CalibreBox - New Cloud-Based App

[Hofferic]

If you use the "direct open" download mode (the left download menu) the app will look for a copy of the book in the current download directory and, if the file is new enough to be up to date with the last changes for the book in the library, open it without a new download. In all other cases the book will be downloaded again but overwrite any previous file for this book.
So you may redownload the same book but there will always only be one copy (unless you changed its title or author).

I may change the "download for later" mode (the right download menu) to also check for the file date if you would like it to do that, for now it does not to allow for easy redownloading if the file changed but the metadata didn't without manually deleting the file first.

[Thomas_AR]

As i understood it only downloads the calibre base in first base, not the books. When choosing to download book it will only then download a book, not before. So only one copie of the book on your phone/tablet.

[melmac]

Is there an apple version of this app?

[Hofferic]

Originally Posted by Thomas_AR

As i understood it only downloads the calibre base in first base, not the books. When choosing to download book it will only then download a book, not before. So only one copie of the book on your phone/tablet.

Exactly. The initial library download only downloads the database to save space and time. Books are only downloaded when the user chooses to download/open them. And if you already have a copy of the book on your device which is newer than the latest change indicated by the library, the left-hand download menu (open directly) will open this copy directly without downloading it anew.

Originally Posted by melmac

Is there an apple version of this app?

There might be a comparable app for IOS but this app will only work for Android devices. Additionally it was written in Java and uses specific features of Android so I would have to re-develop the entire thing for IOS which I do not intend to do as I don't have access to IOS devices and don't have any experience writing IOS Apps.

[nqk]

1) Sometimes the colors of status bar and action bar are not matching (blue and red, etc.). It seems CalibreBox looks at the colors of the cover.jpg and decides what color should be applied, which is cool, but I think two different constrast colors look weird.

2) The download button is easy to understand, but the "open book" button is not. And can you make it clearer to identify which books have been downloaded, and which not? An option for automatic update of newer book files?

3) There is a black bar under the book list - It could be an ad, I don't know, because Adaway is present in my phone. I tried "Purchase Pro Version", but it says "No Internet Connection". . (In fact, I do have smooth connection now).

4) Can you support custom columns as well?

5) I have no problem with Dropbox - which is fast. But if you can support OneDrive, it is also great because it comes built-in with Windows 8.x

[nomistakes]

Originally Posted by Hofferic

If you use the "direct open" download mode (the left download menu) the app will look for a copy of the book in the current download directory and, if the file is new enough to be up to date with the last changes for the book in the library, open it without a new download. In all other cases the book will be downloaded again but overwrite any previous file for this book.
So you may redownload the same book but there will always only be one copy (unless you changed its title or author).

I may change the "download for later" mode (the right download menu) to also check for the file date if you would like it to do that, for now it does not to allow for easy redownloading if the file changed but the metadata didn't without manually deleting the file first.

Sorry but I haven't understood

How is it possible to send back all the modifications made on the opened pdf to the original file stored in dropbox?

What I'm looking for is a solution in oder to directly open original file of my Calibre db and not a local copy that is not synced back with the original version

[Hofferic]

Originally Posted by nqk

1) Sometimes the colors of status bar and action bar are not matching (blue and red, etc.). It seems CalibreBox looks at the colors of the cover.jpg and decides what color should be applied, which is cool, but I think two different constrast colors look weird.

2) The download button is easy to understand, but the "open book" button is not. And can you make it clearer to identify which books have been downloaded, and which not? An option for automatic update of newer book files?

3) There is a black bar under the book list - It could be an ad, I don't know, because Adaway is present in my phone. I tried "Purchase Pro Version", but it says "No Internet Connection". . (In fact, I do have smooth connection now).

4) Can you support custom columns as well?

5) I have no problem with Dropbox - which is fast. But if you can support OneDrive, it is also great because it comes built-in with Windows 8.x

1. Yes, CalibreBox takes the predominant "vibrant" colors from the book cover to color the ActionBar. I might add an option to disable this completely but I do not have any input into the process Android uses to determine these colors. I tried several variants of color palettes Android can create and liked this one the best as the "muted" version tends to go into mushy colors. I also think that in most cases having two different colors works very well and computing my own "darker shade" for the upper bar would be rather involved if I try to avoid edge cases. I will have to look into this and either find some intelligent way to handle wildly disparate colors or allow users to disble the behaviour if they are annoyed by it.
   
2. The "open book" button tries to open a local copy first. It will only result in a new download if there is no ocal copy or the local copy is outdated. Id will also dismiss the notification and open the file as soon as it is available instead of keeping the notification around for you to click later.
   Updates of existing book files are handled by the "open" download mode (the regular mode will _always_ overwrite existing copies) as long as the change has also had an impact on the library.
   Auto-updating books would require a list of all downloaded files and checking them in the background regularly. It would also most likely have to use dropbox timestamps directly, which I do not currently keep on file. But I MIGHT implement such a list of books in the future to support cards for google now when the api becomes available, so it might be a possibility then
   
3. Yes, that is indeed space reserved for ads. I tried to make them hide when no ads are available but that led to no ads loading when they where available again when a user wasn't blocking them and that defeats the purpose of an ad-supported version
   The Pro version should be available as long as you have an internet connection and are logged into your google account. Could you show me a screenshot of the "no internet connection" error message so I can verify if the problem lies with my implementation of Googles interface?
   
