10.2: Downloads

So much of our digital lives revolves around shared storage and documents, so it’s no wonder that forScore’s Services panel plays a big role in helping users work effectively. With forScore 7.1 we replaced the Dropbox panel with a much more powerful alternative that introduced support for additional services like Microsoft OneDrive, Box, and more. We got a lot of things right with that significant rewrite, and most of the Services panel is the same today as it was back then, but we’re always looking for ways to improve and the biggest one is the ability to download items and add them to a setlist in one step.

We added this ability in forScore 9.4, allowing users to tap “Edit” and select one or more compatible files, then tap and hold the download button to choose to download them, download them to the current setlist (if applicable), or download them to a specific setlist. This worked well, but wasn’t very discoverable, so in forScore 10.2 we’ve removed the long press altogether and now show these options any time the download button is tapped. Downloading a single file is as simple as it has ever been, since you don’t need to use Edit mode at all: just tap an item and it downloads. Downloading several items at once takes an extra step, but on the whole we think this change strikes a better balance between efficiency and functionality.

Another thing people often do in the Services panel is download everything in a folder at once. You can go through the list tapping every item individually, but the easier method is to enter Edit mode, use the circled check mark to select everything, then tap the Download button. The second step isn’t always obvious to everyone, however, so in forScore 10.2 we removed that requirement. If you’re in edit mode and tap the Download button with nothing selected, forScore selects everything for you automatically and then asks you what you’d like to do with those files. It’s a little thing, but it can be a big help for new users.