Introducing Curio 4 Standard

We just released Curio 4.0.3 with some nice fixes and features which we'll discuss in depth shortly.

One of the most noticeable changes was simply a rename: Curio Home is now called Curio Standard.

Why?

Simply put, it's a better name. Originally, we thought we'd add home vs. workplace features to Curio. But, in developing Curio 4, we realized that all the new features we were adding were applicable to both, and thus Home was a bit of a misnomer. Sure, Pro had some extras for serious pro users like dossiers, presentation mode, customization features, etc. But, there was certainly no reason why a workplace person couldn't use the home-labeled product if they didn't need those extras.

So, we'd like to introduce everyone to Curio Standard, and please note that all current Curio Home customers are simply on the Curio Standard bandwagon now. Welcome aboard! :-)

Flashlight: Curio's mini-Spotlight

I can't help but imagine that some of our Curio 4 customers may be wondering about our motivations to provide a Spotlight-lite, which we call Flashlight. Spotlight is very powerful and we certainly admire all you can do with it and with the technology that it's built on. However, sometimes it can also be annoying.

One of the things that drove us batty about it was its tendency to start searching before you finish typing the word for which you want to search. Oops, I mistyped the word I'm looking for. Let me back up and correct myself. Ouch, that was painful. Flashlight lets you decide when you want to start the search (and stop it, for that matter). No wasted cycles looking for the wrong thing.

Another slight annoyance is that Spotlight always includes the contents of files in its search for your keywords. There are times when you know the title of the file contains a certain word or word fragment. Flashlight lets you decide whether or not to include the contents of files in the search or just search by title.

Flashlight also lets you narrow your searches down or even perform searches based on the type of file and the last modification date of the file. So, for example, you can very quickly find all Keynote files on your system, by choosing "Keynote files" from Flashlight's "Kind" popup, then clicking on "Search".

So if you know there's an Excel file on your system that you modified in the last week, and you really want to include it in your Curio project, switch over to Flashlight and find it quickly with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Curio 4 collection styles

We just had a question come in regarding how mind map styles work. I thought it would make a good blog posting so here are some tips regarding list and mind map (aka collection) styles in Curio.

The magic key to collection styles is the "Use figure's style for all figures on level" button. In the following steps feel free to replace the word "mind map" with "list" as appropriate.

First, let's set a default style for figures on the mind map:
  1. Click on a figure and change its attributes to a nice default appearance, this will be the style Curio will use by default for all figures in the mind map regardless of the level.
  2. Click on the Layout inspector then, in the Mind Map panel, make sure the "Default style" radio button is selected, and then click "Use figure's style for all figures on level".
Next, let's set an "override" style for a few specific levels:
  1. Click on a figure on a particular level in the mind map and change its attributes to the style you'd like for all figures on this level.
  2. Click on the Layout inspector then, in the Mind Map panel, make sure the "Level style" radio button is selected, and then click "Use figure's style for all figures on level".
  3. Repeat for each level you care about - including the "root" level which is the central figure.
Finally, when you're all done, you can save it as a new named style:
  1. Click on the Layout inspector then, in the Mind Map panel, click on the little gear action button next to the style popup, then choose Save As.
  2. Type in a name you would like to give this style and save it.
That's it! Now you can use your new named style with any list or mind map you create.

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