Suggestions for the Widget

[kintrupf]

Currently I'm using the "CC Book Grid 3x1" with 4 covers. I have a Energy Sistem Pro+ Reader with Nova Launcher. Works very well

I have resized the widget and set padding to off in Nova Laucher, so that the widget covers the entire width of the screen. However, the covers do not scale very well, as you can see on the image. They should fill the maximum space available for the widget, don't you think?
And I guess the covers should be centered in their "box" and not "stacked" as on the image.

I use a blank wallpaper, but optionally adding a border and an opaque background would be great, too. For those who like it it could be one of the "bookshelf" textures, but I would prefer a single color.

Having a second widget with recently added books would be great, too.
Same general layout than the other widgets, but instead of read books add the covers of recently added books in descending order. To distinguish the widgets you could add a small title in the upper left or right corner.

Like on most stock eBook launchers one could then create two rows of covers with currently read and newly added books.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...1&d=1448952057

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kintrupf

Currently I'm using the "CC Book Grid 3x1" with 4 covers. I have a Energy Sistem Pro+ Reader with Nova Launcher. Works very well

I have resized the widget and set padding to off in Nova Laucher, so that the widget covers the entire width of the screen. However, the covers do not scale very well, as you can see on the image. They should fill the maximum space available for the widget, don't you think?
And I guess the covers should be centered in their "box" and not "stacked" as on the image.

That must be a stack widget, not a grid widget. Below is a screen capture off my Afterglow 2 (my wife has my Energy Systems Pro). The top widget is a 4-wide grid widget. The bottom one is a 4-wide stack widget. The bottom one looks like yours.


If you really want the covers to fill all available space then you need to change Settings / Covers and Thumbnails / Cover shape to be "Square box, stretch to fit". This will make CC expand the covers to fit the area available, ignoring the cover aspect ratio. I don't like the result, but others do. Selecting any of the other three options causes CC to use portrait covers.

If you change the cover shape option then you must either reboot the device or delete+add the widget.

I use a blank wallpaper, but optionally adding a border and an opaque background would be great, too. For those who like it it could be one of the "bookshelf" textures, but I would prefer a single color.

We went through this when the widgets were being developed. The user community almost unanimously wanted no border and a transparent background. The exception was the book list widget, where reading the text was very hard without a guaranteed dark background. Another problem is that desktop widgets are severely limited in what graphics objects can be used inside them and, for those that can be used, which options are available. Add to the list that I didn't want to add yet more options that I must maintain and explain, and we end up where we are. Sorry.

Having a second widget with recently added books would be great, too.
Same general layout than the other widgets, but instead of read books add the covers of recently added books in descending order. To distinguish the widgets you could add a small title in the upper left or right corner.

Interesting idea. Of course, as soon as I add "date added" then someone will want "date updated" and "calibre date" and all the other dates. And both ascending and descending. And grouped by genre. Or only one author. And ... Fairly soon we have all of CC in a widget.

I am not sure that I can add a title without adding a title bar (again, the limits of widgets), which would be rather ugly. There would also be problems with coloring the area behind the title. This needs thought.

Do note that you can see the book list/grid in CC sorted by date added, so it is possible to get what you want if you open CC.

[chaley]

After some thought, I will take a look at adding some kind of color picker to the widget configuration dialog. I am not sure it will work, but it is worth a try.

[kintrupf]

Originally Posted by chaley

That must be a stack widget, not a grid widget. Below is a screen capture off my Afterglow 2 (my wife has my Energy Systems Pro). The top widget is a 4-wide grid widget. The bottom one is a 4-wide stack widget. The bottom one looks like yours.

I'm feeling a little bit embarrassed right now. Of course you're right, it was a stack widget on my eBook reader

I just checked the cover shape "Square box, stretch to fit". The covers now completely fill the width of the screen, but they sure are ugly
The setting "Portrait box with aspect ratio" looks way better. However, the widget still puts some millimeters of unused space around all covers. It would be great if you could draw the covers right to the edge of the widget like in square box mode, filling as much as possible of the widget.

Originally Posted by chaley

We went through this when the widgets were being developed. The user community almost unanimously wanted no border and a transparent background. The exception was the book list widget, where reading the text was very hard without a guaranteed dark background. Another problem is that desktop widgets are severely limited in what graphics objects can be used inside them and, for those that can be used, which options are available. Add to the list that I didn't want to add yet more options that I must maintain and explain, and we end up where we are. Sorry.

I can live with it if it was decided by the majority. It's more like a "nice to have" and would only be useful with a second widget for different covers.

Originally Posted by chaley

Interesting idea. Of course, as soon as I add "date added" then someone will want "date updated" and "calibre date" and all the other dates. And both ascending and descending. And grouped by genre. Or only one author. And ... Fairly soon we have all of CC in a widget.

CC in a widget would be great
I can see your point. It's like a can of worms from a developers perspective

[kintrupf]

BTW, how did you do the screenshot of your eBook reader? The apps I tried all messed the screenshots up

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kintrupf

BTW, how did you do the screenshot of your eBook reader? The apps I tried all messed the screenshots up

I used Android Studio, the development environment I use for CC programming. The screenshot was in color, so for consistency I used irfanview to convert it to grey scale.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kintrupf

I just checked the cover shape "Square box, stretch to fit". The covers now completely fill the width of the screen, but they sure are ugly
The setting "Portrait box with aspect ratio" looks way better. However, the widget still puts some millimeters of unused space around all covers. It would be great if you could draw the covers right to the edge of the widget like in square box mode, filling as much as possible of the widget.

The space available is divided into equal segments with no separation between the segments 2 normalized android pixels between the covers. The cover images are sized (downscaled) to maximum 3 times the size of an app icon (this avoids a memory consumption issue). These images are laid into the segments. If the segment is smaller than the image then the image is further downscaled to fit the segment, preserving aspect ratio. This means that one dimension will fully consume the segment. If the segment is larger in all dimensions than the cover then the cover is centered into the segment, leaving space on all sides.

Of course I could change the "max 3 times" size rule, but that would have consequences. One would be that the memory required for a widget would increase dramatically. On some devices this might cause the widgets to stop working. Another consequence is that existing widgets could change appearance, something that people might or might not be happy with. These are both risks I am loath to take.

There is a way to get Android to upscale an image to fit the segment in at least one dimension. The problem is that upscaling covers can get ugly quickly, with pixelation and generating color artifacts. The only way to avoid the problem is to make the widget size smaller so that upscaling doesn't occur, and given the granularity of the widget size bars that could produce images that are too small. In summary: changing the scale type at this point raises the "it changed" risk described above.

If you want the covers to fill the widget and if a segment is larger than the cover, then the current solution is to make the segments smaller. You can do that by making the widget smaller or by adding books (segments) to the widget. Try adding a 5th cover to the widget. That might fix the problem for you.