Dec

18

Strange Bug. Anyone?

Filed Under Bento Bugs | Leave a Comment

I was hoping that the Bento 3.02 update would fix this. It didn’t. The strange part is that this bug is not in MY Bento, but in my daughter’s.

It’s just a little thing, but I do want to put it out there, if just for its strangeness…

On my daughter’s new Macbook Pro, Bento displays a white canvas for html files in a File List Field (Grid View). Other files display a nice thumbnail, like PDF files or Rich Text files. On my own (two years old-) Macbook Pro, the html files DO have a thumbnail! Why would it happen on one computer and not on another? Our computers are very similar, both running Snow Leopard.

If anyone experiences the same little oddity, please leave a comment.

Oct

15

Bento Bug: Movie Aspect Ratio

Filed Under Bento Bugs | Leave a Comment

(Any Bento version)

When you drag a movie into a Media field, Bento fits it to all four borders, totally ignoring the movie’s aspect ratio.

This is extremely annoying to me, because I like to make my Media fields as big as I can and my layout somewhat dictates the shape of it. With still images it works great – Bento always keeps the correct aspect ratio and you can zoom the image in and out and move it around within the Media frame.

For movies there are no editing options at all and the aspect ratio is never perfect.

If anyone has a workaround for this bug or has figured out something about editing movies in a Media field that I haven’t, please come forward!

Oct

12

Bento Bug: Back-Ups

Filed Under Bento Bugs | 7 Comments

This goes along with the database bug described earlier, but is more important and should really be fixed.

If you make big changes to your database, like deleting 500 records, you might want to create an immediate back-up to secure the changes. But before you do, you have to quit and re-start Bento. Only then Bento has really updated your database file and reduced its size. If you back-up without re-starting, the size of the database file doesn’t change!

Again, this should be fixed, because Bento should be able to create true back-ups WITHOUT having to be restarted! Anything else doesn’t make any sense.

Oct

9

Bento Bug: Database File

Filed Under Bento Bugs | 4 Comments

Newest bug discovered: when you delete a Library, the size of the database file doesn’t change! Apparently all Bento deletes is the reference to the Library, but not the records or the media!

Since Bento 3 is so unstable, I decided to create sub-sets of my database for archiving purposes. For example, my daughter’s High School sports career is over, so I don’t need to do much more editing on her race reports… but one of my objectives was to reduce the size of that sub-database which Bento didn’t do!

Update: (see comments)

Oct

7

Bento Bugs: Export/Import Dialog

Filed Under Bento Bugs | 1 Comment

This post is filed under a new category: Bento Bugs. A “bug” for me is an application problem that causes crashes, unexpected results, or simply confusion.

There are several problems in the export/import dialog boxes.
Trying to export a single Collection template from iCal Events: Bento actually makes you believe that this is possible by using the name of the Collection throughout the process.
Actual result: ALL your iCal Events Collections with ALL forms and fields are exported (even from the main library)! Together with Bento’s “duplication bug” this creates a huge mess as described in this article. I will talk about duplication in a new post.

Bento 3 added another discrepancy: when you are trying to export a data file, it gives you a choice between exporting “all Table View fields” or “only fields displayed in Table View.” Since Bento can now display a media cell (pictures, videos, sound files) one would believe one could now export the media files as part of the data file.
Actual result: this is not true. No media files are exported or imported with a data file.

Finally, try exporting a data file of an iCal Collection. This gets really confusing. Bento does export just the records contained in the Collection. But if you choose “all Table View fields” it exports all fields of the main Library! It should just export all fields used by the Collection.
Actual result: When you import such a data file into the SAME template it came from, Bento issues the warning: “some data cannot be imported.”
Remedy: you have to go into Table View and make sure that only all the fields used in the iCal Collection are displayed. Then choose “only fields displayed in Table View” in the export dialog.

Comment: it is hard enough to re-build a Library on a different computer without being able to export both the media files and any data from List fields. The three described bugs in the dialog box make it even harder and more confusing!

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