Oct

5

Bento Power Users: Beware!

Filed Under Bento Bugs, Bento Tips, Editorial 

My first important Bento 3 project was a disaster: Bento crashed about 50 times in the process! Before I go on I want to stress that this long article is mainly for the benefit of Bento power users like me. What is a “power user” ? Here’s my personal definition (a summary):

I read all versions of the Bento user’s guide from cover to cover, I was an award winning beta tester for Bento 3, I am using Bento for countless ongoing and archival projects, both personal and business. I’ve learned to use most features to the extreme and to my advantage to create highly useful, informative, and visually pleasing Bento Libraries.
By now, I’m also experienced in finding workarounds for Bento’s shortcomings. But most importantly, I’m expecting Bento to cooperate. In other words, I expect a stable environment AND consistency: the advertised features have to work as described and should yield predictable results. And they really don’t in many cases. But that will be the subject of another comprehensive (power user’s) post.

Back to my problem over the weekend. I visited my daughter at college and gave her a copy of Bento 3. Then I wanted to give her the elaborate Library Collections I had compiled from her athletic prowess in High School. Databases of races and events from three sports: Cross Country Running, Nordic Skiing, and Track. Since Bento supposedly can export & import templates and data files, it should be a straight forward process, especially for a power user…
But first there is that huge (template) export/import bug that nobody but me seems to care about (see my previous report). The bug only involves the iCal and Address Book Libraries and their Collections. Unfortunately, my project ONLY consisted of iCal Events Collections. But I know exactly how to edit the exported Collection templates to squash the bug and make them usable on another computer. It just takes a lot of time. I start with a virgin database file, import the template to delete erroneously duplicated forms, collections and fields (I even forgot that last step this time). And since you can’t import any data into Smart Collections I also had to “convert” them to regular Collections before exporting the now “clean” template again. And this was the point where all the crashes started:

Bento 3 has a potentially great feature: you can now copy Forms within the same Library and its Collections. Now I am given a TOOL to convert a Smart Collection into a regular one, so I can import my data. All I have to do is copy all the forms from the Smart Collection into a regular Collection and then delete the Smart Collection before exporting the template.
After copying several forms successfully, Bento crashed all of a sudden when I ctrl-clicked a form to copy it! And after the crash the database file became so corrupt that Bento would not restart! So I had to ditch the database file and had to start over with a fresh one. And that happened over and over again, now triggered by various actions. I saved the template a few times anticipating the crashes but I could never finish it before Bento crashed again.
Finally, I figured out that I could keep editing the template even after Bento crashed – because the application didn’t actually quit, even though the pop-up window said so…

But the final template file is not working perfectly – it displays some strange behavior, sometimes random, sometimes consistently – both are very annoying. At least just using the template and editing its data doesn’t trigger crashes… and until the Bento team fixes all the bugs, I can say I found another workaround I can live with, even though it doesn’t make me happy.

Bottom line: the new feature of copying forms is not stable! It was a last minute addition and should have been tested much more thoroughly. Make sure you work with a copy of your database file before you use it! It was clearly the main trigger of the crashes, together with the incomplete and misleading (template-) import/export function (I really call it a bug too). This function has to be totally re-designed, but at this point I’ve given up hope…

My clear verdict: even the newest version of Bento does not even come close to satisfy the high standards of a power user like me. And that has nothing to do with a lack of features. IMHO, it just has sloppy implementations of even the most basic features which I wlll explain in detail in my next post.

And I would rather wait longer for an upgraded version if it would mean that all features were tested more thoroughly before its release.

Comments

12 Responses to “Bento Power Users: Beware!”

  1. Sandra on October 5th, 2009 6:52 pm

    Bento is crashing all over the place for me too!

  2. Florian on October 5th, 2009 7:19 pm

    Sorry Sandra, welcome back anyway…
    can you give me more details? Bento 3 under Snow Leopard or Leopard? Do you remember how the crashes started?
    I did find that Bento 3 runs more stable under Snow Leopard for example. And I’m sure now that my exported template file was NOT to blame for the strange behavior.

  3. Dave on October 6th, 2009 8:14 am

    This is a great resource for new Bento users!
    Please never give it up. I am getting ready to download Bento 3 in a week. Should I be worried?

  4. Sandra on October 6th, 2009 9:05 am

    I’m still using Leopard. I’m planning on upgrading to Snow Leopard soon, though. I wanted to move some addresses out of my main address book into a new address book library.

    I exported the list into Numbers ADDRES BOOK TEMPLATE. When I imported the list TEMPLATE, I selected the new address book library, yet Bento placed the listing TEMPLATE back into the main address book ADDING DUPLICATE TEMPLATES OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I tried the import several times and ended up with several duplicate forms that needed to be deleted. As I deleted the forms, Bento would crash over and over again. Bento would let me delete one, two or maybe 3 forms before crashing.

    To get the project to work, I FINALLY GAVE UP. I turned off the syncing between Bento and my Address Book, iCal & iPhoto. Then, I RECREATED THE TEMPLATE IN A NEW ADDRESS BOOK LIBRARY AND I was able to import the addresses FROM THE NUMBERS DOCUMENT into the new Library.

