Three Major Problems I'm Having with Synergy 3.0

Originally Posted By: Charity1. I can no longer rate songs using hot keys, which was the main reason I wanted Synergy. All my other hot keys work great, it's just those used to assign ratings that don't. I neither get the visual feedback image, nor do the ratings for the songs actaully change in iTunes. I've included a picture to show how I've assigned my hot keys. http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b163/HeavenOnEarth/Picture416-57-20.png I can't see that this would create any conflicts with short cuts in other apps. I've tried the shortcut whilst in various apps, and also whilst in iTunes, and it doesn't work in any. They worked in 2.9, but not in 3.0. I don't want to change the keys I'm using unless absolutely necessary by the way, as I really liked them how they were. There are no differences in the hot key handling between 3.0 and 2.9. You've chosen keyboard shortcuts that are in conflict with other applications. Control+Something is a particularly common combination, especially in the case of Control+Arrow. You may not have noticed this with 2.9 but that's because when you tried it out you probably had a different application frontmost. If the frontmost application responds to those key strokes, Synergy will never see them. In order to work around this problem you'll need to select some other shortcuts. Quote:2. My playlists will not show up in the Global menu. Only 'refresh' is listed, and when I click on that, nothing happens. Even when I go back a while later, there is still nothing. This also worked in 2.9. I can't reproduce that issue here. Have you tried deleting your preferences file or any other the other trouble-shooting tricks listed here? Quote:3. Not sure if this is a personal issue just for me or for all users, but I am confused about how Synergy displays artwork in the floater panel. I don't know how it works currently, but I know how I would like it to work, and that's for it to always get it's artwork from iTunes, without ever connecting to the net. It doesn't seem to be doing that for me at the moment, occasionally it seems to use my iTunes artwork, but often I'll just get a question mark show up, even when the song has artwork in iTunes. Most questions about how the feature operates are answered here. There are also quite a lot of threads on these forums which may prove of interest. Quote:I feel Synergy needs to have the option to simply fetch the art from iTunes for all songs, especially now, with iTunes 7, where art plays a big part in the experience of using iTunes, so many people will have filled their whole library with art, carefully choosing which images they want. Not all users like whatever iTunes or Synergy would fetch... There are a number of feature requests related to cover art open in the bugs and feature requests database. The most relevant one here is probably:

https://wincent.dev/a/support/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=54

Quote:Also, when I installed Synergy 2.9, I installed it to work only on my user account on this machine, then when I installed 3.0, I installed it to be usable by all users on this machine. I used the normal installer not the expert method. The old version of synergy seems to have been deleted properly, as there are files from it in the trash, so hopefully, I didn't cause problems by changing how many users were able to access Synergy when I installed the new version?

It depends on what user account you are trying to use Synergy from. If you installed it in "User A" account first, and then installed it for all users within "User A" account, the installer should have removed the local install first so there will be no conflict. But if you installed for all users from "User B" account, then it won't (and can't) have cleaned up the old install in "User A" account. If in doubt, the most certain course is to remove the old install(s) and do a clean install.

Originally Posted By: CharityThis is not why the shortcuts weren't working, as I tried them in various applications, including ones in which they worked with Synergy 2.9.

You could always go back to Synergy 2.9 and make a comparison, but I think you'll find that it performs identically to 3.0.

Quote:Despite this, I have now changed the keys, by adding shift to all the actions, so now all my key combos are ctrl + shift + something else. Does that sound like it would work in most apps? It's definitely working in the ones I'm currently trying it in, just want to check it's not too much of a common combo.

It depends on which apps you're running, but Control+Shift is definitely better than just Control. The trouble with keys like Control+Arrow is that they are used by just about every application that works with text; for example, when I press Control+Arrow in the application I'm writing this in (Safari) it is used for cursor movement. Even Control+Shift+Something will be used by some applications, but I imagine that it will be less common.

Quote:About the art issue, I read the page of information about it, and it seem Synergy isn't working for me as described there. It doesn't display art that's embedded in songs in iTunes for every song, only the occasional few, and for those I'm not sure if it's using my art or fetching art from the net.

