Brewing Software Guis

[MartinS]

I'm a long-time user of both ProMash and BeerSmith. While they both have their strengths, there's one thing that frustrates me in both of them: the interface for creating and editing recipes, especially the hop schedule.

Tables are fine for grain-bills - they are after all just a list of ingredients, but when you're playing with more detailed hop schedules, I find adding entries to a table to be laborious, error-prone, and difficult to absorb by skimming the table.

Do any of the other offerings provide better interfaces? I've often thought that dragging and dropping additions onto a graphical timeline for the boil would be a much more natural interface. Is there any software out there that can do that? Is there some novel interface in your favourite software you couldn't live without?

 

[mika]

I hate GUI's, chews too much memory, let's go back to DOS.

 

[MarkBastard]

ProMash looks like arse. I uninstalled it straight away due to my displeasure at viewing the GUI!

I would love if there was a nice AJAX website that did the same job as BeerSmith but better, and you could store and share recipes etc.

 

[chappo1970]

I hate GUI's, chews too much memory, let's go back to DOS.

Fortran anyone?

:lol:

 

[Supra-Jim]

Fortran anyone?

:lol:

Quit showing off Sherman and get back to nusiance posts brewing!!!!

Cheers SJ

 

[chappo1970]

...show... Sherman... brewing!!!! <snip, snip>

Cheers SJ

Ok if you insist SJ? :huh:

 

[Supra-Jim]

oooh you're just too clever me Chappo!

Cheers SJ

 

[jonocarroll]

Fortran anyone?

:lol:

Switches back from working on Fortran code to AHB... :unsure: Hey!

Fortran's still great for doing numerical calculations. The compilers these days (well, the Intel compiler at least) work pretty well, and are very efficient.

And, no - it's not on punchcards anymore. f90 is a very easy to read language, with many very sophisticated tools. MPI over a quad-core machine runs faster than Usain Bolt.

Personally, I like the GUI for Beersmith. Dragging onto a timeline is probably not very precise. Is it all that hard to type in the number you want anyway?

 

[MartinS]

Personally, I like the GUI for Beersmith. Dragging onto a timeline is probably not very precise. Is it all that hard to type in the number you want anyway?

It wouldn't have to be imprecise. Perhaps a tooltip-style popup with the current position of the pointer would help there.
Not for simple recipes, but I'll often do mixes of Fuggles and Goldings in my English ales, and *that* gets to be a pain, especially if you start editing them: edit one, work out how your edit has affected the ordering of the table, find where you were.

I just think a graphical view of the hop schedule would just be a lot easier to read and modify.