Firmware 4.23.15548

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I've always been surprised at how little people here explore the UI. In the past, there have been a lot of complaints about having to swipe through the pages to get somewhere. I used to have to post about anything in italics was usually something that had an action behind it. Unfortunately, that isn't as true now. I generally think the interface is obvious, but, I'm also willing to tap things until something happens.

People are so afraid they’ll somehow screw things up irreparably. I don’t know where they get this fear because it’s not been true for computers for some time now (I’d say on Mac anything since OS X launched as OS 9 and under gave a lot of access, for Windows maybe since Win 7 but I’ve never been much of a Windows guy so maybe earlier) nor has it been true of smartphones or tablets etc. and hasn’t been true for ereaders since at least the time they started entering the mainstream consumer market around the NST era when prices came down.

I’ve personally never had a real issue navigating on Kobo from the tiled home screen to the current which isn’t me trying to brag. It’s a generally well designed UI/UX with some minor oddities here and there. But getting to your book and buying more books is simple and that’s really the point of an ereader everything else is just icing.

Originally Posted by davidfor

And what does "recently accessed" mean? Seriously, I don't know what it means. What I would think it means, doesn't agree with how collections were put on the old tiled screen. And doesn't agree with the meaning of Recent on the other tabs.

Why not have it function just as series does? If you access a book from a collection that collection is the most recent. If you don’t access it from a collection the collection list isn’t changed. Likewise only the collection that you access the book from is affected if it’s in other collections those stay where they are.

It’d be like collections are just boxes you keep books in but via the magic of digital books can have one book in multiple places. However whatever box you were last using would be the most accessible / recent.

Though I’m not sure if it’s worth Kobos time to implement something like that. I rather suspect it’d need a fair bit added to how Nickle tracks books. And I have doubts about how many people are clamoring for something like this especially now that Series exists.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by koboy

as you will know i've been using the old 3.16.0 firmware since it was released 5 years ago. it allows me to put up to 12 collections on the home screen. you also will know the new home screen allows only 1 collection.

it's only over the last week while i've been using the new firmware and trying to sort collections by recent, reasoning being because as i've already said it only allows one on the home screen, that i realised it doesn't have that feature. i hadn't noticed it doesn't have it on 3.16.0 because i was looking for it.

the comments by posters i've been apart of regarding collections being sorted by recent. have either told me they don't see the need for it or they use search instead. that doesn't tell me why it's not an option when it is on the others.

I have no idea what the above has to do with the discussion we are having about how you worded a post. But as you brought it up...

To answer your question, we don't know. How could we? No one here works for Kobo. Unless one of us explicitly asked Kobo about it, or Kobo came out and made an explicit statement about it, there is no way to know. The most likely reason is that Kobo do not think it is needed. But, that is my opinion, nothing else.

The other big reason for some "obvious" feature not to be implemented is that there are more important things to do. Again, my opinion completely, but heavily influenced by a long career as a software developer and being involved in deciding on the priority of changes in that software.

And if either of those is the reason, the responses you mention above back it up. You had several responses that imply "don't need it", and I don't think a single one that came back with "Yes, that's what I am missing".

And don't try the "no one who agrees will post" because that isn't true. Plenty of people will post if they agree with a suggested changed. And I think that they would have posted in response to the "not needed" type posts.

please explain to me why it appears/seems to be an unforgivable crime not to have read and know every single comment/post.

No, it isn't a crime. But it is bad manners not to read the posts that reply to you or are part of the discussion you are having. You are so keyed up on this that is unreasonable that you didn't look for alternatives or check responses to your post.

all i just did was ask you a polite straight forward question. if you don't want to answer/reply that's fine i understand, but i fail to see the need for any animosity or hostility.

What "polite straight forward question"? Where have I answered your questions with animosity or hostility? That is excluding this discussion started by that post. Any animosity or hostility is on both sides for that.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There is room for the page number on that line. Probably immediately to the left of the menu. It is about the only place it can go and be fairly consistent. But, there is some thing about it that I just don't like. Maybe that it would be mixing menu items with changing information on the same line.

Another option would be to put the page number above or underneath the scrollbar, but I don't think it's a good idea as it would reduce the precision of the scrollbar, and you can just hold the scrollbar to see the current page if you don't have too many.

Personally, I only use the pagination controls in the library view for skimming the list of titles, quickly listing books somewhere in the sort order, or estimating how many books are in a given view. If I want something specific enough to need accuracy, I almost always know enough of what I want to be able to search for it directly.

I think the complaints about the scrollbar are either one of two things: a complaint about the look and balance of the UI (I personally feel that the scrollbar should appear smaller even if the tap area is the same), or an X-Y complaint related to book management on the reader itself which could be resolved in a more specific manner (like introducing a secondary sort dropdown so you can sort by two things).

