Soft As It Gets Help & Support
How can we help you today?
No change in display when query returns no results
Carl, I can see where you are coming from. My thought process here is to minimize UI changes when no results are found so your context is unchanged. If I'm currently working with a group of articles and a query finds no matches then I may well want to look more closely at those articles and possibly follow on with another query.
If on the other hand the articles list etc. is cleared when the query finds no matches I've lost my context and am nowhere.
Ah, I see your intention now Neville. Your intent is that we are issuing "queries" against the list currently displayed when we select a tag, and that nothing changes if the query is unsuccessful. I'm just taking the tags at face value. Meaning I expect "Show me all articles with the tag [In progress]" to return an empty list if nothing matches that tag.
Hi Carl,
It isn't a query against the list that is currently displayed, queries are across the entire KB.
In V2 queries are unified to enable both Tags and Full text search in the one place. I can see a case where if a Tag query doesn't match any articles, then clearing the articles list make sense. However for a text search, leaving the articles list as is, feels like a better user experience.
I'll keep an open mind on this.
Have you tried the new Table of Contents capability in v2.00.14?
Hi Neville.
I agree: if a query returns nothing, then the list should be empty. But if a search returns nothing, the display should not change.
I just looked at the Table of Contents feature. It's pretty cool. I keep my articles fairly short, so my use of this feature will be limited. But nice to know it's there for the longer articles.
(P.S.: Is the export/offline capability coming soon?)
Hi Carl,
I'll continue to ponder but feel it would quite confusing if one type of query cleared the list and the other didn't when the both come from the same User Query prompt.
I have quite a mix of articles, many are quite long so the TOC is really nice to have in that case.
Offline is something I've been nibbling away at for quite some time, mainly doing research and trying various things. As you can imagine it is a complex area and I want to ensure that it is done right the first time. That said it is very much something I want to get done.
Export, yes also still on the list. It will work quite differently once offline is implemented so it might wait until then.
Clibu databases are backed regularly and so far we've had 100% reliability and absolutely no data loss or corruption, I'm very pleased to say.
Carl Lum
I am kind of dubious about your switch to not changing the display when selecting a tag that has no articles.
For example, I have the tags "In Progress", "In Review", and "Done" to indicate the status of my tasks. If I currently have no items in review, before Clibu would show no articles if I select "In Review". Now, Clibu retains my previous view (query) when I select "In Review". It does briefly display a message a the bottom, and the query box at the top continues to display the current query. I prefer to keep my tag list open and it still shows "In Review" selected, yet the articles currently displayed don't match that tag. If I go away and do something else and then return to Clibu, I could easily lose my train of thought and be mislead into thinking I have items "In Review" when in fact I don't.
This is just my long-winded way of saying that I liked the previous behaviour better.