You can find out by choosing "Show Album Covers Folder" from the Synergy Global menu when such a song is playing. If it is a downloaded cover you'll see it selected in the Finder in the "Album Covers" folder; if it is a song supplied by iTunes you'll see it in the "Temporary Album Covers" folder.

Quote:I've done everything I think I should do; I'm not playing music from across a network and I have the option for showing album art selected in Synergy's preferences, so I'm not sure what's wrong. I looked at the form you pointed me to; and I'm afraid I found it very confusing, so I didn't fill it out. Any advice on what to do about that?

If you can find a music file which has album art in it but which Synergy does not seem to receiving the art from iTunes, can you send me the file and I will see if I can reproduce the problem here? You can send it as an email attachment to "win" at this domain.

Originally Posted By: CharityAbout the art issue, it seems to be working now i.e. it's always displaying the art I've assigned songs in iTunes. Before it was either displaying stuff from the net, or an old image I have since changed, or nothing at all.

Unfortunately it will prioritize the "old stuff" over what's in iTunes. This is a known issue (see https://wincent.dev/a/support/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=54). For the time-being the only way to force Synergy to use the new art is to delete the downloaded art that you no longer want to use.

Quote:I'm not sure what fixed it, I did de-select, then re-select the option for what Synergy displays in the preferences, clicking on 'apply' each time, maybe that re-set it? I also deleted any album art in the Synergy covers folder, and that made sure it definately uses my art, not art I don't want from the net or art I used when I had 2.9 but have now updated.

Yes, that's right. Deleting the unwanted art was a necessary step. Also note that when you delete such art Synergy will pick up the change the next time you play the track.

Originally Posted By: CharityWhat I meant was that as well as deleting old art, I also tinkered with the preferences. I had it set to display cover art, which I changed to one of the other options, clicked apply, then changed back to display cover art, and clicked apply again... maybe that helped too? It shouldn't help, unless you had a corrupt preferences file, in which case clicking "Apply" may have had the effect of writing out a new preferences file.

Yes, I agree the website could be (and should be simpler). As time goes by I'm aiming to make it simpler and simpler. The detailed content will still be there, but you will have to dig for it a little deeper; all the basic stuff will be much more up front and easy to find.

Yes, I think it's partly due to the influence of Apple and their very clean product pages:

http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/ http://www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/ http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/ http://www.apple.com/ilife/idvd/ http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/ http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/ http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/

And also partly due to the "Web 2.0" aesthetic as represented by extremely simple sites like this:

http://www.37signals.com/ http://www.flickr.com/

So over the last couple of years many, many, many independent Mac software houses have started to make their pages look more and more like Apple's. The more popular houses have started to design extremely attractive, simple pages that look like this:

http://panic.com/

And the smaller houses have followed suit:

http://hogbaysoftware.com/

There are many, many examples out there but those links above give the basic idea.

The general trend seems to be:

Fewer words per pageA focus on simple languageSimple navigation"Shallow" sites: not many "levels" deepMore graphicsHigher "production values"Fewer words overall!

As you've noted, this trend can be taken too far and you can end up with a website that contains only a few pages of information and doesn't really provide in-depth information about a product.

Seems to me that text-heavy websites are considered less and less navigable nowadays, which is a key difference from when I started, where putting more text on your website made it perceived as a more valuable resource.

Let's take one example of a very text-heavy page on this site:

https://wincent.dev/a/products/synergy-advance/help/preferences/advanced/

Obviously that sort of text shouldn't be up front where nobody will have the inclination to wade through it (and indeed, it's not up-front), but the information needs to be somewhere... My current inclination is that in the future I need to make the following changes:

Less text in general on all the "top-level" or "entry" pagesVery simple navigationVery simple, brief langaugeDetailed help is useful, but it should be broken up into very small chunks, not monolithic pagesTo make that help useful it should be easily searchableThis suggests that help should be embedded inside applications and viewed with the Apple Help Viewer (for searchability) even if it means making downloads a little largerThe focus of the website will therefore shift towards pre-sale support, whereas after-sale support will often be met by the in-application help (if it's good enough)For completeness, the in-application help should be mirrored somewhere on the site (where Google can find it)

Originally Posted By: CharityAlso, what did you mean by higher production values? I've not come across that phrase before.

Basically what you said about things looking better and being more polished:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_values