(Archived) SFTP - "Unique Filename" broken, respecting image type, and other feedback

[Chuck Burt 0]

Hi,

Just a few points of feedback about SFTP sharing. Thank you thank you so much for bringing this back, without it I was going to stay on Skitch 1.x indefinitely.

1. If you have your SFTP setup to have "Unique Filename" checked, when it copies the URL to the clipboard it is not grabbing the unique string that you are putting at the end. It makes the "Unique Filename" feature useless for now (I certainly would use it if it worked).

2. The upload only seems to occur as a .png even if you have .jpg selected. I only have so much web space/bandwidth so having the more compressed .jpg option is quite useful when the better fidelity of .png is overkill.

3. It would be great if you could make share by sftp somehow one-click. That said, it is two clicks now and the auto-copy makes no more clicks necessary whereas before you needed two clicks, one to upload then again to copy to clipboard, so I'm ok with it if you can't figure out an elegant way to make that possible.

Here are a few other points of feedback unrelated to SFTP.

1. The UI of specifying a custom filename is not totally clear that it is editable. Might I suggest an on-hover style change of the text box to a lighter gray, this will show to the user that that space is editable.

2. If you drag an existing image file into the Skitch window, it keeps the current note size settings unlike before where it would start using this image's size. There is a workaround, however, if you drag the image instead to the dock icon.

3. Transparencies are not being preserved properly. Check the above image for an example (the background is set to white rather than transparent). Example, hit Cmd-Ctrl-Shift-4 then Space then click on any window in Mac (which will copy the window plus the window's partially transparent drop shadow to the clipboard). When you paste that into the old version of Skitch, it respects the transparency. The new version converts it to white.

4. I resize wayyyyyy more than I crop (since I primarily use cross-hair capture which renders cropping as extraneous), but the crop/resize tool defaults to crop always. Any way to get this to default to resize (or introduce a simpler resize function, that was one of my favorite parts about Skitch 1.x was how easy it was to resize simply and quickly) would be beneficial.

5. Where do files get saved locally? Do I have to explicitly drag/export something out of Skitch and put it somewhere for it to get saved (I'm not and will not ever use the Evernote features)? I loved how Skitch 1.x saved a history of what I did automatically, but have no need/desire for that history to be reliant on Evernote when I have a perfectly good hard drive that is local, faster, more reliable, and cheaper.

Thank you as always!

-Chuck

[klang 38]

Thanks Chuck for the detailed feeback.

For your first 3 points, we'll got fixes/improvements planned.

1. Agreed — making it clearer that this is edtiable is on our to-fix list
   
2. When you say 'note size', do you refer to the document Zoom?
   
3. Transparency support is on it's way.
   
4. Cropping and resizing is getting a makeover soon too.
   
5. Files are not saved in 'library' locally unless you have an Evernote account which enables syncing, text searching via the OCR and sharing via Evernote.
   

We appreciate the thoughtful feedback, it helps us continue to squash bugs and smooth out the UI.

[Chuck Burt 0]

2. When you say 'note size', do you refer to the document Zoom?

Try snapping a small area and then dragging in a much bigger (in pixels) image file, dropping it right into the Skitch window. It seems to crop the bigger image to your previous snap's size, rather than considering it a new snap. If you instead drag the image file onto the Dock icon, it uses the new image size.

5. Files are not saved in 'library' locally unless you have an Evernote account which enables syncing, text searching via the OCR and sharing via Evernote.

I don't want OCR or synching, I just want to have a local, ideally unflattened (though that I could probably live without) file saved that I can reference back and reuse. If I use Evernote, will I have that too? But that means I must use Evernote to get it, right? What happens if I start hitting bandwidth usage limits on Evernote? That means I must pay Evernote for the premium package as a recurring subscription? As someone who snaps on the magnitude of dozens to sometimes hundreds of times a day, that thought scares me when it worked perfectly fine in the older version. Frankly, it's a bit of a bait-and-switch disguised as a "new feature" (cloud synching!), don't you think?

What if I'm snapping things where I'm not the copyright holder? As with any cloud-hosted service, we are required to grant some rights to Evernote for you to perform the hosting/display/etc service, right? What if I do not have the legal rights to grant you such permissions/sub-licensing on something I've snapped? Snapping something onto my own hard-drive would very likely fall under "fair-use," however I very much doubt the same would hold true if it then requires me to authorize Evernote licensing or somehow guarantee I'm a legal rights-holder (90%+ of the stuff I snap is either "owned" by my employer or is screenshots of other websites for reference, neither of which do I have legal authority to use with Evernote, as per Evernote's Terms of Service). What if I happen to be in some other country when I snap and it then must cross international borders?

Cloud is all well and good if it offers some sort of value and synching and OCR might be useful to some people, but to me, Evernote offers absolutely nothing I value that a perfectly good hard drive doesn't already offer for no additional charge, far less hassle and legal risk, and much less potential instability/downtime.

If there is no plan to have a local library without Evernote, I'll likely stay on Skitch 1.x for as long as it works. In this case, there isn't a chance you'd be willing to open source the old branch, is there?

Cheers,

-Chuck

[klang 38]

Hi Chuck, thanks for the details.

#2 I understand, thanks. This is on or to-do list, and I'll push that up in priority.

As for #5, this is correct — Skitch 2.0 sees the Skitch Notes collection as a single, fully synced library. It will do everything it can to keep a copy of every Skitch document in the Evernote service. We're always trying to find the best (in terms of user expereince) model that fits the most people, and hearing what people need guides us greatly. I can't comment on anything legal, including anything to do with Open Sourcing etc. I can say that I hear your feedback, and it all contributes to the ranking of our 'what to do next' list.

[Sal Lara 0]

Thanks guys. @klang when can we expect a fix for #1? Basically I'm wondering if it's worth writing a script to update my clipboard with the correct image URL as a workaround in the meantime.

[klang 38]

@Sal - We've fixed that in 2.0.4, due very soon. Probably not worth creating any workaround script.