    I also tried to import a template that I exported and had no luck with that yet. I downloaded the CD template from the web and that imported correctly. The address book template that I exported wouldn’t import at all. I EVEN TRIED CHANGING THE NAME OF THE ADDRESS BOOK TEMPLATE BEFORE IMPORTING IT, YET THAT DIDN’T HELP EITHER.

  5. Florian on October 6th, 2009 11:29 am

    Dave, for one reason you should be worried: the Bento team doesn’t always seem to be taking bug reports seriously. And there is no guarantee that the bugs will ever get fixed. They might not consider every strange behavior a bug, unfortunately. In my next article I will be pointing out many inconsistencies as well.
    But having said all that, I still believe in the overall Bento concept and I have so many great Bento archives that I can’t quit using it, I have to put up with it… So my advice is to download Bento 3 Trial (it’s fully functional) and really give it a workout. Read the user’s guide. You really have to decide for yourself if you want to shell out the money after the trial period is over. If it ever crashes on you, try to write down how it happened, what you were doing right before the crash. Once your database grows you should back it up often (from the file menu), because a Bento crash can totally corrupt the database file.

  6. Florian on October 6th, 2009 12:06 pm

    Sandra, the first problem SHOULD be solved (fixed) by the two new version of the software: Bento for iPhone 1.03 and Bento 3.01 update which has just been released. That’s the claim.
    I still don’t fully understand your last paragraph: did you create a new Address Book library (like Bento’s additional Contacts library) in addition to Mac’s Address Book? Then after exporting it, you tried to import it again on the same computer? Why would you do that? Still, even then, what Bento normally does then is creating a duplicate of that library called “address book 1.”

    And as a reminder to all: if any of the library templates you export involves Mac’s Address Book or iCal (either directly or as a Related Data field) then you’re in trouble. Because that’s when Bento’s export/import bug kicks in.

  7. Florian on October 6th, 2009 12:11 pm

    My tip:
    If you want to have a Bento library for Addresses that’s not linked to Mac Address Book, use the supplied Contacts template. You can still copy and paste Address Book records into Contacts.
    The Contacts library template and data file(s) should export and import (onto another computer) without any problems. I can’t see any reason why you would want to re-import them onto the same computer…

  8. Florian on October 6th, 2009 12:19 pm

    Another tip:
    after the horrible problems I had with editing templates for export or after import, PLEASE do what I did: use a fresh database file for all the editing.
    Once your template is just right and you’re ready to start using it, you can export it one more time from your test database file and THEN import it into your real (main) database file.

    Same thing you should do with templates you download: first import them into your test database (or another fresh one) and check them out, edit them, a.s.o.

  9. Bento to the Max on October 7th, 2009 2:18 pm

    I consider myself a Bento Power User. I use Bento heavily for my business and push it to the limits. I extend Bento’s functionality by automating the building of websites using QuicKeys, Bento, and FileMaker as a back end for complex calculations.

    I was looking forward to some of the exact features that came with Bento 3.

    But I have found so many bugs with Bento 3 in just a few days, it is unbelievable.

    1) There is the checkbox in a calculation bug (which I depend upon and have thousands of these simple calculations that display the state of a checkbox)

    2) There is the reordering of libraries bug

    3) I have had Bento run excruciatingly slow when being shared

    4) And then today, I tried to delete one record and Bento hung. After force quitting, I came back, and while all the records where there, Bento had deleted all the data in all the records!

    Incredible.

    I’m really disappointed in Bento 3 and think the developers at FileMaker should’ve stayed and worked at the office a few extra weekends.

  10. Florian on October 7th, 2009 2:31 pm

    Yes Max, I noticed right away that you’re a Power User!
    Would you send me an email (under Contact) and describe the bugs in more detail? I’ll make a post under Bento Bugs. I emailed the product manager of Bento today and told him about that new category. So there is some chance he’ll drop by. He did before. Thanks.

  11. Sandra on October 7th, 2009 7:32 pm

    Before I had Bento, I had my students and my personal address books mixed together. I finally wanted to get around to separating the two address books. It’s ok to have my current students in my mac address book, yet it’s too cumbersome to also have all the former students in there as well. (Many students come back to my classes after a semester or two or even graduation, so I still want to have the information.) So that’s why I was exporting and importing on the same computer.

    I did create a new Contact Library in addition to the Mac Address Book. Then I tried to import the Template from the Mac Address Book into the new Contacts Library. Unfortunately, it didn’t create a new library, I guess that would have been ok, I would have just renamed it. Instead, it just added duplicate templates into the main address book.

    I was successful importing the export data into the Contacts Library. So in the end, I did get everything the way I wanted it.

  12. Florian on October 7th, 2009 7:52 pm

    Sandra, now I understand, and I’m glad everything worked out.
    This is expected behavior, for a change. A template in Bento can NOT be mapped to a library of your choice which does make sense to me. It will either create a new library, or a duplicate library, changing the name (if a library with the same name already exists), or (in case of Address Book and iCal) duplicate collections and forms (which is a bug).

    A data file is different, it can be imported into any existing library (as you did by using the Contacts), OR (if you choose) it will create a brand new library with a very basic form layout which you would have to edit to make it look better.
    It works best, of course, if the import library has the exact same fields as the one the data is coming from. If not, you should map them the way you like it in the import dialog.

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