In short, what I'd change is to add a secondary sort option (i.e. so it sorts by the first, but if equal, then the second) to allow for things like sorting by author then series+series-index. This might cause confusion for non-technical users, so it should probably be hidden behind a setting to show advanced library management options.

I would also make the scrollbar appear thinner, but still have the wide tap area (to make the interface appear more balanced and less cluttered).I don't think this is worth the effort, complexity, or time to implement though.

___
One more thing people should keep in mind is that the Kobo library management is already superior to all other e-readers and phone reader apps I've used, and it's already more than good enough for the majority of uses and users the way it is.

___
And, either way, I think this discussion about page numbers and the new pagination has gone on long enough. We've gotten to a point where nobody's going to agree on the same thing since they've already decided on and argued their opinion for a while, and if this change has enough complaints, it will be reverted, and if not, it won't be. After all, this release was one of the fastest and it was just to add pagination buttons.

Keep in mind that MR users are already a minority, so a minority/majority of a minority isn't really an important point to make either way. And, I agree with davidfor's prediction earlier in the thread that Kobo is planning to rework the UI over the next few releases. They've probably already decided more or less what they're going to do, and arguing back and forth here won't really change anything.

And, a few facts to give some perspective about the minority point: MobileRead only accounts for less than 30% of the forum traffic (which doesn't include traffic from direct, Google, blogs targeted at less-technical users, etc) to my kobofirmware page. And, mirrors/repackaged
versions of NickelMenu I've found (not including NiLuJe's OCP packages) with download counts have more downloads than the original one on GitHub itself. Granted, most productive discussion (about firmware, mods, and other random things about ebooks) happens here, but it doesn't change the fact that we're still a minority to Kobo overall.

Don't take this the wrong way, though; I believe MR is quite an important place for this sort of thing to be centralized in (just look at how naive the Reddit r/Kobo users tend to be...) (and I wouldn't have been able to work on my tools without the valuable discussion, people, and information here), but we need to keep in mind that even a majority of MR users won't alone be enough to convince Kobo of something.

[pdurrant]

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[geek1011]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

People are so afraid they’ll somehow screw things up irreparably.

I agree with that with two nitpicky exceptions:
- The touch accuracy on certain devices is atrocious.
- On non-IR touch devices, it's too easy to let go too soon and open a book, causing it to jump to the top of the sort order. This could be fixed by not counting a book as opened until you turn past the first page.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by geek1011

I agree with that with two nitpicky exceptions:
- The touch accuracy on certain devices is atrocious.
- On non-IR touch devices, it's too easy to let go too soon and open a book, causing it to jump to the top of the sort order. This could be fixed by not counting a book as opened until you turn past the first page.

Granted, though I'd argue that neither of those would irreparably mess anything up, I can concede that they'd at least present frustrating scenarios for the less technologically inclined among us.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Granted, though I'd argue that neither of those would irreparably mess anything up, I can concede that they'd at least present frustrating scenarios for the less technologically inclined among us.

Maybe not the first one, but I'd argue the second one can mess things up quite a bit. It's impossible to fix the sort order without editing the database, and some people, including me, use the sort order as a way of keeping track of things.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

People are so afraid they’ll somehow screw things up irreparably. I don’t know where they get this fear because it’s not been true for computers for some time now (I’d say on Mac anything since OS X launched as OS 9 and under gave a lot of access, for Windows maybe since Win 7 but I’ve never been much of a Windows guy so maybe earlier) nor has it been true of smartphones or tablets etc. and hasn’t been true for ereaders since at least the time they started entering the mainstream consumer market around the NST era when prices came down.

Yes that seems to be the thing. It goes along with the "Now I have a Kobo ereader, what should I do?" posts.

I’ve personally never had a real issue navigating on Kobo from the tiled home screen to the current which isn’t me trying to brag. It’s a generally well designed UI/UX with some minor oddities here and there. But getting to your book and buying more books is simple and that’s really the point of an ereader everything else is just icing.

Basically what I think to. It causes me no end of trouble when I pick up a Kindle in a shop, or try to use my Tolino.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by davidfor

And what does "recently accessed" mean? Seriously, I don't know what it means. What I would think it means, doesn't agree with how collections were put on the old tiled screen. And doesn't agree with the meaning of Recent on the other tabs.

the old tiled home screen shows the most recent collections that i've opened a book from. if i open 12 books from 12 different collections all 12 collections tiles are available on the old tiled homescreen in the order i opened the collections, obviously i have to close/dismiss the 12 books form the tile home screen first, to then be left with the 12 collections and only 1 book showing.

the sort by recent in the book list works exactly the same way in the latest firmware and in 3.16.0, both firmware's show the last 5 books opened on the first page of the book list. the collections list shows 10 collections on each page, as i've already said before i have 35 pages of collections=350 in total.

