New IOS Design

[samcohen]

Hi Everyone,

Here are some mockups I made for the new IOS design. Let me know what you think. Be critical so I can make these as great as possible before implementing them.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Vh3NTSyftePauE

Sam

[pwalker8]

I'm not completely sure what I'm looking at. I think it's for the wireless connect to Calibre and download books.

I'll be honest, that particular screen isn't the primary screen for me. I connect to download whichever books aren't already on my iPad. I suspect that I'm abnormal in that respect. Most of the time, I push from Calibre rather than pull down from CC. As long as I can identify books that are not on Calibre, I'm fine.

My main use case is finding books by specific authors or in a specific series or books that I haven't read yet or books in a specific category/tag.

[shinyplastic]

Looks very clean, well done!

Few questions / comments
- assuming the symbol in the bottom centre is the Connect (Wireless, Content, Cloud) button?
- does it support full dark mode?
- noticed dropped the quick select A..Z down the side (probably a good idea)
- is there space for the "read" checkbox
- assuming the Filter / Sort buttons have the same options. If you sort by Author does that become the bigger font at the top?

Sorry not really feedback, except to say looks great, but the devil will probably be in the details of the options / sub-menus.

I agree the one "killer" feature for me would be to easily find any of the books in a Shelf / Tag / Category that are not on my device / not read and download (not matter what network I am on). A "one-touch" download of all the missing books would be ... amazing.

I prefer to pull from CC (especially when travelling), but have had to learn to be more organised as the login to content server "OK" button is always greyed out in V2.0, so getting better as push from Calibre (and it's better than I though!

[GeckoFriend]

I don't really care what the interface looks like; I want it to function. At least to the point I can access my books without having to delete and reinstall the app daily. Fix the groups and author search. Worry about making it prettier (in you opinion anyway) after you fix what you broke.

[jim.g]

Originally Posted by GeckoFriend

I don't really care what the interface looks like; I want it to function. At least to the point I can access my books without having to delete and reinstall the app daily. Fix the groups and author search. Worry about making it prettier (in you opinion anyway) after you fix what you broke.

I couldn't agree with Gecko more. You strike me as a person almost exclusively focused on sales/marketing and capitalism. You've done a horrible thing here by how you rolled out an update that was a total disaster. Your overriding priority should be to rectify that first and then focus on your capitalistic objectives. As I've seen others suggest in the long bitch and moan thread, you should figure out how to put the old version that was fine for almost all users back into the app store as a legacy version, and then introduce a new, updated version with all the design and pricing model changes that you want to implement. Many other apps have done this, so there is no question that it is possible. That is not debatable. Attempting anything else only shows what your true attitude and motivations are, which is that you don't really give a shit about the impact of your horrendous update rollout on existing longterm users of what was once a great app, and are purely interested in focusing on your capitalistic objectives.

[samcohen]

It's impossible to roll back to the old one unfortunately because it was running on xcode 9. All of the issues everyone has mentioned are going to be addressed. I had to change out developers multiple times already and this time it's going to work. I'm optimistic. I care about this project more than you know. I will prove it.

[stumped]

i will believe that "I care" line only when I see some attempt to fix the broken dropbox auth on android, which has been broken for over a year
I cant remember how long its been since there was an android update - a VERY long time.
as for Amazon store - do you even know you have an amazon store version ?

all that's saving you from complete desertion of your customer base is that the play store alternatives e.g. calibre - Go are completely broken also.

[PeterT]

One thing I'd love to see... The CC development team following the approach of Sigil and carrying out their development discussions here at MobileRead rather than through yet another darned forum / website.

Sent from my SM-T290 using Tapatalk

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by PeterT

One thing I'd love to see... The CC development team following the approach of Sigil and carrying out their development discussions here at MobileRead rather than through yet another darned forum / website.

Sent from my SM-T290 using Tapatalk

I get the impression that there isn't really a development team per se, but rather one person who took over and is outsourcing the actual development, but has gone through several different groups in the past several months.

As a developer myself, it strikes me as a bit late in the game to be talking mock ups when you expect to release by the end of the year. If it had been me, I would have focused on just getting the updated code working correctly with the current design, then gone for a redesign. But as they say, the proof is in the puddling.

[stumped]

given the total shambles of IOS updates, maybe its a good thing that the android version has not been touched since July 2018 ?

OTOH, dropbox access has been broken for over 2 years and S Cohen's claims of a workaround, posted to multiple play store reviews , are ingenuous. The workaround is ONLY for where dropbox login is a gmail account, not for any other users

I asked several months ago, here, for OTA on android fixes. Still waiting for a reply. I guess making pretty pictures of future IOS screens is way more important.

If there's no plan to support long suffering android users then a candid admission that CC for android is now abandonware would be appreciated.

PS posted here because there is no evidence that the developer now reads any other threads

PPS on the subject of developer comments on customer reviews at google play - posting sarky stuff like

Sorry that your network is broken. Good luck with your life."
or
We are sorry that your network is so slow. You might want to fix that

to the reviews that criticizes CC connection speed will simply alienate the customers you do still have

If I saw that a developer has posted those responses on an app I was thinking of buying, I would immediately go elsewhere

[tas03]

I also agree with GeckoFriend: I don't care what it looks like as long as it works. Right now the app is basically useless.

I do feel something should be done for the legacy users. We should be given the new version for free. While I realize that is not likely, at the very least the legacy users should be able to buy the new version for a one time cost like before to make up for the mess that we have been left with on our devices.

We bought an app that we believed had only a one time cost. The new owner destroyed the app. Now we are told that in order to have the mess fixed we have to rent the app. That is extortion.

I wonder how the new owner thinks he is going to be able to sell the app when we start leaving reviews about how we have been treated in the app store?

[mdclanahan]

Like many others on these forums, I will reiterate that what you need to do, Sam, is focus on fixing everything you've broken before working on visual design. Until alphabetical sort by author functions properly, what's the ******* point?

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by samcohen

It's impossible to roll back to the old one unfortunately because it was running on xcode 9. All of the issues everyone has mentioned are going to be addressed. I had to change out developers multiple times already and this time it's going to work. I'm optimistic. I care about this project more than you know. I will prove it.

It's obvious you don't care. Why you thought destroying a perfectly good and much loved app was going to help you moniterise it is beyond me.