The latest release brings a change to the way the topic pages behave in bases. There is now a setting for bases (checked by default for newly created ones) that causes the topic view for any topics in the base to display all the properties of the commons types associated with it, whether or not the types are linked to existing views in the base.

For instance, in the previous release if you were to add a topic for a TV show, say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you wouldn’t see the properties for the television show type on the page when viewing it in the base. Here’s an example of what that looked like…

The rationale for this was that some base administrators want to be selective about which types appeared on topics in their base. For instance if you were creating a body building base you might not want to display Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie and political career information in the topic view. This case still seems important and is supported (by deselecting the new setting and creating views associated with the specific types you’d like to have appear) but it isn’t the more common scenario.

With the new release, you can check the box in the base settings like so…

Once checked, the topic page will display all the properties of the commons. As a by-product, you will also see the type menu in this view — allowing you to add additional types to the topic from here.

New bases will show these properties by default. If you created your base prior to A4.02, you can enable this by simply going into the ‘edit base’ settings area and mark the checkbox as desired. Hope this helps. Any comments or suggestions about this change are welcome.