I recently purchased doggcatcher and settled down to learn and understand how it works. I was amazed to find that, despite the good reviews, the help and instruction are almost worthless. Simple fundamental explanations appear to be totally missing eg: what are the little colored balls to the left of the media items? What are the numbers to the right of the item? Why are the numbers in different colors? How do you delete items? There are many other questions that I have which I haven't found any answers for. I did find some posts that brought up these issues quite a long while ago but it is apparent that nothing has been done to make it easier. Although I'm sure that it's a good program I'm too busy to sit around and spend hours figuring out all the little details behind it. I'll probably delete it at this point and move on to something that takes 10 minutes to understand and implement. Incidentally, I even have a difficult time understanding the layout of this forum!! I participate in many online forums and the organization of this one is simply bizarre.
Some of what you are looking for is in the user guide which is installed as a feed when you start the app for the first time, but some of it is not and it should be. You can also view it on a PC here - http://www.doggcatcher.com/forum/11?sort=asc&order=Created
The colored numbers are covered here - http://www.doggcatcher.com/node/1747
The meaning of the colored balls was missing but I just updated it - http://www.doggcatcher.com/node/1752
Items don't get deleted by users, they are managed by the app. This is configured by the max items feed option (and also global preference). It's a common leap for users to miss and I haven't figured out a good way to communicate this yet.
I agree that the app can be a bit overwhelming at first. I've tried to improve that over time but there is still plenty of room to get better. Most of what one needs is in the User Guide feed within the app, but there are plenty of other more detailed topics covered in the FAQ.
I do appreciate you taking the time to share your experience, even if it wasn't a pleasant one. I'll take a another pass through the user guide feed to see if there are any gaps or areas where I can clarify things.
Thanks for your feedback.
I completely agree on almost all the comments made by the OP.
I've been using Doggcatcher for more than 6 months and still didn't know what the coloured balls meant (until Eric posted the reply). The meaning of the numbers next to the podcasts are guessable after a while, but it has taken me a long time to get to the point of understanding all the mysterious buttons and icons.
Perhaps there should be a one or two page popup that is shown on first run, but that is also accessible through the menus, explaining these basics with pictures. Doggcatcher's becoming a complex app, but it still should be easy for the first-time user to get to grips with :)
I also remember being confused by the forum layouts at first, but can't remember why now - it seems logical enough to me now.
That's a good idea about a graphic help page, I created an issue for this - http://mantis.snoggdoggler.com/view.php?id=1079
I agree completely about making the app easier for new users. I have spent the past couple weeks trying to think of things to make the app quicker to grasp for newcomers and have come up with a few ideas. Graphical help would be a good addition.
If anyone has any feedback about other things that didn't make sense or were hard to figure out, please let me know and I'll see what I can do to improve it.
Thanks for the feedback.