Feature: Ask the user for updates upon closing Jabref rather than upon upstart (or both).
My typical situation is: I fire up Jabref because I am looking for some paper and the update dialogue bugs me. So I click “yes, go to homepage” and forget about the open tab. A minute or two later, I found my paper and close Jabref again, totally forgetting about the uptate. So the cycle repeats.
Being reminded of the update when my work with Jabref is done rather before it starts, feels like it could be more successful.
Unfortunately, I am not yet allowed to post polls. But consider these three options on my behalf:
I would like to have this feature, too! It fits my workflow
No, I think it’s unnecessary and against all intuition!
I think the current solution is the correct implementation since it is also used by most other software packages I know. Usually I start JabRef only once a day - at the start it totally makes sense to test whether an update is available (since the user might want to use the most up-to-date version). But after that I do not want to be bothered anymore with technicalities related to JabRef and use it for my actual work.
I don’t know of any other software that does the update check when closing the software. Furthermore, I could see this leading to new bugs. If you want to close JabRef and something is off with the update service, you might need to force-shutdown JabRef which could ultimately lead to data loss. And what if you have the autosave thread running in the background?
So, no, I would be against this change and I am in favour of keeping the current behaviour which is also in line with other software I know.
However, I am interested in listing to users to consider the interests of “the user”.
What I sense here are different interests.
Would this be an acceptable “compromise” between the interests?
add one or several “remind me later” options()? (default upon “quit” of jabref; other option “next day”).
Alternative option: Make it possible to turn off the updater. If people do not want to be bothered by it, they can just turn it off. I am not a big fan of this at the moment, since JabRef is under quite active development and many issues are being fixed in newer versions - but if people are really bothered by the update dialogue, this might be an option.
I don’t have a strong opinion on this topic generally speaking. I just feel, that the current solution is already the best one. Yes, changes could be made and you could have additional options - but the time of the JabRef developers (as far as I can tell) is limited and they are also not getting paid when developing this application. Given these circumstances I would prefer the developers to focus on more important issues (stability, performance - there have been great improvements lately, but we can go even further with it) rather than minor ones, especially if the minor ones do not even necessarily represent a step forward. If the developers had unlimited time/money, then yes, I would also be happy to see all potential requests addressed. But since that is not the case, I think the focus should be on other things.
Having said all of this - yes, a reminder (when starting the program - not when quitting JabRef) that might only come back once a month would seem like a good suggestion (but see my points above).