It’s been a hard-work week, but I can say that work pays off (at last). One of the three pillars of the next release of Mosaico is persistence of snapshots (the others being multi-monitor and 64 bit OS support). Persistence among Windows sessions means that you’ll be able to take a snapshot, reboot your PC (or just restart Mosaico) and find that snapshot exactly where you left it, ready to be used. In other words snapshots don’t disappear when you close Mosaico. This means that you can set up a couple of layouts you use frequently, i.e. an image editor full screen on the first one and a pair of browser side by side on the second one, and recall them the morning when you get to work and boot your PC.
This mechanism is so simple to describe as it is hugely useful in practice. It really adds value to Mosaico. It’s been quite tricky to implement though! For example, it’s clear that if a snapshot has an application window that is not actually open yet, Mosaico has to open it. But what happens if you take a snapshot, then close AND reopen i.e. an explorer window and then you restore that snapshot? The snapshot contains an explorer window but it’s not the PARTICULAR one you’ve closed, that no longer exists. What to do here? Blindly open another explorer since the one we were searching for doesn’t exists anymore, or do a smarter thing and use the spare one? In this case I think the latter option is the best. However it is not always true that doing the “smart” thing is the best choice. Many developers think that “the smart thing” is to guess what the user want to do and silently do it under the hood. For example if you install an MP3 player I guess that you want to listen to your music, so do you mind if I scan ALL of your drives and directories (even network or USB ones) and COPY all MP3s to a secret directory renaming them in an incomprehensible way? Yes, I do mind. In this case “being smart” is not being smart. I’m trying not to do such things and keep Mosaico predictable.
Mosaico is a tool. An electronic one, with a precise scope, maybe not so general, but nonetheless it is a tool. It is my firm opinion that the greatest quality that a tool can have is predictability. A great tool must do what you expect it to do. Excessive simplicity or smartness can lead to unpredictability, so they cannot be used to evaluate the usefulness of a tool. As I expect Mosaico not to open unnecessary windows as I expect an MP3 player to just play the MP3 file I want to be played. This is the philosophy that drives the development of Soulid Studio software.
By the way: snapshots persistence has been fully implemented and will be part of the next release of Mosaico! If you want to keep track of Mosaico releases you can easily subscribe to Soulid Studio newsletter using the box on the right. Any comment/suggestion is welcome, please feel free to contact me at info@soulidstudio.com.
Please also keep in mind that once you install Mosaico you can keep using it even after the 14 days full-version trial, with just few limitations. If you like Mosaico please spread the word among your friends. If you’re into Facebook please Soulid Studio page with your contacts!
Enjoy!
