Some thoughts on areas for improvment

[holymadness]

First of all, congratulations on shipping version 2.0! Having followed your travails this past year, I think I understand what a massive effort it's been to bring this app to market. I was happy to support Marvin's development and eagerly await its continued refinement.

I'm an iPhone-only user so my first experience of the app was today. I thought I would post my first reactions and some thoughts about elements that jumped out at me while they're still fresh in my mind. These will mostly be items I think can be improved, but this list shouldn't be taken as criticism of your efforts, which have been tremendous. If this post belongs elsewhere, please feel free to move or delete it. So, to begin...

• When syncing to Dropbox, the icon that shows up in the authentication screen is the old Marvin logo with the glasses.
• There is an error when trying to unlock new colour themes. When a locked theme is tapped, the following message pops up: "Oops. A Problem occurred getting the product from the theme store. If this problem persists you can contact us at support@marvinapp.com."
• I don't understand what the circle/half-circle slider (under brightness and warmth) does. Moving it all the way to the left and right doesn't seem to change anything.
• Deleting highlights and notes is a long (4-tap) process. It wasn't very intuitive to understand how to delete a highlight (tap highlight, swipe right, click garbage icon, confirm). I think this could be greatly simplified by just adding a delete highlight icon to the pop-up-menu when a word is selected.
• The notes UI is based on the pre-iOS 7 notes app (yellow background, Marker Felt font). It would be nice if this were updated to reflect the overall UI changes accompanying iOS 7.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to highlight across multiple pages.
• It would be very convenient if the app could intelligently "quick highlight" in the same way as the Kindle app, i.e. automatically highlight words as I hold down and slide my finger across the text.
• When turning the page to a new chapter, instead of the normal page turn animation, the app screen goes blank and shows a loading icon before the next page is shown. It would be nice if this transition was seamless.
• There isn't a back button. This would be very helpful either when scrubbing through a book using the bottom bar or clicking on a footnote that doesn't link back to the text. Is there another way to return to my original place if I've jumped around the in the book?
• What is the rationale for the progress bar at the bottom of a book focusing on chapter, rather than overall length? Can this not be one or the other? Personally, I would rather know how much of the book I have left before me, rather than the current chapter.
• Custom buttons: (1) The "look up in Wikipedia" button takes you to a non-mobile optimized version of the Wikipedia site; this should be the mobile version instead. (2) The Google Maps button launches the mobile version of GMaps within Marvin; is there a way to have this launch the GMaps app? Or even the default Apple Maps app?
• In the library view, book length can be compared by going into metadata preferences and calculating the word count. It would be nice if a) this was done automatically, and b) this could be displayed visually as a series of dots or a line, which would also have the ability to show one's progress in the book.

I will continue adding things to my list as they occur to me, and apologies if these are just re-hashes of features that iPad users have been discussing for months. Once again, thank you for your hard work to bring us Marvin.

[Philantrop]

Please file these suggestions as issues on github:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues

[kguil]

Originally Posted by holymadness

When syncing to Dropbox, the icon that shows up in the authentication screen is the old Marvin logo with the glasses.

You're right. Fixed.

Originally Posted by holymadness

There is an error when trying to unlock new colour themes. When a locked theme is tapped, the following message pops up: "Oops. A Problem occurred getting the product from the theme store. If this problem persists you can contact us at support@marvinapp.com."

That's because Marvin as an app didn't propagate to all the app store yet. It should be OK now.

Originally Posted by holymadness

I don't understand what the circle/half-circle slider (under brightness and warmth) does. Moving it all the way to the left and right doesn't seem to change anything.

You must have some warmth dialled in before that slider does anything you can see.

Originally Posted by holymadness

Deleting highlights and notes is a long (4-tap) process. It wasn't very intuitive to understand how to delete a highlight (tap highlight, swipe right, click garbage icon, confirm). I think this could be greatly simplified by just adding a delete highlight icon to the pop-up-menu when a word is selected.

