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holymadness · 09-13-2013, 03:10 PM

First of all, congratulations on shipping version 2.0! Having followed your travails this past year, I think I understand what a massive effort it's been to bring this app to market. I was happy to support Marvin's development and eagerly await its continued refinement.

I'm an iPhone-only user so my first experience of the app was today. I thought I would post my first reactions and some thoughts about elements that jumped out at me while they're still fresh in my mind. These will mostly be items I think can be improved, but this list shouldn't be taken as criticism of your efforts, which have been tremendous. If this post belongs elsewhere, please feel free to move or delete it. So, to begin...

When syncing to Dropbox, the icon that shows up in the authentication screen is the old Marvin logo with the glasses.
There is an error when trying to unlock new colour themes. When a locked theme is tapped, the following message pops up: "Oops. A Problem occurred getting the product from the theme store. If this problem persists you can contact us at support@marvinapp.com."
I don't understand what the circle/half-circle slider (under brightness and warmth) does. Moving it all the way to the left and right doesn't seem to change anything.
Deleting highlights and notes is a long (4-tap) process. It wasn't very intuitive to understand how to delete a highlight (tap highlight, swipe right, click garbage icon, confirm). I think this could be greatly simplified by just adding a delete highlight icon to the pop-up-menu when a word is selected.
The notes UI is based on the pre-iOS 7 notes app (yellow background, Marker Felt font). It would be nice if this were updated to reflect the overall UI changes accompanying iOS 7.
There doesn't seem to be a way to highlight across multiple pages.
It would be very convenient if the app could intelligently "quick highlight" in the same way as the Kindle app, i.e. automatically highlight words as I hold down and slide my finger across the text.
When turning the page to a new chapter, instead of the normal page turn animation, the app screen goes blank and shows a loading icon before the next page is shown. It would be nice if this transition was seamless.
There isn't a back button. This would be very helpful either when scrubbing through a book using the bottom bar or clicking on a footnote that doesn't link back to the text. Is there another way to return to my original place if I've jumped around the in the book?
What is the rationale for the progress bar at the bottom of a book focusing on chapter, rather than overall length? Can this not be one or the other? Personally, I would rather know how much of the book I have left before me, rather than the current chapter.
Custom buttons: (1) The "look up in Wikipedia" button takes you to a non-mobile optimized version of the Wikipedia site; this should be the mobile version instead. (2) The Google Maps button launches the mobile version of GMaps within Marvin; is there a way to have this launch the GMaps app? Or even the default Apple Maps app?
In the library view, book length can be compared by going into metadata preferences and calculating the word count. It would be nice if a) this was done automatically, and b) this could be displayed visually as a series of dots or a line, which would also have the ability to show one's progress in the book.

I will continue adding things to my list as they occur to me, and apologies if these are just re-hashes of features that iPad users have been discussing for months. Once again, thank you for your hard work to bring us Marvin.

09-13-2013, 03:10 PM	#1
holymadness Guru Posts: 722 Karma: 2084955 Join Date: Dec 2010 Device: iPhone	Some constructive critiques First of all, congratulations on shipping version 2.0! Having followed your travails this past year, I think I understand what a massive effort it's been to bring this app to market. I was happy to support Marvin's development and eagerly await its continued refinement. I'm an iPhone-only user so my first experience of the app was today. I thought I would post my first reactions and some thoughts about elements that jumped out at me while they're still fresh in my mind. These will mostly be items I think can be improved, but this list shouldn't be taken as criticism of your efforts, which have been tremendous. If this post belongs elsewhere, please feel free to move or delete it. So, to begin... When syncing to Dropbox, the icon that shows up in the authentication screen is the old Marvin logo with the glasses. There is an error when trying to unlock new colour themes. When a locked theme is tapped, the following message pops up: "Oops. A Problem occurred getting the product from the theme store. If this problem persists you can contact us at support@marvinapp.com." I don't understand what the circle/half-circle slider (under brightness and warmth) does. Moving it all the way to the left and right doesn't seem to change anything. Deleting highlights and notes is a long (4-tap) process. It wasn't very intuitive to understand how to delete a highlight (tap highlight, swipe right, click garbage icon, confirm). I think this could be greatly simplified by just adding a delete highlight icon to the pop-up-menu when a word is selected. The notes UI is based on the pre-iOS 7 notes app (yellow background, Marker Felt font). It would be nice if this were updated to reflect the overall UI changes accompanying iOS 7. There doesn't seem to be a way to highlight across multiple pages. It would be very convenient if the app could intelligently "quick highlight" in the same way as the Kindle app, i.e. automatically highlight words as I hold down and slide my finger across the text. When turning the page to a new chapter, instead of the normal page turn animation, the app screen goes blank and shows a loading icon before the next page is shown. It would be nice if this transition was seamless. There isn't a back button. This would be very helpful either when scrubbing through a book using the bottom bar or clicking on a footnote that doesn't link back to the text. Is there another way to return to my original place if I've jumped around the in the book? What is the rationale for the progress bar at the bottom of a book focusing on chapter, rather than overall length? Can this not be one or the other? Personally, I would rather know how much of the book I have left before me, rather than the current chapter. Custom buttons: (1) The "look up in Wikipedia" button takes you to a non-mobile optimized version of the Wikipedia site; this should be the mobile version instead. (2) The Google Maps button launches the mobile version of GMaps within Marvin; is there a way to have this launch the GMaps app? Or even the default Apple Maps app? In the library view, book length can be compared by going into metadata preferences and calculating the word count. It would be nice if a) this was done automatically, and b) this could be displayed visually as a series of dots or a line, which would also have the ability to show one's progress in the book. I will continue adding things to my list as they occur to me, and apologies if these are just re-hashes of features that iPad users have been discussing for months. Once again, thank you for your hard work to bring us Marvin. Last edited by holymadness; 09-13-2013 at 03:32 PM.