[yocalif]

Since I'm new I have no clue who is who on this forum and who although by checking post counts I can see who has been on the forum for some time. I have not intent to offend anyone or knock Calibre, I want to use it and if a question leads to a suggestion which leads to a tweak by the programmers thats kool too.

My purpose for posting in this discussion area was to see if others would express similar frustrations. Of course the long term faithful are not frustrated, they always defend the status quo. Thankfully a couple did agree that there are issues with the UI. One even questioned the faithful's attitude.

Two posts talk directly to the clicking on the News category and what should happen:

Originally Posted by chaley

I fixed clicking on news on 7 March (rev 7464.4.26) to make clicking on it (and also search) do nothing. The fix appeared in release 0.7.49.

Originally Posted by Starson17

If you happen to be poking around in that part of the code, later, you might consider setting it so that clicking on "News" searches for tag:"=news" That's what I'd expect if it did anything at all.

That is what I would expect and want too.

Why there is confusion?

The GUI layout is like most standard "menu block at the top, search bar, then 3 panels. On most layouts of this type the left panel is either a menu with each label a link, and when clicked on the results display in the center panel. The most common example would be Windows Explorer, where the left panel is a menu tree, click on anything in the left panel and the contents of that branch are displayed in the center panel. The contents displayed in the center panel can then be clicked on for further sub-navigation.

Many applications work this way. However Calibre's left panel doesn't work this way.
1st depending on what is clicked on in the left panel, doesn't necessarily change what is displayed in the center panel. A brand new user, if he clicked on "Authors" in the left panel he would expect to see a list of Authors in the center panel. Instead to see authors he has to click on the side arrow next to authors and that opens the sub-list of authors in the left panel. In older versions of Windows in the left panel if you clicked on say C: drive the list would expand in the left panel and display just the C: drive folders / files in the center panel. The only time a click results in the center panel displaying the results with Calibre is when clicking on the category label's sub - item. I.E. Authors > Mark Twain the mark twain books are then listed in center panel. Or, Formats > epub, pdf, txt, click on pdf and all pdf material is listed in center panel.

Hopefully the older calibre users can see how easily a new user gets confused because the way calibre uses the left panel is not standard. Further the left panel is described as the "Tag Browser", YET that label "Tag Browser" is not displayed anywhere. In fact on most web pages tags are now displayed either in the right panel, or at the bottom of a page, thus leading to further calibre new-user confusion.

I'm sure some are wagging their head in disagreement, but I'm not a novice idiot either. I have built 75+ PCs for family and friends and I am their IT guy. I have been a beta tester for programmers, (on use-ability, I'm not a programmer), I generally can figure out how to use software without a book, thankfully most software is fairly intuitive.

Getting back to my original complaint, there is not one item to click on for either books or news that will display that one piece of content in the center panel. Instead one has to do several clicks. I think it is possible to have a one click link displayed in the left panel.

Right now Calibre on my PC has a 100+ epub ebooks, several books.txt, and several books/PDFs, plus 37+ news sources. Before I posted anything on this forum how did I get all my news and only news to display in the center panel? I used Authors > Calibre. this brings up all my news downloads.

Because there is no label describing the left panel as a search filter instead of a menu or tree guide, this leads to confusion. Yes playing around and clicking will eventually get the results that most want, especially if they read the help files. Can the layout especially how the left panel functions be improved?

What NONE of the old timers with suggestions mentioned was to use the "User Categories Editor" to create my own News filter and have it displayed in the Left Column. Which worked fine for News, but I can't create one for Books because I need to turn off news, calibre, pdf, txt, and the editor doesn't allow you to turn on or off the filter. At least I haven't figured out how.

Further unless I missed something, I can't bulk import the hundreds of epub books and have a tag "book" associated with each book at the same time of the import? Or can I? I am not going to do each epub book by hand. So far I have only used the "Add books from single directory", but as I recall there was no dialog for adding an existing tag or a new tag to each book during the import process.

Originally Posted by Manichean

I can only repeat what I said earlier: If you don't like the GUI, work out how it would be better. Explain it in the forum. Be prepared for criticism, but if your proposal has merit, it might get implemented. If you can program yourself, create a patch and submit it to Kovid. If it's well done, he'll probably include it.

I think that is what is the result of this thread, but is it really necessary to repeat yourself? Are their kudo's for high post counts on this forum?

Without doubt Kovid Goyal has created an awesome tool, but some tweaks wouldn't hurt.

Suggestion:

•On left panel divide it, top half would be for your personalize of favorite search categories.
For me a label "News" for my filtered search of downloaded news". And a label "Books" which would have sub categories for the different formats i.e. PDF, epub, txt. Which I could turn on or off and when I click on books what is turned on would display each time.

•Bottom half of the left panel would be the tag browser as it is, with a title at the top "tag filter" . leave the User Category editor link at the bottom.

•Add a dialog box so that tags either default or custom can be included when one adds material. These tags can help create the custom filters that would be used in top half of Left Panel.

ran out of time couldn't proof read... sorry