Softvoile support forum

Flashnote 3.0 beta appeared. Program is rewritten from scratch. So, despite it was thoroughly tested, it has a -beta suffix

as far as features are concerned, we have not added anything important into 3.x series. The current feature set is pretty much the same as in 2.x branch. Among new functions I can mention that now you can move Notes up/down on the tree. This branch will be further developed. There will be new versions, but I do not promise make them soon.

Some features that will appear in future versions: support of portable mode, search through the whole database,
automatic backup, Drag&Drop of Notes on the tree.
At the same time Flashnote is not going to turn into PIM.

Note for the users of current version

Flashnote 3.x converts your database into the new format automatically. Backup of current database will be created before that. But all Settings you should make again.

Thus you can return to using Flashnote 2.3 and the old database. In this case infomation saved in version 3.0 will be lost.

In spite of the above I advice you make backup of the "C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application
Data\flashnote\" folder (or where you store your database).

Hope you like new version. All your comments are greatly appritiated.

One more notes

Flashnote can import the database, but can't import the old settings. So, if you store database in some other place, not in the /Application Data/Flashnote/ folder, you should manually specify path to it to get old notes in new version.

Thanks for it and congratulations.

Installed it and got the old notes intact. Worked fine and seamlessly.

some comments:

1. Consider dropping mails to users to inform about the release of updates. I was looking eagerly for this release and was often visiting the site and I came to know about it two days after release.

2. It is good that the right click on the systray icon gives option to Exit. Previously, it only restored the main window and we had to again choose Exit from file menu.

3. It is good that the window could be reduced to any size. I think in the previous mode it didn't go below a fixed size and the notes pane didn't contract below a certain size.

4. As the toolbar icons are all for the management of notes which are not used in everytime use of Notes, yet the toolbar takes screen space, an option to show/ hide toolbar would free the screen space.

5. previously, after finding a text, the find window remained open on the screen. In this version, it closes and we have to hit ^F to reopen it. It could be the force of habit, but I find that the old method of leaving the find window open was more convenient.

6. It would help if the find window could 'remember' previous 5-6 strings that were entered.

7. moving notes up/ down is a great improvement. Thanks for it.

8. As each note can have a fixed number of character, when the note is filled to the brim and we add new text that crosses that limit, only the text that could fill in that limit is copied and rest of text is truncated. There is no message, no warning, no sound, no nothing. And for a while, I am at a loss to understand why the text is not getting copied to the full. maybe I didn't copy it to clipboard fully, so I try the copy/ paste again till I realize that the note is full. So, some warning at that time will help a lot. It would also help if the current count of characters on a note can be shown on a statusbar of somewhere.

9. In Help-About, the window that opens right on top of flashnote main window has no boundary and it merges seamlesly on the flashnote window confusing me. It would help if About window has a distinct boundary.

10. The backed up notes now have the day name also in full "Thursday" that only increases the name of the folder.

Thanks a lot for this great free utility. Flashnote and Clipdiary have become a must for my everyday use of my pc. I can not ever help you enough for having conceptualised and made these.

Thanks.
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Hello VSRawat

Thank you for taking the time to write your thoughts. It's very necessary for me.
Some my comments are below.



We have a newsletter list, I have sent letter about new release to all subscribers, but nowadays e-mail works very very bad...

New version has an autoupdate support. You can activate it in Options to automatically check for update every month or check manually from Help menu.




I should think about this.





I consider a variant to give such option to user... wait a next version. Now
I can suggest use F3 instead of Ctrl-F




It requires a lot of work:(




I did not think about this before... I always considered Flashnote as utility for fast and small notes. How often do you try to store text larger than 65K characters there?
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hey, my flashnote has 10 notes almost full of full size, and it keeps on increasing everyday. Seems FN has grown beyond the use you had visualized it for, and it is an accomplishment for you that it is fulfilling all my requirements of larger notes, database, quick references. whenever I am on pc, if some friends gives me some information face to face, or even if there are phone calls, or even a thought occurs, I am just pressing ^S and that gets written in a FN note. I have made a to-do page in which I make and follow a list of my day's plan. I save the entire reference of my social networking sies (orkut, etc.) in fn notes.

