I agree that Marvin 3 interface is, in some respects, worse than the previous Marvin 2 & 1 interface. I don't get this obsession with text menu items instead of icons. I absolutely prefer icons, because they save space, and so they allow access to a lot more functionality at a single glance. Unfortunately, this is the way Marvin 3 went – "destroy all icons wherever possible".
Overall, I think Marvin 3's interface is an improvement over the interface of Marvin 2 & 1, but not in
this particular aspect – that all menu icons got destroyed.
This unfortunate trend has even continued
within Marvin 3 – so it's only getting worse in this respect.
The most recent Marvin 3 version from December, I think, changed the behavior of books in the library. Previously, when you left-swiped a book, you got a set of icons to choose from, to perform frequent actions. Now, all the icons are gone from
there as well, and they're replaced with a long, difficult-to-parse list of text-only menu items.
That's a lot
less clear to me than previously, I'm afraid.
The ideal app would give users the choice of an interface: do you prefer icons or textual commands? And each of us could choose one or the other.