Navi (bookmarked page) menu reworked #11997
Conversation
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For me, No I also like the Alt/Custom Toc to be in the first submenu. Having them in the second will be a bit unpractical, just for the sake of prettyness. |
Much like with every other before/after photo shoot out there, there is a bit of trickery involved. The models are not the same, shocking 😮. One is KV the other is K4.
Well, now tap the screen once more and you can find out ;). More elegant this way.
This is why we can't have nice things... |
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Nothing wrong with it, what I am not okay with is the over reliance on it, it makes the programme feel unpolished, cheap and amateurish. Grab your device and have a little tour through the menu, you will find a lot of instances of it. I made my stance very clear before (perhaps not to you), settings, should only be in one place. custom top and hidden flows are preferences you make, you could not use them, but you do because you prefer it that way. Apple called all their 'settings' for a very long time "system preferences" so... there is that as well
This I agree with, however, I can't have twice the exact same name listed, so the "enable" is kind of a necessary evil.
How? Alternative ToC is a one click solution, and custom ToC isn't set there anyway. Furthermore, they are all related to ToC so I can't just separate one just because. |
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In any event, we will not be using "preferences." Randomly using synonyms to avoid repetition feels "unpolished, cheap and amateurish." |
You did. We discussed that elsewhere in the past. And those of us who discussed it with you made our stance very clear too: we don't agree, we have no problem with multiple I'm not that fond of having it at the first item: Anyway, if they were to be all at the top, it would feel indeed quite unpolished/... if there were to NOT have the same text, and each be a random synonym just to avoid repetition. |
Definitely. The top is where you'd want the most important or most frequently used action. You might quibble whether that's ToC or Book map, but it won't be settings.
Yes, I'm definitely not fond of that one. I'd probably prefer it at the bottom. |
to be fair, I don't access any of these 'widgets' (ToC, BookMap et al.) via the menu. They are all assigned to a gesture so the only thing I personally need is their "settings". Don't you all have gestures for that stuff?
This was a poor choice of words. In any case, my intention has been to somewhat improve things (at least where I think they could benefit from improving), but it seems like the only thing I have successfully done is offend everyone. I am not sure if I should continue pushing for changes like this one. so that is where I am at, unsure how to proceed... |
TOC is top-left corner tap for me, PageBrowser I set up as a gesture (and access Book Map from within it, if needed - rarely), Bookmarks are also on a gesture. However, I agree that Settings should not be the top choice. According to regular (please don't beat me to death for my exact words, I don't have a UX degree :D ) paradigm, first "tab" in the top toolbar is So the idea here is that (I think) most people got used to have something functional (i.e. just areas of the software that work) first, before willing to dig into the settings/preferences. |
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Here are examples from Firefox on Ubuntu:
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We probably do - and even for settings, we don't access them very often, so they don't really need to be more accessible than the "launch the feature" menu items. (Also, for the first left menu, I never dropped the "action" items and never put them in a submenu, because I thought about NT users, who need them quickly reachable. Now, they have your hardware keys combinations to get at them more easily - but it's like gestures, some users will probably not like them, and prefer just reaching stuff via the menu like they have done for years.)
I'm not offended by your choice of words (at least not these ones - I probably was by complications and tab leaders :)) But it's possible our accumulated choices have resulted in not the best general layout - but nobody among us probably cares. So, it's good somebody like you have the energy, interest, and time to invest in thinking about it.
Well, you proposed your solution, but it's just the first - we don't like all of it, but we mention some requirements and problems. So, as you have the time and energy, give it some thoughts, try to think about an alternative that you won't dislike too much (because we probably won't accept the one your like most), and that fit our requirements and don't trigger our stated oppostions. (For the record, my saddest losing against others' opinion is #4659 (comment) - it still hurts in my belly when I see https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/multiswipes - so I just don't visit that page :)) |
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@Commodore64user Not offended, but we've established that as a group we disagree that seeing the same word settings multiple times in different contexts for the same general concept is a bad thing for the purposes of a computer interface, which is a different medium than a written text where you might want to avoid using the exact same turn of phrase five times in a row.