if the firmware gave me the feature/option to sort by recent in the collections list, like it does in books/authors/series. i would then be able to open 1 book from 10 different collections and those last 10 collections would be shown on the first page of the collections list. that would make it far easier than having to go through the whole 35 pages of collections.

best wishes koboy

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by koboy

the old tiled home screen shows the most recent collections that i've opened a book from. if i open 12 books from 12 different collections all 12 collections tiles are available on the old tiled homescreen in the order i opened the collections.

the sort by recent in the book list works exactly the same way in the latest firmware and in 3.16.0, both firmware's show the last 5 books opened on the first page of the book list. the collections list shows 10 collections on each page, as i've already said before i have 35 pages of collections=350 in total.

if the firmware gave me the feature/option to sort by recent in the collections list, like it does in books/authors. i would be able to open 1 book from 10 different collections and those last 10 collections would be shown on the first page of the collections list. that would make it far easier than having to go through the whole 35 pages of collections.

Yes, that is how the collections was done on the tiled home screen. But, using that becomes inconsistent with the other "Recent" sorts. Those are purely based on the book inside them being opened. They don't care were the book was. And what about adding or removing items from a collection? Shouldn't that put the collection at the top. Or creating a new collection. And if I simply look at a collection, scroll through it looking for a book, shouldn't that be considered a "recent" use?

I do remember discussions here about when a tile for a collection was added to the home screen. Some where confused and didn't like the way it was done. And that might be the reason it wasn't added. Though collections (shelves at the time) were added before the tiled home screen, so it is just as likely it was never a function that was considered to be needed.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yes, that is how the collections was done on the tiled home screen. But, using that becomes inconsistent with the other "Recent" sorts. Those are purely based on the book inside them being opened. They don't care were the book was. And what about adding or removing items from a collection? Shouldn't that put the collection at the top. Or creating a new collection. And if I simply look at a collection, scroll through it looking for a book, shouldn't that be considered a "recent" use?

I do remember discussions here about when a tile for a collection was added to the home screen. Some where confused and didn't like the way it was done. And that might be the reason it wasn't added. Though collections (shelves at the time) were added before the tiled home screen, so it is just as likely it was never a function that was considered to be needed.

ok thank you for the explanation/possible reasoning for why that option isn't there. as i said i hadn't noticed before that collections couldn't be sorted by recent because while i'm using the old tiled home screen that already does what i require/want it to do.

my idea was that if i could sort collections by recent like it can be done with the books/authors/series, i'd click on my books from the home screen and then go into the collections list and i would be greeted by the last 10 recent collections on the first page, which would only be a couple of clicks away from having them on the home screen like i already do now in the 3.16.0 firmware.

obviously because i would like the feature/option to be there so that i could upgrade to the latest firmware while still maintaining the user software capabilities that i'm use to/prefer. i think it's a shame that the collection tab is the only 1 out of the 4 tabs that doesn't have sort by recent available.

edit. i'm pretty sure you will know already while inside a collection the books can indeed be sorted by recent, it's only while looking/going thorough the full collections list that the feature/option isn't there.

best wishes koboy

[lkmiller]

I definitely used the go to when I thought it would get me there faster then paging or search. But the scrollbar is an improvement on that function.

I liked the old tiled homescreen. But now I barely look at the current homescreen so I don't really care what's there.

I don't use many collections and I number them in the order I want them.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

I definitely used the go to when I thought it would get me there faster then paging or search. But the scrollbar is an improvement on that function.

I liked the old tiled homescreen. But now I barely look at the current homescreen so I don't really care what's there.

I don't use many collections and I number them in the order I want them.

numbering collections in the order you want them is a very good idea. the problem with that for me is i have over 4500 books in 350 collections which are mainly named by the author spread over 35 pages in the collections list. therefore it wouldn't be productive for how i have my ebook library organised.

best wishes koboy

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The Author list doesn't have it... They don't have a cover view or anything like that.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Yes, this is something I had also mentioned briefly. Authors is the only tab that lacks this menu and it seems odd that it would. It also seems odd it would lack a cover view or covers in list view, not that I'd fight for it to be added to Authors or to Collections.

I hope in an upcoming firmware they do update Authors to have cover view. That is the view I use my most on Nook.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by koboy

numbering collections in the order you want them is a very good idea. the problem with that for me is i have over 4500 books in 350 collections which are mainly named by the author spread over 35 pages in the collections list. therefore it wouldn't be productive for how i have my ebook library organised.

best wishes koboy

Removing the author name collections and using search to locate the authors might simplify your collection of collections. Search remembers your last 7 or 8 searches which might help replace your need for desktop tiles.