I mean it is never full 65K text saved in one go, but small small parts get added to a note and it is soon full to 65K needing to add another note and that is your new feature of moving notes up and down is so useful in keeping new note near the previous note.

and again, thanks to your great creativity, I never found fn not fulfilling my any requirement. Some small conveneince could get increased and that would make life easier but even now, it is doing full fledged work. It is just great and you are so great as its visualizer and implementer.

Thanks. Sorry that I am too verbose for your precious time.

Thanks, Great work! Best feature is certianly moving notes up and down.

Some comments
- bring back F6, to make a subnote
Too many times I've forgotten to check the "subnote" box. argh

- Move notes through the whole tree
I sometime start off a new note under "random notes", but later it becomes important and becomes its own branch
Current solution is very manual: cut, new note folder, paste, del old folder

Can't wait for the "Drag and drop note sorting" and "Search all notes" features. My vote goes for the searching first!
Keep up the good work.

My some data got lost again.

I was updating (copy/paste) info from some sites and my emails to fn3b and some voltage fluctuation caused my pc to come down. when I restarted, fn ran, but all the information I updated in last session was gone. It is sad that I had deleted my those emails and didn't remember what all info I had stored from what all sites. the fn was in the state I had opened it for that session.

So, I would say that its storage behavior is still not predictable enough.

It would help if you could give us some tips on what do to avoid such things from happening.

I have found that when I press Alt-s to close fn window, thenafter the information remains safe. The problem I have seen only when I keep fn window open and keep on updating.

So, could you share whether it writes to disk everytime we close its window? If so, we can do that more often.

However, u might also consider writing to some temporary text file on disk as soon as some info is moved/ pasted to fn window. In that case, if system goes down, we can still open that disk text file and get back the info that we can then move into fn.

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My observation is fn3b is more stable and less prone to data corruption than previous version. thanks for it.

Another small convenience is by the new style of file/ folder name for back that you have introduced with this version. That creates problem in sorting the backup.

The current name is like
Flashnote Export - Monday, April 28, 2008 1.09.29 AM

Now, in that "Export - " makes the initial of it so long that remaining name which has actual info gets hidden in explorer for the small width of file name column.

And then, there is "Monday" and other day names, so If I am taking daily backups, the backups on mondays come together, then the backup on thursdays and so on. It is not the sorting order.

something like
Flashnote2008-04-28_01_09_29
would have been fine (time in 24 hour format to avoid am/pm)

Just one thought, I don't knwo whether it is practical or not.

currently, the main config file is still stored in c:\documents and settings\ etc etc.

I have moved my notes2.db file to another folder, rather another partition altogether E:\My Data\Fn, so that in eventualities when I need to reinstal my xpsp2, I could just format my c and have my data intact. that is what I am doing with all software that give me such option.

but cfg file being in c: is gone with formating of c.

I wonder if you could consider keeping the config file in the same folder where the notes2.db file is. And you might create just another registry variable or diskfile having the only entry that gives the name of the folder having the config and db files. In such case, we can even copy that "location" file to backup and just move it to required place after reinstallation without needing to move database which might be a horrible martian term for non-techies.

that is the concept of firefox/ thunderbird group of software. You might wish to have a look at their structure and styling.

While we are at firefox, I wish to say that even the default firefox now has a very strong and perfect data saving measure. Just another day, I was entering a long message on a site when my system went down, and when I restarted after boot up, I found that firefox is still showing the long unfinished message that I had entered in the textarea of a site. What a convenience it was.

I think that portable version will give that option. I'll added support of portable mode in two weeks

New version supports work in portable mode