It's not quite a UX principle, although it's not not one either. The principle is more fundamental than that. We scan diagonally from the top left to the bottom right. Aspects like size, white space, color etc. can influence where attention is drawn, but basically you'll note both paper and electronic "interfaces" often work in what is termed Z and F patterns. Also related is Fitts' Law, which in the simplest terms means we want the most important stuff the closest to where we just put our finger to open the menu. The traditional menu layout is a result of all of that combined with a ton of testing and a dash of technical limitations. |
Incidentally that shows the insertion of a complications-equivalent that doesn't impact much of anything and hopefully made someone smile. ;-) |
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What you seem to dismiss as "your few-months-old user experience with the app" gives me an upper hand over all of you, I can see the shortcomings (new users face) that all of you no longer see. You are already so familiar with it that you cannot put yourselves in the shoes of inexperienced users (i.e Little Timmy). Sadly I might lose that power soon too.
because I care about Little Timmy, I don't want people to give up on the app (almost my case) because it is extra difficult (there is already an unavoidable learning curve here) to set their sleep screen message or other. I thought I had already proven myself that my changes are not "sabotage" or malicious in any way, in fact quite the opposite (I think), I am all for improvement. Alas, it feels like I am in a constant fight with everyone, like caring does not pay. Regarding the placement of the "preferences" or "settings", I am honestly not bothered if it goes at the top or bottom. I specifically put it at the top for consistency with the "Search" one, an also because it now had all the settings available in that menu. But in any case, I am not sure what other alternatives there are to essentially what I can only describe as: keeping it the way it is ("Reference pages and Hide non-linear fragments on the top menu", "the Alt/Custom Toc to be in the first submenu. Having them in the second will be a bit unpractical, just for the sake of prettyness")
And yet here I am, defeated. Because it simply does not pay to care. I really wanted to help improve things, in perhaps the only way I can, but it is very difficult when you are essentially fencing with every single person about the most minute of things, even using the name of the actual things seems to be a problem. The best analogy I can think of right now is politicians opening new hospitals and cutting ribbons, everyone loves those, but fixing the existing ones [hospitals], nah nobody cares about that stuff. |
I know they are not.
You are right. But you are not playing this game alone, you need to also care about the other players, and not crush them with a royal flush every time :)
I know you do, and that's good. (But you're not the only one who cares about him.)
Every single person can not be wrong :)
So, if this way does not work/pay, may be try to learn/invent another way ? Listen, read, suggest, compromise, adapt. (In most of the projects I have worked on in my life, I've usually been quite solitary: I get an idea, implement it, make all the decisions alone, and they are obviously the best :) because I'm good at what I do and other people are less or do not know or do not care (and they are usually happy with the end result). It feels a bit like how you do. |
I'm not sure how helpful the Little Timmy metaphor is. Would Little Timmy just use the stock Kindle/Kobo software or is Little Timmy a power user? That doesn't in itself mean we should or shouldn't do things differently, but in trying to reach the widest possible audience while preferably tying said audience to their store, they'll frequently make different choices.
I'm not necessarily sure if I don't want them to give up. There are many alternative apps that they can or should use if they don't like this one. Exceptions apply of course for things like your specific non-touch perspective, which is very helpful.
If we didn't care we'd simply merge. :-)
That mostly describes how things came to be and why they are as they are. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. Explicitly meaning you can read discussions in some issue or PR making similar or even identical points, implicitly meaning the PR author went through that during the design phase and we agreed with the reasoning without going in depth. Regarding the alternative table of contents, if we flutter our eyelashes at @hius07 maybe it'll magically appear as a hamburger menu on the ToC itself. By which I mean to say that solutions can also lie outside of the top menu, or be accessible from both locations. |
Lets play with it 😄 There're other things besides menu reordering/rewording that could improve the life of little Timmies :) We, currently, ship the full package, with everything enabled. My suggestion, for 1st time users, is to ship with all plugins disabled (except coverbrowser, gestures and language support). This will reduce the cognitive overhead of learning KOReader, as the core program is pretty minimal. Also, since plugins are now opt-in put Polishing menus for core options is important, but the impact of the action alone won't help little Timmy as much as you would think. |
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One thing that Microsoft does, or at least tried at some point in the past, is to put something like an "enable all plugins" button in the quickstart guide. |
! I might want so see some guided experience level: with interests in: and a good multilinual glossary (autotranslated). Maybe I can get that for XMas? |
Well, here we go again. In my never ending quest to improve our menus, I present to you, your new "Navi" (bookmarked page) menu.
This is by far the least aggressive of all changes proposed so far, it is purely a reorganisation of settings, with NO new additions, pretty much just a UI/UX job here.
Before:
After:
Inside table of contents:
I haven't touched the "Bookmarks" submenu at all, as I am not entirely sure what is going on there. I mean, some changes were proposed but reverted shortly after so, should you all want me to go ahead with it, I'll get it over and done with.
This change is