new intro would have been nice. What Tom and Dave noted, is that this 3 year gap shows up clearly between the intro and the actual review.

[quote]

ConnectedText is still my main note repository.

ConnectedText does a lot of the same things as InfoQube but I think it has come to the end of it's development.

[/quote]

For textual content, perhaps. IMHO IQ has a wider scope though, to handle dates, numbers too (sorting, filtering, reporting, merge, multi-user)

Do not hesitate to ask for help if and when you want to transfer stuff out of ConnectedText (how tos, custom import module, etc)

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

Do not hesitate to ask for help if and when you want to transfer stuff out of ConnectedText (how tos, custom import module, etc)

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[/quote]

Importing from ConnectedText would be quite a challenge I think. The two programs are different in nature and the features don't map nicely to one another. For InfoQube everything is done through a GUI interface and nothing apart from the links and formatting is stored in the body text of the item. For ConnectedText all the features are controlled by the body text of the topic (item). It is the source code for the page. You edit it in a simple text editor and when you are done the page is compiled and the database updated accordingly.

You would probably be able to capture the formatting links and tables fairly easily just like 'Markdown' but the more sophisticated features like searches, inclusions, conditional inclusions and classification might pose more of a problem.

ConnectedText has a hierarchical classification scheme where categories can have sub categories which can also have sub categories recursively. InfoQube has no hierarchical classification scheme (although you can fake it a little awkwardly). I have been trying to mimic the structure of my ConnectedText database in InfoQube but it doesn't work very well, they are two different animals.

One approach might be to try and incorporate the markup language from ConnectedText for use in the HTML pane as you have done with Markdown but be warned the markup language is quite sophisticated and would be difficult to reproduce.

I have attached the manual for ConnectedText, it comes as a ConnectedText database but can be exported to .CHM however it looses some of its functionality in doing so.

This will give you some idea of what you're up against.

[quote=Tom]

[/quote]

ConnectedText is very good but I worry about if future changes to Windows might cause problems like the upgrade to Windows 10 did with high DPI screens. ConnectedText doesn't do screen scaling very well and so on high DPI screens the icons and a lot of the window furniture become microscopic. There is a workaround but it still has some drawbacks.

ConnectedText works very well and is very useful but I cannot recommend it for new users in light of the fact that it is no longer being developed.

Comment published on Paul's blog:

[quote]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the excellent review.

It is expected that any software which is more a framework than a clearly defined, single purpose tool, will require learning time and customization.

It is clear however that we need to put extra work on improving the "ease-of-use". Templates and "How-to" videos should help too.

The online help is also improving (both in quantity and quality) and is being linked to the UI, so you'll always be just a F1 key away from context sensitive help.

Thanks again,

Pierre Paul Landry

InfoQube designer

[/quote]

Nice review!

And nice, concise answer, Pierre!

Like David and others, I'm a fan... My comments would be biased.

I wouldn't use anything else than IQ.

However, the ease of use part is obviously something that can be improved -- and, fortunately, it's feasible... as Pierre said.

After the huge usability improvements in v108, it would be so cool if there could be some kind of review update... Paul ?

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

I have installed the new version and there are some moderate usability improvements but I would hardly describe them as huge.

The 'New Grid' button is certainly an improvement, actually on a toolbar rather than being buried one level below the 'View' menu. I have started moving things about in the menus trying to get a more intuitive system. I think the 'New Grid' button should be right at the top of the 'Grid' menu because this is one of the first things that a newcomer to the program will want to do. I can't put it at the top because of the 'Display Mode' caption but I have put it at the top of the 'Other' section of the menu.

Finding the right place for things is one of the key aspects of usability. Often things develop to fit in with things that are already there and this often doesn't yield the best results. But once things have been arranged in a certain way for a while they tend to stay there because that is their place and 'everyone knows' where they are. But new users don't. You need to think 'if I had no idea where this menu item/button was where would I start looking for it?' and that is the best place for it.

One of the problems is that there are too many buttons/menus/sub menus. As there are so many I would hesitate to suggest adding another but one solution could be to have two different configurations of user interface, an 'easy' mode and an 'expert' mode. In the easy mode the user interface would be stripped down to a bare minimum and all the fancy features that people hardly ever use would disappear from view. The 'expert' mode would be the interface as it is at the moment.

