It would be nice to be able to tag a group of screenshots. When I select a group of screenshots, and then type in the Tags box, only the first screenshot in the group gets tagged.
Yes, we would work on providing an additional option to specify the path for FTP. However, even with the present set-up, you can specify a different folder/ path for uploading images on your FTP. We have addressed this with our blog post, check this link http://www.globaldelight.com/blog/2009/07/uploading-to-ftp-with-voila/
Thanks for your feedback on the tagging. Yes, it's very helpful to edit a group of images with tag or description. It is a bug in the current version and we would be fixing it.
Here's my stab at guessing the new features (actually, my wish list :-)
1. Hide the dock icon (everyone seems to want this)
2. "Post-it" notes (drag a note to annotate on) as well as "post-it flags" (like a sign here-> flag)
3. Dragable tool bars
4. An option that toggles between the "old" Drawer style, and the Sidebar style. Drawers are extremely useful with low screen real-estate (laptops). I have seen a few apps that do this (see: the MyManuals option to do this at: http://bit.ly/CO10E )
5. More stamps, or a stamp editor (I would love to have a "Reviewed" stamp or "Documentation" stamp to help file print-outs.
One more, and probably the most important one I forgot:
SCP/SFTP as an option to upload. As a web space reseller, I actually turned OFF FTP support, since it is so insecure, and very easy to sniff out usernames and passwords. As proof of concept, I demonstrated this to a customer who did not want to give it up, and his next question was, "So, how do I use SCP or SFTP?"
For others asking how they would do that with a Mac, ExpanDrive is a great utility that integrates well with the Mac. Your SFTP "sites" are mounted as drives in the finder, and you can do what you want with them. See what ExpanDrive can do for you to increase security: http://bit.ly/Givpa -- and, No, I am not the developer, nor even know who he/she is. I just think that ExpanDrive should be something built-in to OS X in this day and age. Sure, you should be able to cobble together something in the Finder, but ExpandDrive is amazingly simple to use (like the Mac should be).
I find you software very interrested but I still use LittleSnapper for now. The only thing that make me hesitate is that I can't capture a page from Firefox or default browser. Only Safari is supported, and I don't use it, I prefer Firefox or Chrome. When it will be possible, I will buy it.
Maybe for sharing it could be great to upload to Picasa too or Facebook and Twitter
We too have added this feature request to our wish list :) We would pass this request to the developers, and hopefully they would support Firefox as well..
I would love it if screenshots could be dragged directly from Voila onto the message entry box in Tweetie. This has never worked without first dropping the image onto my Desktop.
We are working on the new version and that should do this trick. Basically, if the app is capable of receiving the images directly then this should work.
I have been using Voila for a couple of months now and I have a few needs:
1. The ability to just PASTE a capture into other applications. I have the need to take captures of many technical documents, annotate them and then want to email them out through Entourage. Unfortunately, the support for Entourage does NOT allow me to paste directly into the body of an email, only as an attachment, which is kind of useless. I cannot even Insert from Entourage as all the captures do NOT append the extension of the picture format such that Entourage will not 'see' them. The only way is for me to save manually as a filename with the correct extension and then insert it. This is NOT user friendly and it takes far too much time to do this for clips of many documents. This simple feature, the ability to paste directly, and to fix the file extension issue would go a long way.
2. I have used Snagit on the PC for years. I heartily suggest you look at that for the types of things I can do in seconds that I cannot do with Voila.
Please email me if you have any comments or want to ask any further questions of me,
Regards
Ed
Copy-paste is going to be supported in the next version of Voila. Even with copy-paste, you have to be in the 'HTML' mode in Entourage for the image to get pasted. Also, the captures taken from Voila saves in the '.voila' format in the >Users>Pictures>Voila folder, and you would not be able to insert them. This is because Voila converts the file format on-the-fly as chosen by the user. But with copy-paste and drag-drop support you could do this easily.
We thank you for your feedback and suggestion. We look forward to hearing more of them from you.
That is good news.
As to the extension, could there not be a preference to allow the captures to be saved with a given format extension to allow users that are 'manually' oriented? I know it would defeat the on the fly conversion, but I am sure there are other Voila users like myself that do not share with any of the existing canned options.
I am always in HTML mode with Entourage so that is not an issue.
I still say if you look at the difference between the Apple mail support, where the capture is inserted into the body of the email, versus Entourage as an attachment, I cannot understand why it would be different. Captures, for me anyway, are always more effective if they are in the body of the accompanying email text(as in the MAIL support).
Microsoft has announce Outlook will be on the MAC with next release of the Mac Office suite, so I assume you will support it as well some time in the future.
Thank you for that feature suggestion. Providing an option to set the file format in the Preferences would be a great time-saver and handy feature. We too have that in our mind and it is already included in our wish list
Different mail clients handle attachments/ insertion in different ways. So, if an app accepts image import from Clipboard, then ideally it should work fine. We will check it out on the Outlook for Mac part, if it is available by the time the next version is released.
Haven't had time to read all the comments, so I hop I'm not repeating anything here.
I've bee using Voila (trial mode) for a couple of days now. I had narrowed down my choices to Voila and LittleSnapper, and honestly neither completely fills my needs, but Voila is much closer to doing so.
If you would make your tagging system better (auto lookup of previously entered tags, OpenMeta tags, no dupes, etc), displayed url info for web snaps (is it there but I'm missing it?), made web snaps of text editable/copyable/etc, polished and refined the "Effect" and "Tools" sections (LittleSnapper just excels in this area), allowed the complete removal of the tray icon (leaving just menubar icon), made use of control-click/right-click in browser and canvas areas (I'm really surprised at the lack of this feature), add a few more optional buttons to put on toolbar (move to trash/print/etc), same goes for bar between canvas and browser (and allow dragging of this bar to get multiple line browser area), and make better use of the space in the "(i)nfo" area. I would happily purchase the software. But the lack of some of the mentioned features, is making me continue my search.
Oh, and what is it with that annoying "Unable to save" dialog, that keeps popping up, but doesn't tell you what it couldn't save.
Thank you for your comments, suggestions and feedback. We are working on Voila to improve it further to meet our users needs. It would be great if you could elaborate more/ identify the areas on "polishing the Effects and Tools sections" in your comment. What options would you be looking for when you control-click/ right-click on an image in the browser/ canvas?
Can you provide the steps to regenerate the issue "Unable to save"?
I'm so used to getting the usual "Good suggestions, we will certainly consider them for our next major release" replies. It's nice to actually see a developer asking for more input.
So...
First of all, one more gripe - why does the browser area disappear when I go into "Tools" or "Effects". It would be useful to have at least a single row always visible.
Next, polishing the Effects and Tools section:
1. Make the changes "live". So during the creation a box, line, etc, you could just change its attributes (type, style, stroke ...) and see the effect immediately, rather than having to go and select the pointer on the toolbar then re-selecting the object in question and then changing attributes.
2. Some of the extra dialogs aren't needed. Like customize, for shadow, there is plenty of room to put the controls on the side panel. And what is "Copy" and "Paste", still not sure what they're doing.
3. Why can't I adjust the size of a "stamp" while placing it on the canvas. Just more extra steps required from the user. And the ability to create, or add, my own custom stamps would be nice.
4. The ability to create templates out of the properties (was this what copy and past in customize was for?) for the various tools, then re-apply them to other snaps, would be useful.
5. Please just look at LittleSnapper's handling of changing attributes, creating call-outs, blurring, etc.. they just seem to have found the right interface, for me anyway :)
There is more regarding the above, but I'll add it later, after I make sure they aren't buried somewhere, and have had more time to explore the documentation.
Next, control/right click options:
When editing:
1. Send back/front
2. Undo
3. Copy/Paste/Delete
Basically what you get with every other Mac program that I can think of. I had actually thought that my right mouse button had broken when I didn't get a menu at all.
When browsing:
1. Move to trash
2. Move to category/folder
Again, all basic stuff.
I''ll have to remember to make note of what I did before, the next time the error shows. Won't be long though, as it pops up a lot, especially during shut-down.
That's all I can think of for the moment. But you can be sure I'll be posting anything else that comes to mind :)
1. Add "Rotate Object" icons/commands to the toolbar (the one at bottom of canvas)
2. Move the "Crop" tool over to "Tools" tab, never seen it classified as an "effect" before
3. Instead of having separate "Arrow" and "Line" tools, why not just add "Arrow" options to the "Line" tool
4. Flag attribute?
- Browser area disappearing when moving to Tools/ Effects - We are already looking into this.
- Live changes for the editing - Unlike 'Effects' where you can see the changes instantly, currently Voila allows you to have multiple drawings. You can use the keyboard shortcut (Command+L) to Select. We would work on this to improve the workflow.
- Copy, Paste allows you to copy an image, annotation or set of annotations onto another image. You can also paste them to other documents and applications if they accept image imports from Clipboard.
- You can definitely resize, rotate and reposition the Stamps on the canvas. After adding a Stamp on the canvas (image), use the Select tool to select it. Upon selecting you would see the resize and rotate knobs. A hand cursor would appear on mouse-hover for you to relocate.
- Creating templates is currently not available in Voila. We will add it to our wish list.
- Right-click items: We will pass on the requirements to the team. But for most of them, we have provided the keyboard shortcut options or tools on the bottom of the canvas.
- 'Unable to save' message. There is no definite regeneration sequence, except that it appears during the system shutdown and it is arbitrary in nature. This does not appear on all the systems or for all the users. More inputs from users would be helpful for us.
- Rotate Object options - We are looking into this.
- Moving 'Crop' option to "Tools" tab - All the Tools options are selectable, but after a crop, the image gets flattened. That's why it is in the 'Effects' tab.
- Arrow and Lines are different tools and this way users can quickly access the right tools.
We thank you for your time and helping us improving this tool.
Regarding the resizing, rotating and positioning of stamps. I was referring to having the ability to do all of this when creating the stamp, not after you've placed it. It just seems like you're adding an unnecessary step.
The "unable to save" dialog is appearing during shutdown, so I see it is a known anomaly.
I do feel that the omission of the right-click/option-click menu is a large oversight, as this ability is now standard in every Mac app I use now. Not having it, just throws your workflow off, makes you feel like you've been sent back to the 90's :)
I just thought that since arrows are basically lines, just with pointers on the ends, it made more sense :)
Thanks for the copy/past enlightenment.
Anyway, I hope your looking into switching to OpenMeta tags down the line, and perhaps enabling a "flag" attribute (tag I guess).
I believe I will be removing my LittleSnapper app, and finishing up the demo time with Voila, then probably purchasing Voila, as it definitely seems to be heading in a better direction than LS.
Comments
Yes, we would work on providing an additional option to specify the path for FTP. However, even with the present set-up, you can specify a different folder/ path for uploading images on your FTP. We have addressed this with our blog post, check this link http://www.globaldelight.com/blog/2009/07/uploading-to-ftp-with-voila/
Regards
Team Voila
Thanks for your feedback on the tagging. Yes, it's very helpful to edit a group of images with tag or description. It is a bug in the current version and we would be fixing it.
Regards
Team Voila
1. Hide the dock icon (everyone seems to want this)
2. "Post-it" notes (drag a note to annotate on) as well as "post-it flags" (like a sign here-> flag)
3. Dragable tool bars
4. An option that toggles between the "old" Drawer style, and the Sidebar style. Drawers are extremely useful with low screen real-estate (laptops). I have seen a few apps that do this (see: the MyManuals option to do this at: http://bit.ly/CO10E )
5. More stamps, or a stamp editor (I would love to have a "Reviewed" stamp or "Documentation" stamp to help file print-outs.
Many thanks,
Bruce
SCP/SFTP as an option to upload. As a web space reseller, I actually turned OFF FTP support, since it is so insecure, and very easy to sniff out usernames and passwords. As proof of concept, I demonstrated this to a customer who did not want to give it up, and his next question was, "So, how do I use SCP or SFTP?"
For others asking how they would do that with a Mac, ExpanDrive is a great utility that integrates well with the Mac. Your SFTP "sites" are mounted as drives in the finder, and you can do what you want with them. See what ExpanDrive can do for you to increase security: http://bit.ly/Givpa -- and, No, I am not the developer, nor even know who he/she is. I just think that ExpanDrive should be something built-in to OS X in this day and age. Sure, you should be able to cobble together something in the Finder, but ExpandDrive is amazingly simple to use (like the Mac should be).
Best Regards,
Bruce
Thanks for all the inputs. We would look into all of them.
We would have SFTP uploading option eventually but may not be the way you are referring to another tool there.
Regards
Team Voila
Firefox unsupported :-(
I find you software very interrested but I still use LittleSnapper for now.The only thing that make me hesitate is that I can't capture a page from Firefox or default browser.
Only Safari is supported, and I don't use it, I prefer Firefox or Chrome.
When it will be possible, I will buy it.
Maybe for sharing it could be great to upload to Picasa too or Facebook and Twitter
We too have added this feature request to our wish list :) We would pass this request to the developers, and hopefully they would support Firefox as well..
Looking forward to your continuous support.
Regards
Team Voila
We are working on the new version and that should do this trick. Basically, if the app is capable of receiving the images directly then this should work.
Regards
Team Voila
1. The ability to just PASTE a capture into other applications. I have the need to take captures of many technical documents, annotate them and then want to email them out through Entourage. Unfortunately, the support for Entourage does NOT allow me to paste directly into the body of an email, only as an attachment, which is kind of useless. I cannot even Insert from Entourage as all the captures do NOT append the extension of the picture format such that Entourage will not 'see' them. The only way is for me to save manually as a filename with the correct extension and then insert it. This is NOT user friendly and it takes far too much time to do this for clips of many documents. This simple feature, the ability to paste directly, and to fix the file extension issue would go a long way.
2. I have used Snagit on the PC for years. I heartily suggest you look at that for the types of things I can do in seconds that I cannot do with Voila.
Please email me if you have any comments or want to ask any further questions of me,
Regards
Ed
edatwork@sympatico.ca
Copy-paste is going to be supported in the next version of Voila. Even with copy-paste, you have to be in the 'HTML' mode in Entourage for the image to get pasted. Also, the captures taken from Voila saves in the '.voila' format in the >Users>Pictures>Voila folder, and you would not be able to insert them. This is because Voila converts the file format on-the-fly as chosen by the user. But with copy-paste and drag-drop support you could do this easily.
We thank you for your feedback and suggestion. We look forward to hearing more of them from you.
Thanks
Team Voila
As to the extension, could there not be a preference to allow the captures to be saved with a given format extension to allow users that are 'manually' oriented? I know it would defeat the on the fly conversion, but I am sure there are other Voila users like myself that do not share with any of the existing canned options.
I am always in HTML mode with Entourage so that is not an issue.
I still say if you look at the difference between the Apple mail support, where the capture is inserted into the body of the email, versus Entourage as an attachment, I cannot understand why it would be different. Captures, for me anyway, are always more effective if they are in the body of the accompanying email text(as in the MAIL support).
Microsoft has announce Outlook will be on the MAC with next release of the Mac Office suite, so I assume you will support it as well some time in the future.
Regards
Ed
Thank you for that feature suggestion. Providing an option to set the file format in the Preferences would be a great time-saver and handy feature. We too have that in our mind and it is already included in our wish list
Different mail clients handle attachments/ insertion in different ways. So, if an app accepts image import from Clipboard, then ideally it should work fine. We will check it out on the Outlook for Mac part, if it is available by the time the next version is released.
Thanks
Team Voila
I've bee using Voila (trial mode) for a couple of days now. I had narrowed down my choices to Voila and LittleSnapper, and honestly neither completely fills my needs, but Voila is much closer to doing so.
If you would make your tagging system better (auto lookup of previously entered tags, OpenMeta tags, no dupes, etc), displayed url info for web snaps (is it there but I'm missing it?), made web snaps of text editable/copyable/etc, polished and refined the "Effect" and "Tools" sections (LittleSnapper just excels in this area), allowed the complete removal of the tray icon (leaving just menubar icon), made use of control-click/right-click in browser and canvas areas (I'm really surprised at the lack of this feature), add a few more optional buttons to put on toolbar (move to trash/print/etc), same goes for bar between canvas and browser (and allow dragging of this bar to get multiple line browser area), and make better use of the space in the "(i)nfo" area. I would happily purchase the software. But the lack of some of the mentioned features, is making me continue my search.
Oh, and what is it with that annoying "Unable to save" dialog, that keeps popping up, but doesn't tell you what it couldn't save.
Thanks for listening.
Thank you for your comments, suggestions and feedback. We are working on Voila to improve it further to meet our users needs. It would be great if you could elaborate more/ identify the areas on "polishing the Effects and Tools sections" in your comment. What options would you be looking for when you control-click/ right-click on an image in the browser/ canvas?
Can you provide the steps to regenerate the issue "Unable to save"?
Thanks
Team Voila
I'm so used to getting the usual "Good suggestions, we will certainly consider them for our next major release" replies. It's nice to actually see a developer asking for more input.
So...
First of all, one more gripe - why does the browser area disappear when I go into "Tools" or "Effects". It would be useful to have at least a single row always visible.
Next, polishing the Effects and Tools section:
1. Make the changes "live". So during the creation a box, line, etc, you could just change its attributes (type, style, stroke ...) and see the effect immediately, rather than having to go and select the pointer on the toolbar then re-selecting the object in question and then changing attributes.
2. Some of the extra dialogs aren't needed. Like customize, for shadow, there is plenty of room to put the controls on the side panel. And what is "Copy" and "Paste", still not sure what they're doing.
3. Why can't I adjust the size of a "stamp" while placing it on the canvas. Just more extra steps required from the user. And the ability to create, or add, my own custom stamps would be nice.
4. The ability to create templates out of the properties (was this what copy and past in customize was for?) for the various tools, then re-apply them to other snaps, would be useful.
5. Please just look at LittleSnapper's handling of changing attributes, creating call-outs, blurring, etc.. they just seem to have found the right interface, for me anyway :)
There is more regarding the above, but I'll add it later, after I make sure they aren't buried somewhere, and have had more time to explore the documentation.
Next, control/right click options:
When editing:
1. Send back/front
2. Undo
3. Copy/Paste/Delete
Basically what you get with every other Mac program that I can think of. I had actually thought that my right mouse button had broken when I didn't get a menu at all.
When browsing:
1. Move to trash
2. Move to category/folder
Again, all basic stuff.
I''ll have to remember to make note of what I did before, the next time the error shows. Won't be long though, as it pops up a lot, especially during shut-down.
That's all I can think of for the moment. But you can be sure I'll be posting anything else that comes to mind :)
1. Add "Rotate Object" icons/commands to the toolbar (the one at bottom of canvas)
2. Move the "Crop" tool over to "Tools" tab, never seen it classified as an "effect" before
3. Instead of having separate "Arrow" and "Line" tools, why not just add "Arrow" options to the "Line" tool
4. Flag attribute?
Thank you for your useful inputs.
- Browser area disappearing when moving to Tools/ Effects - We are already looking into this.
- Live changes for the editing - Unlike 'Effects' where you can see the changes instantly, currently Voila allows you to have multiple drawings. You can use the keyboard shortcut (Command+L) to Select. We would work on this to improve the workflow.
- Copy, Paste allows you to copy an image, annotation or set of annotations onto another image. You can also paste them to other documents and applications if they accept image imports from Clipboard.
- You can definitely resize, rotate and reposition the Stamps on the canvas. After adding a Stamp on the canvas (image), use the Select tool to select it. Upon selecting you would see the resize and rotate knobs. A hand cursor would appear on mouse-hover for you to relocate.
- Creating templates is currently not available in Voila. We will add it to our wish list.
- Right-click items: We will pass on the requirements to the team. But for most of them, we have provided the keyboard shortcut options or tools on the bottom of the canvas.
- 'Unable to save' message. There is no definite regeneration sequence, except that it appears during the system shutdown and it is arbitrary in nature. This does not appear on all the systems or for all the users. More inputs from users would be helpful for us.
- Rotate Object options - We are looking into this.
- Moving 'Crop' option to "Tools" tab - All the Tools options are selectable, but after a crop, the image gets flattened. That's why it is in the 'Effects' tab.
- Arrow and Lines are different tools and this way users can quickly access the right tools.
We thank you for your time and helping us improving this tool.
Regards
Team Voila
Regarding the resizing, rotating and positioning of stamps. I was referring to having the ability to do all of this when creating the stamp, not after you've placed it. It just seems like you're adding an unnecessary step.
The "unable to save" dialog is appearing during shutdown, so I see it is a known anomaly.
I do feel that the omission of the right-click/option-click menu is a large oversight, as this ability is now standard in every Mac app I use now. Not having it, just throws your workflow off, makes you feel like you've been sent back to the 90's :)
I just thought that since arrows are basically lines, just with pointers on the ends, it made more sense :)
Thanks for the copy/past enlightenment.
Anyway, I hope your looking into switching to OpenMeta tags down the line, and perhaps enabling a "flag" attribute (tag I guess).
I believe I will be removing my LittleSnapper app, and finishing up the demo time with Voila, then probably purchasing Voila, as it definitely seems to be heading in a better direction than LS.
Thanks for your replies
Thank you your great suggestions and encouraging words, we are looking into all the user inputs. We welcome your suggestions, comments and feedback.
Thanks
Team Voila