We’re currently testing an important new feature in Codebook for iPhone and Codebook for iPad and we’d really love your help testing it out. Testing is easy and you’ll get early acces to something our customers have been asking us for since the advent of iOS 8.
The big thing that’s coming through town is an iOS app extension—Find in Codebook—that you can launch while viewing a webpage on Mobile Safari to look up your Codebook data. We’d like to expand the pool of testers to help identify problems we may not be anticipating. These could be anything from Touch ID issues, upgrading issues, problems using data back in Mobile Safari, bugs in the feature, etc. If you would like to help us test this please send me a private message here on Discuss with your email address, or send us an email directly and we’ll get you set up.
There is no requirement or obligation to report back, but we’re looking to get as much feedback as we can so don’t be hesitant. If you at least give the feature a spin and there are no problems you’ve done us a service. If there are problems I trust you’ll let us know!
If you need a Beta tester for iOS I can help out. I’m running iOS 9.3.2 and MacOS 10.11.5 and syncing through Dropbox. Sounds like a useful feature.
Note field are still squirrelly to edit and view. I would really like them to behave like a Note Entry inside of a standard entry. Their current rather bastard status is kludgy.
Shout if you have questions. Note the transition from Strip to CodeBook has been worn it.
Take care.
Joe Holland
Thanks very much, I have added you to the list. We are releasing the feature today, but we will need more help testing future updates. We test maintenance and new feature updates continuously, and we work hard to ensure that the beta releases are relatively stable before distributing them.
Note field are still squirrelly to edit and view. I would really like them to behave like a Note Entry inside of a standard entry. Their current rather bastard status is kludgy.
Ha, thanks for the feedback Note fields are admittedly more limited in functionality than note entries. Note fields predate note entries in the app’s model, and were intended as more a convenience for adding multi-line text that we didn’t expect to be very long. We improved it to support longer text documents, but it became clear that for providing the kind of features we provide on the new entry notes we’d have to create a new interface for these, at the entry record level. We didn’t want to try and kludge the search-in-note feature into the existing note fields interface, for instance.
We may be able to support some of the improvements of note entries on note fields—what specifically would you like to see?
Note the transition from Strip to CodeBook has been worn it.
Thanks very much! I have added you to the TestFlight list. We do not have a build in beta at the moment, TestFlight will notify you when an update is available along with what’s new.
William,
I’m ready to beta test but I don’t have an iPad, I have a pair of iPhone 6 units running iOS 9.3.2 and MacBooks running MacOS 10.11.5. I have the latest released versions of Codebook on all of the above.
I’ve added you to our external testers in TestFlight, you should have received an email at some point. Have you received an email from TestFlight inviting you to test Codebook? If not could you take a look in your spam or junk mail folders? If you didn’t receive it I can try removing and adding you again.
William,
I have gotten a couple emails from TestFlight however it says it is iPad only I don’t have an iPad. My hardware base is a couple of iPhone 6 units and a couple of MacBook Pro’s. So at this point I can’t apparently do any testing.
Hi Joe, thanks for checking! I just removed you from the iPad list and re-added you to the iPhone list. You should get one new email from TestFlight with a link to open on your iPhone and I think that should square us away.
Not at the moment, however, we post regularly on what we’re testing to the Beta group (just started doing that) and when you receive updates from TestFlight, the “What’s New” section is important to pay attention to.
Okay, I’m game. I’m not a technical user, but have been using codebook since it was STRIP s/w. I’ve come across a number of issues along the years and have provided feedback so you guys can get some insight from an ‘average user’.
I have just tried the Find in Codebook feature and already have some feedback fyi. I’ll send as a follow up.
While my ipad is sync’ing here’s what I have run across using Find…
Here’s the problem:
Some of websites have username on one screen, then you have to go to next screen to get to password field.
Find in Codebook makes you authenticate each time you access it from the Action/Share icon…see more info
below for details.
Explaining what occurs:
I went to the action/share button and looked for Find in Codebook and turned ‘on’ .
Back at Safari, I go to a website; Visit a website where I have account (screen with the login is displayed),
I select actin/share icon and select ‘find in codebook’
-Codebook displays dialog box and asks me to enter password for Codebook (okay, seems reasonable)
-I have to authenticate to Codebook by typing in password (fine)
-I enter my search criteria to get to appropriate Codebook category/entry (it enters my username
in the Safari webpage for my username - whoo hoo, nice)
BUT, that website has username on one screen, and once I type in my username, I have a “Next” button on the website to get to next screen to enter my password. (drat)
Once that screen is displayed I go again to Action/Share icon to pull up Find in Codebook, and another authenticate dialog box is displayed (so I have to retype in my Codebook password again).
I’m sure this is good security feature, but it makes it quite cumbersome at the end of the day.
For me I find its easier to open codebook, look for the entry, review my username and password, then go back to the Safari webpage and enter the information (so there’s no need to authenticate twice). Even if I cannot remember the username or password, I can easily/conveniently go back to Codebook and see it again before Codebook locks.
FWIT: it’s a nice feature for auto filling in username/passwords but only if those fields are displayed on the same Safari screen/webpage.
Thanks for trying out the new Find in Codebook feature and for the feedback!
The way the extension works is by grabbing the content of the page currently being displayed and locating the username/email/password fields within that content. Some sites (like Gmail and Yahoo) have their login separated as you described (enter the username, hit next, enter the password) but you should only have to activate the app extension one time for them because the password field is actually present on the first page, it’s just hidden until you enter the username. Throughout testing, the majority of the sites that had their login separated used this hidden pattern (so you would only have to activate the app extension once).
There were a few, however, where the username and password fields were truly on separate pages (which you would have to activate the app extension twice for). If you don’t mind sharing it, could I ask you to private message me with the website you’re attempting to use the app extension with where you have to activate it twice?
Codebook displays dialog box and asks me to enter password for Codebook (okay, seems reasonable)
Having to authenticate every time is a necessary security requirement—admittedly this is a bit frustrating. The good news is that the app extension shares a keychain with Codebook, so if your iOS device is Touch ID capable, you should be able to activate that under Settings → Login Settings → Enable Touch ID Login to speed up the login process for the app extension.
My name is Willem Beekhuis (Dutch version of William) and my profession is Senior Test-coordinator at a financial an insurance company. I have experience as a developer.
My special interest is Security and I like to test applications that are related with (User) Security and encryption. Password-managers have also my special interest.
My age is 62 and about three months I am going to retire. I will have regularly time to do some Beta test activities as a hobby. I am working multi platform, so if you need another IOS; OS/X and Windows Beta tester I would like to help you with testing Beta releases and future Beta releases.
I’m running always the latest OS releases.
I have also translated Applications in Dutch, so if wanted I can contribute to this needs.
My mailadress is […]@gmail.com
So if you are interested I would like to get a Testflight invitation code.
Hi @Willem, thanks very much! I have added you to the testing list for the iPhone version, do you also wish to test the iPad version? It is distributed separately. We do not currently have a version available in TestFlight to beta test right now but we will have a new one soon and the service will send you an email you can open on your iOS devices to get started.
Note fields are admittedly more limited in functionality than note entries. Note fields predate note entries in the app’s model, and were intended as more a convenience for adding multi-line text that we didn’t expect to be very long. We improved it to support longer text documents, but it became clear that for providing the kind of features we provide on the new entry notes we’d have to create a new interface for these, at the entry record level. We didn’t want to try and kludge the search-in-note feature into the existing note fields interface, for instance.