4. Custom Columns are supported in the pro version. The detail view shows most custom column values (some I didn't test so the presentation may be a bit off for dates and enums ). Also you can filter and sort based on them! (One of the reasons I decided to build my own app was missing something along those lines on mobile. Plus I needed a topic for my bachelors thesis )
   
5. Right now I have no plans to support other cloud storage options because my code is tied very closely to the Dropbox programming interface right now. I would have to look into whether or not OneDrive offers the same features and put some abstraction in between to support more than one option, but for now I am aiming for the most integrated expirience possible (like the library update reminder and library adding feature which use specific dropbox funtionality. That functionality may not be available in a similar enough form with other storage providers).

Originally Posted by nomistakes

Sorry but I haven't understood

How is it possible to send back all the modifications made on the opened pdf to the original file stored in dropbox?

What I'm looking for is a solution in oder to directly open original file of my Calibre db and not a local copy that is not synced back with the original version

I don't know in which direction you want to propagate the changes you make.

• Mobile Device -> Desktop

This would require me to practically re-implement the entire dropbox app, which is not happening. If you change a file on your device you will have to overwrite it using something like the dropbox app (which will then cause dropbox to update the file on your compter int turn). For a way to keep the file permanently in sync see below.

• Desktop -> Mobile device

If you make any changes to a file that is synchronized with dropbox (which the have to be to wirk with the app, so that is obviously not the problem) dropbox will update the copy on their servers. After that you will at the moment have to re-download the book in CalibreBox to get the changed copy to your device. This is required because auto-updating copies on your device would use a lot of ressources (and programming effort) for rather little return. If the right-hand download option (open directly) does not update the copy on your device (because the entry in the calibre library has not changed, which is checked to avoid multiple downloads of the same file in this mode) you can force a new download by using the right-hand download menu, which will ALWAYS download the file anew and overwrite any copy that may have been downloaded before.

• Consistent Synchronization

Direct synchronization of a file, one-way or in both directions, is not what this app is built for. If you want to do this frequently you may want to look for an app that actually synchronizes files with dropbox rather than allowing a simple way to find contents therein for download. One example of such an App would be Dropsync which I have neither tested nor am I affiliated with the developer

[Hofferic]

So, I worked the color thing over with the new library version from Google and some additional testing. The colors should now be extracted quicker and the colors actually used will clash less often. As a tradeoff they will now be slightly more pastel-y. I also updated it so that the text and icons in the toolbar never become unreadable if the background color is too light by varying the text color aswell.

Here is a before - after example of a bookcover that had particularly garish results in earlier versions:




The update has been pushed to Google Play and should be available in the next few hours

[nqk]

1) Regarding "No Internet Connection", sorry I cant make screen shot now because I have managed to go Pro. But I was sure...

2) Coloring: Why dont you pick automatically ONE dark color for status bar, and the color for Action bar is calculated from the former? Im not a dev, so I technical suggestion may sound ridiculous...

[Hofferic]

Originally Posted by nqk

1) Regarding "No Internet Connection", sorry I cant make screen shot now because I have managed to go Pro. But I was sure...

2) Coloring: Why dont you pick automatically ONE dark color for status bar, and the color for Action bar is calculated from the former? Im not a dev, so I technical suggestion may sound ridiculous...

1. Well in that case it was probably a transient server problem on Googles side. If it comes up again I'll have to investigate then, no sense in doing it now with such a vague error message
2. First, I work with the ActionBar first, as the status bar is not always accessible for changes. Also, darkening is easier than lightening in terms of hue and saturation. In the case of darkening the colors would be more uniform but it would still create undersaturated greyish colors or might invert the brightness relationship by accident (lighter color on top) if I go the easy way. Ill have to look into doing a lightness shift whithout skewing saturation or hue in rgb if I get the time. But for now I think it works well enough in most cases (and much better than it did before in extreme ones).
   The general problem is that such calculations on colors are hard to get right (by which I mean getting pleasant results all the time) withoug introducing a lot of corner cases where it could go wrong, and to be honest the coloring of the detail view is just a nice effect, nothing really functionally relevant
   Apart from that the suggestion is sound, I am just not very good at working with color values so directly...

In any case thanks for your feedback on both issues!

[nqk]

Talking about effect, I would love to see the download/read buttons merged and moved down as a floating button in material design concept. It would be easier to tap

[Hofferic]

There ARE new design support libraries. Well see if I can come up with a good concept for a FAB

[a_ahmed]

Is there something like this for OneDrive. I hate DropBox... slow and a few other issues. I'm already using OneDrive for everything. Wondering if you could expand this application for OneDrive

[Hofferic]

Originally Posted by a_ahmed

Is there something like this for OneDrive. I hate DropBox... slow and a few other issues. I'm already using OneDrive for everything. Wondering if you could expand this application for OneDrive

I am currently not interested in extending support to differen storage providers as I am still working on other features. Also, this started as my bachelors thesis so in the limited time I had I did not include any abstraction for the underlying storage, which would expanding the options a pain. There are, however, similar apps that do support different storage providers, so mybe you could use one of them for now if dropbox really irks you that much.

Originally Posted by nqk

Talking about effect, I would love to see the download/read buttons merged and moved down as a floating button in material design concept. It would be easier to tap

Coming back to new features. I still have some testing and animation work to do but I implemented a new download flow that will hopefully be less confusing. And yes, it is based on FAB's! (FAB = floating action button)
And let me tell you, getting the animations and interactions right so that you can touch - drag - release from the toggle fab to an actionable fab (think google keep) and get the desired reaction is a pain

Also the new format picker will tell you before the download if a filetype is supported or unsupported by the apps currently installed. No more guessing before you download (unless it is something esoteric and a questionmark shows up...)

[nqk]

Great. It has become the default calibre app on all my android devices.