This is going to be substantially streamlined in 2.1.

Originally Posted by holymadness

The notes UI is based on the pre-iOS 7 notes app (yellow background, Marker Felt font). It would be nice if this were updated to reflect the overall UI changes accompanying iOS 7.

2.1 will improve M's look and feel re iOS 7 much more but I'm sticking to Marker Felt (I like it). If you prefer a sans serif font, you can do so from your device settings app (the one with the gear icon) and locating Marvin.

Originally Posted by holymadness

There doesn't seem to be a way to highlight across multiple pages.

Turn on the "extend" menu item from Home Screen -> Settings (gear icon) -> Menu tab.

Originally Posted by holymadness

It would be very convenient if the app could intelligently "quick highlight" in the same way as the Kindle app, i.e. automatically highlight words as I hold down and slide my finger across the text.

When turning the page to a new chapter, instead of the normal page turn animation, the app screen goes blank and shows a loading icon before the next page is shown. It would be nice if this transition was seamless.

These are in the wish list.

Originally Posted by holymadness

There isn't a back button. This would be very helpful either when scrubbing through a book using the bottom bar or clicking on a footnote that doesn't link back to the text. Is there another way to return to my original place if I've jumped around the in the book?

Yes, there is. On iPhone it is a hollow arrow at the bottom left of the screen (when toolbars are not shown).

Originally Posted by holymadness

What is the rationale for the progress bar at the bottom of a book focusing on chapter, rather than overall length? Can this not be one or the other? Personally, I would rather know how much of the book I have left before me, rather than the current chapter.

That progress bar shows you your progress in the whole book not the current chapter only.

Originally Posted by holymadness

Custom buttons: (1) The "look up in Wikipedia" button takes you to a non-mobile optimized version of the Wikipedia site; this should be the mobile version instead. (2) The Google Maps button launches the mobile version of GMaps within Marvin; is there a way to have this launch the GMaps app? Or even the default Apple Maps app?

If you know the URLs/URL strings for the website/app you can enter it in the "Command" text field of the custom command. The items in the list are only stock presets.

Originally Posted by holymadness

In the library view, book length can be compared by going into metadata preferences and calculating the word count. It would be nice if a) this was done automatically, and b) this could be displayed visually as a series of dots or a line, which would also have the ability to show one's progress in the book.

Computing the word count automatically is too computationally intensive to do automatically. The Marvin XD plugin for calibre lets you do this from your computer.

[holymadness]

Originally Posted by kguil

You're right. Fixed.

That's because Marvin as an app didn't propagate to all the app store yet. It should be OK now.

You must have some warmth dialled in before that slider does anything you can see.

This is going to be substantially streamlined in 2.1.

2.1 will improve M's look and feel re iOS 7 much more but I'm sticking to Marker Felt (I like it). If you prefer a sans serif font, you can do so from your device settings app (the one with the gear icon) and locating Marvin.

These are in the wish list.

If you know the URLs/URL strings for the website/app you can enter it in the "Command" text field of the custom command. The items in the list are only stock presets.

Computing the word count automatically is too computationally intensive to do automatically. The Marvin XD plugin for calibre lets you do this from your computer.

Turn on the "extend" menu item from Home Screen -> Settings (gear icon) -> Menu tab.

That's helpful, thank you. However, I've since noticed a couple new issues with selecting text.

First, it's not possible to extend a selection to the end of a sentence and then select additional text by grabbing one of the little blue 'paddles.' Touching the screen simply makes the selection disappear. Second, I seem to be unable to select text across paragraphs. I can drag a selection down to the last word of a paragraph but it won't make the jump to a new paragraph.

Yes, there is. On iPhone it is a hollow arrow at the bottom left of the screen (when toolbars are not shown).

I must be missing something. On my reading screen, there is nothing on the bottom left when the toolbars are hidden. Touching the bottom left corner acts as a tap on the left side of the screen and takes me back 1 page.

