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Here's an idea...

cmbrougham

Grandmaster Brewer
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Hey Brad... v1.2 is great! Running very smoothly. Had two thoughts as I was working with the program this evening. One is small, but would be extremely helpful; the other is much larger, and would be cool but isn't essential.

The first thought: is there a way/possibility to make the pane focus follow the mouse? I use the scroll wheel on my mouse a lot. As I was looking through some recipes I downloaded from the site, I would click on the name of the recipe in the upper pane, and the actual recipe would appear in the bottom window... as it should. Obviously, you can't see the whole recipe/particulars at a glance, so you have to scroll. Well, in order to scroll in the lower pane, I'd actually have to click on it, then scroll. If I go back to the recipe list pane, I have to click again... ad infinitum. This applies elsewhere in the program as well. Obviously not essential, but would be a nice little workflow addition, if possible--a thought, anyway  :)

The second thought: let's say I've got 400 recipes. I want to know which ones can be brewed with what I have in stock, or using a particular ingredient. So, what about a built in "find" or "search" feature that would allow the user to select an ingredient (or two, or three), and then recipes would be returned that contain those ingredients. Obviously, this is completely non-essential, but would be an extra-cool feature for the brewer who has tons of recipes, or is just feeling experimental.

As always, great work, and keep it up!
 
Thanks for the kind comments...
 
I guess it would be possible to track the mouse, though it might cause some confusion since it would not be "Windows standard".  I'll take a look and see if there is some way to implement it that might make sense since I can see exactly what you are talking about.

As for the search feature, you can actually use the search command to primitively achieve what you want.  For example, open the search command while viewing your 400 recipes and type in "fuggles" and then check the box that says "Search all fields".  Start the search and you will see all of the recipes that mention fuggles somewhere.    That will at least narrow the field down a bit...though I do not believe the current version works correctly with multiple items.  Perhaps a simple addition that could be added later to allow multiple search words to be indexed.

Thanks!
Brad   8)
 
That's true... I guess Windows doesn't follow mouse focus. Where did I get that idea from?  ::) Anyway, it might just be an "option"... would just help workflow for me (personally).

I didn't even think about using the regular "Search" feature that way. Here's another idea, though: what about making a "filter" bar at the top of the recipe view pane? So, instead of calling up a box with the ingredient search paramenters, there could be a couple drop-down boxes that would let you pick the ingredients you want to use. Three would be awesome, but even one or two would be great. This could be a very powerful and useful feature, IMO.

Just another crazy idea, anyway :D
 
Thanks,
 I did consider having the "Find" box pop up as a pane at the top of the Window like it does in Outlook.  I frankly ran out of time (its non trivial to do) so I went with the separate dialog instead.  

 I do like the idea of being able to search by ingredients rather than a simple text search.  It is amazing how quickly you can collect a lot of recipes with a tool like this...

Thanks for the suggestion - I'm building a list for the next version now.

Brad
 
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