2.0 some first impressions

First, congratulations on this new version. What I use Scrivener for is two things: I write very personal letters which I copy with my own hand in a second stage. I use Scrivener writing job-applications which I construct mostly from text-blocks I have already written and based on the vacancy-description and other reference material. Here are my first impressions:

The need to access reference-material while writing in full-screen-mode is now possible with the quick-reference-frame. This feature addresses an almost natural desire for me.

The collection perspective is certainly a useful one for in creative work for the hierarchical binder structure is but one of many structures with respect to content.

Now for the negative things:

I got lost in the overwhelming compile-options. With version 1 I got something I could continue to work with, no thoughts needed on my part.

The number of coloured buttons are quite high. I find colours very distracting in writing. Can you not go for shape (buttons ar more or less all square now) rather than colour ? The icons itself are not that intuitive. I know this is a a massive challenge for everyone. For example the full-screen icon has the two arrows on it. Full-screen-mode does not display any arrows. That is why it is not intuitive. If the button resembled full-screen mode, say a black button with wider white strip in the center, I believe it would serve its purpose more.

In case I work with a split editor I frequently lose track which part is “hot”. Maybe the highlighting could be more obvious.

Now something that is underrepresented in the design:
I can imagine that everyone working with scrivener loves the index-cards. I find they look more intimidating than useful in the inspector section and I think the screen space used is too big. What I can imagine is bringing up an index-card in an expose-type-of-fashion. Say, I moved to an edge of the text-editor and the index-card would come up looking like an index-card on the corkboard.

A process I would love to do in Scrivener:
Here is something I do very often. I start with a full reference-document and I need to extract some vital information from it for further use. On paper I would highlight the relevant parts for future quick reference. Digitally I would love to mark multiple sections in a pdf and then have an option to display only those sections or even to extract them with a click into a new document.

Thanks for your feedback. Sorry to hear there are more negatives for you than positives, but hey, can’t please everybody, right? :slight_smile:

A couple of comments: The icons are consistent with other Mac apps (see Pages etc). You can hide icons if you want. Compile options are now much more powerful. You don’t need to tweak them every time, just set them up once and you’re done. It’s what most users wanted - more control. I don’t understand your comment about which editor is hot - there’s now a very obvious blue bar, much more obvious than 1.x’s underline. Short of a neon sign and a big shattering glass sound with a booming voice telling you which editor has the focus, I don’t think it could be much easier to see at a glance which editor is “hot”, unless I’m misunderstanding you. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the feedback on your part. The experience is still far more positive than negative. From a perspective of time-spent the negative things hurt me in the order of two minutes, the positive things last for hours in a working session. As always, the positive is everything I do not see, everything I never have to think about, everything that seems not to exist at all, a silent helping hand. It is the invisible contribution of scrivener to what I write. If I had to give it a slogan ( use this one in advertising if you wish ): Scrivener is writing rather than typing.