Frustrated with GUI

[theducks]

Originally Posted by yocalif

I didn't beat up on Calibre I said I was frustrated and that the problem was probably mine as a new user lacking understanding.

HOWEVER, LETS BE CLEAR..

I point out that I have books, and news.
Instead of clicking on News I'm told to use tags.
Instead of clicking on Books, I'm told to use something else again.

I may be the only one that thinks this is confusing on this forum but it frustrates me, hence the thread title.

We are trying to educate you:

Example:
You have 'e-book type files', not News, books, Magazines, Pictures...

Calibre has no way to know what is in (Calibre only knows file format) those files unless they are tagged with content type

Tags work lots better than a simple folder hierarchy when more that one category applies.
Think about The Dead Tree book(s) for the the Movies in the Narnia series:
Do I shelve the book under 'recent movies', Fantasy,...
You only have 1 book to shelve. Libraries used 'card catalogs' with as many cards as needed, to direct you to a single 'shelf'. Those cards are 'tags'

[hrynkiw]

Originally Posted by yocalif

I didn't beat up on Calibre I said I was frustrated and that the problem was probably mine as a new user lacking understanding.

HOWEVER, LETS BE CLEAR..

I point out that I have books, and news.
Instead of clicking on News I'm told to use tags.
Instead of clicking on Books, I'm told to use something else again.

I may be the only one that thinks this is confusing on this forum but it frustrates me, hence the thread title.

Respectfully, I agree with yocalif. The Calibre GUI generates significant frustrations in novice and even not-so-novice users. Calibre is an excellent tool with wide and deep functionality -- but also with usability issues.

Experienced users, having long ago worked through their "how do I..." issues and problems, tend to forget that those issues and problems ever existed. They *know* where to find the setting that needs to be changed, therefore the GUI works just fine -- for them.

However. Novice users also need to be reminded (gently, gently, and with love) that this is open-source software -- in effect, a community project. In exchange for lightning-fast bug repair, enhancements, and wickedly useful plug-ins, we users have to give up (among other things) expectations of a blatantly intuitive GUI interface. Or at least until a usability expert comes along and donates their time and energy to polish off some of the rough edges.

And that's partly why forum communities like this one are the necessary twin to virtually every open-source tool out there. The programmer community builds and develops the tool, and the user community provides the training and support of novice users. (And pushes the programmers to greater heights with enhancement requests.) It's an exciting time to be in.

(Okay, who stuck that soapbox under my feet when I wasn't looking?)

Hrynkiw
With (good ghod) over 30 years of experience in the IT/computer industry, and learning to use new applications

[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.

[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

[jackie_w]

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.

Try Preferences - Adding books There is a large box labelled Tags to apply when adding a book. If I've understood correctly, this should do what you want.

[ldolse]

Originally Posted by 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.

I think part of the point you missed is that you're less likely to get help from the developers/community when you do one of two things:

1. Create a thread with disparaging/non-specific title (or participate in one)
2. Combine numerous topics into one post/thread, or hijack another thread to bring in new topics

Both of which you're doing here. You took the time to write a considerate post, so please note I'm not trying to knock you personally or knock your concerns, many/most of which are valid. Just trying point you in the right direction to get the most use out of this forum for help.

You will have much better luck creating a thread for each separate non-related concern. It's also generally more effective to stack rank your concerns one at a time and bring them to the forum one at a time.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by yocalif

I used Authors > Calibre. this brings up all my news downloads.

There are multiple ways that work. You've named one.

2)I have a saved search for recent news that is no more than 3 days old, and another search for news that is no more than one day old.

3) I gave you another way by clicking on the news tag in the tag browser.

4) You can type in the search for either calibre as the author, or the news tag.

5) Yes, some might click on the news field in the tag browser and expect to see what you expected. We agree that would be a nice fifth option.

Because there is no label describing the left panel as a search filter instead of a menu or tree guide, this leads to confusion.

If you hover over the button that turns it on, it's called the "Tag Browser". Space on the UI is at a premium, so I don't see that a label calling it a search filter helps much. It's true that it does a lot more than browse tags, these days, but that's because features are constantly being added to it.

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.

User categories are more complex than most of the other options listed above. Yes, you could add that option to the list above. The easiest way to do what you want is a simple saved search for what you consider to be a book. If you want to see everything that is not tagged as news, does not have calibre as the author, does not have pdf or txt files, a simple search will do that. (That's overkill, as I have lots of txt novels, but the search is up to you.) Just save the search, and it appears in the tag browser. Click on it in the tag browser or in the saved search pulldown, whichever seems easiest to you.
The search is:

not tag:news not author:calibre not format:txt not formatdf

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?

Yes

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.

You can also do this after import. Just select them all (they are all at the top, or search by added date) and bulk edit them to add your tag.

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?

I need to excuse myself, as my post count is solely because I like to see a big number there. But other than me as single solitary exception, people with high counts are voluntarily donating their time to help others use this software. I think they deserve kudos. I don't know of any high count users who are posting for any reason other than pure unselfish voluntary help. Some help by creating the software. Some by providing support services. Some do both. Calibre is a group effort.

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

Agreed. He has a bug and enhancement request list that is 5,000 to 6,000 long (I hope I got that right). It gets tweaked daily and updates are released weekly (faster if you run the code directly).

Suggestion:
•On left panel divide it, top half would be for your personalize of favorite search categories.

Are you aware that saved personalized searches are already on that panel and that you can eliminate anything on the panel you don't want to see?

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.

This is already available and is easy with saved searches.
[/QUOTE]
•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.
[/QUOTE]
This is already available, too.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by theducks

Calibre's Main UI is different from what I was used to (DOS/Unix/Windows/Linux). No ability to reduce the Toolbar to Text Only (or I missed a setting ).

Imagine what happened.
After you made the above rant, the new version of Calibre contains an option to switch off icons ;-)

Ain't those developers incredible?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kacir

Imagine what happened.
After you made the above rant, the new version of Calibre contains an option to switch off icons ;-)

Ain't those developers incredible?

Absolutely
I jumped on that option as soon as I got the download (I had prior warning )
More space for other things.
FWIW I had already created a 75% Icon set in resources, because I thought the Tag Icons took too much space