Of course a lot of new users would immediately switch to 'expert' mode out of hubris, but thats their problem

It is very good that menu items can be re-arranged and also toolbars. I will mess about with the program for a while longer and see what I can come up with, if I make any significant progress or if there are significant changes to the program then I might update the review or write another.

Hi Paul,

[quote=Paul_J_Miller]

I have installed the new version and there are some moderate usability improvements but I would hardly describe them as huge.

The 'New Grid' button is certainly an improvement

[/quote]

One user thought so, as you can read here. The "huge" qualifier should probably be toned down, I agree to that...

The improvements are significant though, as these also contribute to the improved user experience:

New: Welcome to InfoQube command and IQBase: The Welcome IQBase is a system provided and managed IQBase designed to help users learn how to use InfoQube
New: Grid: Filter by Selection. Select one of more cells to show only items with these cell values. Works with Wikitags too ! Grid column filters now work in a very similar fashion as Hoist filters
New: Grid: Add Column command: Button to create New Fields (on the fly, without going to the Field Properties dialog)
New: Grid: Improved drag / drop (UI and speed). This makes IQ a viable option for Kanban-style information management (i.e. Trello-like)
New: Dialog UI uniformisation in progress. Support for user selectable font size. "F1" button and function key support to open the online help page

[quote=Paul_J_Miller]

I think the 'New Grid' button should be right at the top of the 'Grid' menu because this is one of the first things that a newcomer to the program will want to do.

[/quote]

Done !

[quote=Paul_J_Miller]

[/quote]

Agreed 100%. Just need more time to code it

Since you had used it before and customized it, the UI was probably not what a "new" user would see, which is this (on opening IQ for the first time) :

[quote=Paul_J_Miller]

if I make any significant progress or if there are significant changes to the program then I might update the review or write another.

[/quote]

Thanks !

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[quote=Pierre_Admin]Since you had used it before and customized it, the UI was probably not what a "new" user would see, which is this (on opening IQ for the first time) :[/quote]

And since I'm going to be customising it some more is there an easy way to get back to the default configuration ?

I guess deleting the 'options.ini' file might do it.

The best way is to delete the user's folder, or use the batch file InfoQubeForUser1 which starts IQ for an arbitrary user name (otherwise, uses your login name)

The users folder location can be found in Help > About > Support info

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

I just renamed the .ini files as .old so the program couldn't find them.

It turns out that if it can't find the .ini file in C:\Users\ <user name> \AppData\Roaming\InfoQube then it makes a copy from the one in C:\ProgramData\InfoQube\

Yes the new unmodified layout is better than it was for version 0.9.106 which was when I started to mess about with the user interface.

The 'Views' toolbar is a bit broken, it displays a long list of grids which stretches right across the screen and has a drop down at the end for the leftovers. I disabled the 'Views' toolbar and made my own 'view' toolbar which has the list of grids in a drop down and the list of recent grids in a drop down along with the buttons from the 'Advanced' toolbar and the 'Surface' button.

The 'Office2003' theme looks very nice but there is one problem, the tabs turn black when you mouse over them. I don't know if this is something I have done wrong or what.

I don't know if it is just me getting used to the program but it's starting to look a lot less intimidating.

[quote=Paul_J_Miller]

The 'Office2003' theme looks very nice but there is one problem, the tabs turn black when you mouse over them. I don't know if this is something I have done wrong or what.

I don't know if it is just me getting used to the program but it's starting to look a lot less intimidating.

[/quote]

re: Views: I removed the Views toolbar from the list of toolbars. Users can still tear it from the main menu if needed. Toolbars order (when right-click on toolbars) is also wrong. I'll fix it
re Office2003: You didn't do anything wrong. Themes used to be supported, and I'll certainly re-enable it later on. Everything is in place for it. It is extra work to ensure uniformity for more than one theme, so it is temporarily disabled. UI is tested for Office2007 only right now
re: Intimidating... It grows on you... beware

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer