What are you doing with tabbles?

[Andrea]

Thanks Zach!

[ZachLePwner]

No, thank YOU for making an amazing product! (lol )

[Suzy]

Ah, good, I was hoping to find a thread like this because I'd like to know if Tabbles is going to be good for the use I have in mind for it.

I am a digital scrapbook designer and I have a lot of different kinds of graphics files that need to be tabbed. I might have a whole lot of .png elements, ribbons, for example, but also a lot of .png clocks, candies, tags etc - just graphics. If I make a tabble for each item I'd like to have some main categories, then some more specific categories. Maybe something along the lines of colors.

Then I have .jpg files along with same lines - these are not quite as detailed on the description, though. All tolled it's over a terabyte and a LOT of files.

My question is, how deep does this program go? If I have 10 Tabbles set up with main headings, is there a second tier to allow for more detailed splitting of files? If I click on ribbons, can I have a second tier of tabbies with descriptive terms? I probably have 250 ribbons here, but when I'm designing, I am looking for a certain kind - like a straight red one, not a curly yellow one.

I always knew I'd have to break down and buy a program for this, and to that end, I have collected a nice little batch of categories, which I am happy to paste here, but it's probably of limited interest.

The good new is there are a lot of people who would be interested in this and there are a lot of ways to get the word out if it can be ironed out with some example screen shots.

I also need a reminder to back up my Tabbles. I have heard sooo many horror stories on people who spent week and weeks tagging -- now this is in other programs, not Tabbles -- and the programs just sort of self-destructed and they lost all that work. An email reminder, a web update, a pop up screen - something that says, "Hey, you! Click here and back up your work!"

Thanks,
Suzy

[Andrea]

Hey Suzy,

welcome to the forum and thanks for the post!

You posted an interested message, and it's funny cause we've just received an email from another user who is also a designer and has quite similar issues from you... I'll ask him if he wants to get in touch with you here, maybe you can learn a bit together and we can all talk about what's the best way for you to use Tabbles

Let me go through your message:

I am a digital scrapbook designer and I have a lot of different kinds of graphics files that need to be tabbed. I might have a whole lot of .png elements, ribbons, for example, but also a lot of .png clocks, candies, tags etc - just graphics. If I make a tabble for each item I'd like to have some main categories, then some more specific categories. Maybe something along the lines of colors.

Then I have .jpg files along with same lines - these are not quite as detailed on the description, though. All tolled it's over a terabyte and a LOT of files.

I know exactly where your pain comes from: before starting Tabbles I was an all-around Sales&Marketing guy in a 50 people company doing CAD/CAM, and since they (unfortunately... ) discovered I could use Photoshop and Illustrator, I've quickly found myself taking care of all the marketing material of company (websites, advertisements, posters...+ 1milion screenshots!) and soon enough I had several thousands files on different hard-drives where each file was used in this poster, that advertisement, that wesbite page and this other video...and this is when Tabbles was conceived.

I'd suggest you FIRST have a DEEP look at the auto-tagging feature (as it can spare you a looooooooooot of time). Then, you need to become familiar with the concept of tag-bubble: a tabbles ia tag (a ribbon...) and a virtual folder at the same time. You can tag a file (in many different way, but mostly automatically) and then browse your tags as if they were folder, but with the major difference that you can ask Tabbles: show me all the files contained in the tabble "orange" AND in the tabble "curly" - this is indeed the power of Tabbles.

My question is, how deep does this program go? If I have 10 Tabbles set up with main headings, is there a second tier to allow for more detailed splitting of files? If I click on ribbons, can I have a second tier of tabbies with descriptive terms? I probably have 250 ribbons here, but when I'm designing, I am looking for a certain kind - like a straight red one, not a curly yellow one.

I don't fully understand your question here: I think it's because you come from your experience with another application and your projecting this workflow on Tabbles...

Anyway: you can put a file in as many tabbles as you want ( = you can tag a file with as many tags as you want) and you can later find your file by browsing those tags.

I guess you need to play around with it a bit before you can really understand what I'm talking about... but please-please-PLEASE try and start from the auto-taggin tool (I'm ready to show them to you via skype if needed)

I also need a reminder to back up my Tabbles. I have heard sooo many horror stories on people who spent week and weeks tagging -- now this is in other programs, not Tabbles -- and the programs just sort of self-destructed and they lost all that work. An email reminder, a web update, a pop up screen - something that says, "Hey, you! Click here and back up your work!"

Tabbles has a (not too trivial) backup mechanism built inside. Basically each time the database is saved, if the save was successfull than Tabbles also saves a backup.
Then:
- If Tabbles crashes, it skips on purpose saving the database (the database is otherwise automatically saved every 3 mins)
- if Tabbles tries to load the first database and the file is broken: in some case it will try to load the backup, in other cases it will just give you an error message... when this happens you manually copy & rename the backup database as the normal database.

Anyway: don't believe a word of what I just wrote - I myself save my db like CRAZY
You can do that by simply backing up the folder C:\Documents\your_user\Tabbled\Databases and C:\Documents\your_user\Tabbled\Backups
(Please read between the lines: we're testing while trying to use Tabbles as production tool as well... and when doing Alpha-testing, of course ever third operation the application crashes and the database goes bananas... we hope that the software we're shipping is slightly more stable than that and therefore you can sleep tight at night! )

Ok, I wrote a lot and I hope at least some of it made sense to you!

TTYL,

Andrea

[mrdna]

My question is, how deep does this program go? If I have 10 Tabbles set up with main headings, is there a second tier to allow for more detailed splitting of files? If I click on ribbons, can I have a second tier of tabbies with descriptive terms? I probably have 250 ribbons here, but when I'm designing, I am looking for a certain kind - like a straight red one, not a curly yellow one.

Yes and no. If your descriptions apply only to ribbons, then yes, you can create a child tabble under the parent "ribbon" tabble. (or just create the "curly" tabble and drag-n-drop it into the "ribbon" tabble. same diff) If it's not specific to ribbons, like "red" then you'de simply have to add that to the tabble combination (IE: ribbon+curly+red). I think you could copy the "red" tabble into the ribbon/curly tabble and have it operate correctly, that is pull up all the curly red ribbon patterns, but I'd have to test it to be sure. (Andrea?)

For something as generically applyable as colors, though, keeping it as a primary tabble may save you alot of work.

Hope that helps.

dna

[drjolie]

@ Andrea and Maurizzio ... you are soooo in trouble!!! images/icons/smile/mrgreen.gif My normally curly hair is about to go straight from all the pulling I've been doing, if there's any left. No, that's not why you're in trouble. I can't sleep ... can't eat (now that's not a bad thing, though LOL) ... can't do anything except obsess over Tabbles. With my compulsion for organization, I was a sucker for Tabbles the minute I heard about it. Once I saw the eye candy, it was no contest.

As a graphic designer, I have a zillion graphics, tubes, fonts, filters, plugins, masks, brushes .... the list goes on. I've also started into scrapbooking and that's another bunch of graphic-related stuff. As a bookworm, I have thousands (no kidding) of scanned in books and ebooks, pdfs etc. Even though I'm no chef, I have hundreds of recipes on disk. Then there's the UI customization stuff ... between that and the graphics work my icons are in the thousands. As for multimedia with photos, music, etc ... nuff said!

Now ... what I've been tearing my hair out about is ... where do I start, and how??? I decided to play around with Tabbles while at the same time reading the manual and how to use the autotagging. I think I've got enough of a hang of it now and started making some Tabbles and assigning files to get a better feel. Then I made a list of general categories to start (ie scrapbooking, documents, recipes, graphics, accents, etc. Then started looking at the types of files I have, the sub categories I might want, and so on. I then started thinking about the kinds of searches I would want to do, which I figured really should drive how I build up my Tabbles. One big question is how deep do I build the Tabbles? There's a lot of cross-categorization that could go on, but there are some areas where I'm not sure about. For example ... with file types. With the thousands of icons I have, almost all are either in .png or .ico format. Since I have graphics of different types also in .png format, those icons I figured I'll need to identify as both png and icon. The .ico files, however, are just icons, so I'm not sure I really need a Tabble for the file type .ico ... maybe just the Tabble for icon would be sufficient for the .ico files. Follow me?

I hope more users will share their thoughts, if not their methods of at least beginning in working with Tabbles. It's a great program with sooo much potential, but it will definitely require thought and work, esp for those of us with huge amounts of files to begin with.

Hugs,

Jo

[drjolie]

@Suzy ... I am also looking at organizing all my scrap stuff with Tabbles. I would be willing to share my scrap categories ideas. I thought it might be a good idea to ask Andrea the best way to put ideas on the site for scrap categories for other scrappers/designers who might like to try Tabbles. They could be referred to the site and to that "corner" to get some ideas.

Jo

[Andrea]

Hi drjolie!
I've somehow overseen this message - too bad! But here I am now

@ Andrea and Maurizzio ... you are soooo in trouble!!! images/icons/smile/mrgreen.gif My normally curly hair is about to go straight from all the pulling I've been doing, if there's any left. No, that's not why you're in trouble. I can't sleep ... can't eat (now that's not a bad thing, though LOL) ... can't do anything except obsess over Tabbles. With my compulsion for organization, I was a sucker for Tabbles the minute I heard about it. Once I saw the eye candy, it was no contest.

Thanks - we can't stop pulling our hair ourselves (I'm wearing a wig in the picture...)

As a graphic designer, I have a zillion graphics, tubes, fonts, filters, plugins, masks, brushes .... the list goes on. I've also started into scrapbooking and that's another bunch of graphic-related stuff. As a bookworm, I have thousands (no kidding) of scanned in books and ebooks, pdfs etc. Even though I'm no chef, I have hundreds of recipes on disk. Then there's the UI customization stuff ... between that and the graphics work my icons are in the thousands. As for multimedia with photos, music, etc ... nuff said!

Yes yes... we know the problem

Now ... what I've been tearing my hair out about is ... where do I start, and how??? I decided to play around with Tabbles while at the same time reading the manual and how to use the autotagging. I think I've got enough of a hang of it now and started making some Tabbles and assigning files to get a better feel. Then I made a list of general categories to start (ie scrapbooking, documents, recipes, graphics, accents, etc. Then started looking at the types of files I have, the sub categories I might want, and so on. I then started thinking about the kinds of searches I would want to do, which I figured really should drive how I build up my Tabbles. One big question is how deep do I build the Tabbles? There's a lot of cross-categorization that could go on, but there are some areas where I'm not sure about. For example ... with file types. With the thousands of icons I have, almost all are either in .png or .ico format. Since I have graphics of different types also in .png format, those icons I figured I'll need to identify as both png and icon. The .ico files, however, are just icons, so I'm not sure I really need a Tabble for the file type .ico ... maybe just the Tabble for icon would be sufficient for the .ico files. Follow me?

My first thoughts would be:

1) don't worry too much on how you name your tabbles and what category color you put them into as you can easily rename them and change their colors anytime
2) tag files as much as you can cause Tabbles doesn't seem to slowdown as the file number grows (we're hitting 50.000 files here and the difference in performance is still extremely limited

I hope more users will share their thoughts, if not their methods of at least beginning in working with Tabbles. It's a great program with sooo much potential, but it will definitely require thought and work, esp for those of us with huge amounts of files to begin with.

We had this idea of allowing people to exchange their dbs and export/import them: partially it's there already (but you can only export a database structure and reimport it thus replacing your existing db with a new one... we may be working on a function to import a piece of db into your existent db...).


Please keep the questions and the comments coming, but not in this thread (please start a new thread somewhere else as this thread is meant for people to tell other people what they're using Tabbles for).

Thanks!!!

Andrea