That progress bar shows you your progress in the whole book not the current chapter only.

You're quite right. I should have been clearer: I meant the 'scrubbing' bar when the screen is tapped to show the toolbars.

[kguil]

After performing certain operations such as scrubbing or choosing a chapter from the ToC, you'll see an arrow (bottom left). See attached screenshot...

[holymadness]

Originally Posted by kguil

After performing certain operations such as scrubbing or choosing a chapter from the ToC, you'll see an arrow (bottom left). See attached screenshot...

Attachment 110994

I figured out what's going on. That arrow only shows up if page titles and footers are set to dim or bright. It never appears if they are hidden or if only the progress bar is shown.

As I only read with footers off, it would be nice if the arrow appeared on all settings.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by holymadness

I figured out what's going on. That arrow only shows up if page titles and footers are set to dim or bright. It never appears if they are hidden or if only the progress bar is shown.

Oops! That's not good... Speaking of missing arrows/buttons, I've always missed the forward button in Marvin, to accompany the back button... There's a thread open for that on GitHub:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues/50

[holymadness]

I found a small typo. When you tap the question mark in the Themes toolbar, it reads, "Tap on a color to choose it and see it's name." "Its" should not have an apostrophe in this sentence as it's a possessive and not a contraction.

I would like to retract my earlier comment about the scrubbing bar. The more I use it, the more I realize how practical your version of it is. So much more convenient than going into the ToC.

[holymadness]

Is there any way to remove the glasses icon from the pop-up toolbar when selecting text? I'm not sure what it does, exactly, and I don't find myself ever using it.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by holymadness

Is there any way to remove the glasses icon from the pop-up toolbar when selecting text?

This is a frequent wish, I expressed it months ago on the iPad, and it's even more pressing on the iPhone's tiny screen, where you really should have access, on the first default level, to the 4 pop-up buttons that you, personally, need to access most frequently while reading books.

I have opened a GitHub thread for this issue:

https://github.com/kguil/Marvin-Roadmap/issues/25

PS: A friend of mine from this city used Marvin for iPhone for the first time yesterday, he loved it, said it even has a "noble" look, but his first question was: "How can I move that button with the glasses to a sub-level? I only use Deep View very occasionally in Marvin."

[GOGGS75]

One improvement I thought was coming was the ability to scroll rather than turn the page the same way as iBooks can.

I thought this was edge-to-edge scrolling but cannot scroll. Is this a future development or can the latest version scroll like iBooks?

Thanks

[Faterson]

Auto-scroll will be added in a future Marvin version.

(Or, for that matter, manual scroll.)

[holymadness]

I've run into a couple odd formatting issues where certain parts of the text are displayed much larger than the rest, one with block quotes and one with numbers (see attached screenshots). I exploded the epubs and went looking at the code to see what formatting had been applied to those sections.

Block Quote

<div class="atx">
<div class="tx">

.atx {
border-bottom: 0;
border-top: 0;
display: block;
font-size: 1em;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 3em;
margin-top: 0;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-top: 0;
text-align: left;
text-indent: 1.5em
}

.tx {
border-bottom: 0;
border-top: 0;
display: block;
font-size: 1em;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-top: 0;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-top: 0;
text-align: justify;
text-indent: 1.5em
}

Numbers

<span class="os-figs">

.os-figs {
font-size: 1em;
font-style: normal;
font-variant: small-caps;
font-weight: normal;
line-height: 1.2
}

I can also send over the original files, if that's helpful.

[holymadness]

Just FYI I've posted all these issues to GitHub. Or at least, those I consider bugs (as opposed to feature requests).

[Faterson]

I find there are sometimes various problems with the display of blockquotes in Marvin at this point. Nothing serious, but esthetic issues such as the one you posted. What happens in my Marvin, is that blockquotes sometimes have too large margins above and below them, so that it looks ugly. I suppose when I increase paragraph spacing in the book, this also disproportionately increases the top- and bottom-margins for blockquotes.