CC Beta V3.6.3a-e/V3.6.4 have been published.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by chaley

Clearly you can't.

I wonder why Nova Launcher is not showing the preview when doing widget selection (I assume that is what we are seeing in the attachment). @Dhevi: is this what you see when you select a widget?

I don't use the app drawer to choose a widget, I just long press on the home screen. Choosing a widget from the app drawer means way too much scrolling. Here's what you see from a long press

[Purple Lady]

Here's what you see after choosing the clock widget for example

[Dhevi]

@Chaley: When accessing Widgets from a long press in the home screen you will see the menu if available widgets, as Purple Lady has displayed.

When accessing the Widgets tab from the Apps Drawer you are displayed an example if each Widget.



Nova Launcher does not display Widget images when accessing Widgets for placement through the Long Press, rather, simply a list of available widgets by app, and dimensions.

Both locations display the Widget size as 1 x 1, as that is the size dimension of the default Widget when placing any of the 3 on screen.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Dhevi

...

Nova Launcher does not display Widget images when accessing Widgets for placement through the Long Press, rather, simply a list of available widgets by app, and dimensions.

Both locations display the Widget size as 1 x 1, as that is the size dimension of the default Widget when placing any of the 3 on screen.

A description can also be displayed for each - see my clock widget screenprint above. It shows text for each - Analog and Digital clock.

[Purple Lady]

If I delete a book(in CC) , the widget does not refresh the book list. Reading a new book does refresh.

I like the way the stacked widget looks best, but I don't like how it works. If I hadn't read the comment that said you had to swipe, I wouldn't have known there was another book since I sized the widget with more than enough room for five books. Also, swiping down makes the books disappear - is that how its supposed to work? I know they come back if I swipe up, but it just seemed odd.

[Dhevi]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

A description can also be displayed for each - see my clock widget screenprint above. It shows text for each - Analog and Digital clock.

Ah, yes. A description in this matter would be helpful to the user.

[chaley]

@Dhevi & @Purple Lady: IMO what the launcher does with its menu is wrong. There are several widgets that do not provide distinguishing text. On my phone there is "Bookmark", "Bookmarks", "Contact", "Google Keep", "Google Play Music", and "News & Weather". I don't want to provide new text because that would require translation to some 7 languages, done by volunteers. You can use the drawer to determine which widget you want.

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

If I delete a book(in CC) , the widget does not refresh the book list. Reading a new book does refresh.

I assume you deleted a book in the list? I can fix this.

I like the way the stacked widget looks best, but I don't like how it works. If I hadn't read the comment that said you had to swipe, I wouldn't have known there was another book since I sized the widget with more than enough room for five books.

The widget seems to work that way -- showing 4 books. You can see the same behavior in the Google Books widget.

Also, swiping down makes the books disappear - is that how its supposed to work? I know they come back if I swipe up, but it just seemed odd.

This is Dhevi's question: can the books cycle in the stack view? The choices are "cycle" (books go to the end of the list) or "stack" (the pile of books is shortened or lengthened). I prefer "stack" so I can know what is the latest book, but I am open to arguments.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by chaley

@Dhevi & @Purple Lady: IMO what the launcher does with its menu is wrong. There are several widgets that do not provide distinguishing text. On my phone there is "Bookmark", "Bookmarks", "Contact", "Google Keep", "Google Play Music", and "News & Weather". I don't want to provide new text because that would require translation to some 7 languages, done by volunteers. You can use the drawer to determine which widget you want.

I assume you deleted a book in the list? I can fix this.

The widget seems to work that way -- showing 4 books. You can see the same behavior in the Google Books widget.
This is Dhevi's question: can the books cycle in the stack view? The choices are "cycle" (books go to the end of the list) or "stack" (the pile of books is shortened or lengthened). I prefer "stack" so I can know what is the latest book, but I am open to arguments.

I'm probably not going to use the widgets anyway, so the opinions of those who will are much more important than mine. I was just checking them out. I thought all launchers created widgets by a long press and didn't even remember you could get to them in the app drawer until I saw a comment about sample widgets.

Yes, I did delete a book that was in the list.

[jackie_w]

@chaley, I'm creating this post primarily FYI rather than expectation of change.

• It's quite interesting how widgets/shortcuts can look quite different on different devices, or possibly different screen resolutions. For instance the 2 attached images both show shortcuts from 4 reading apps for the same book:
  
  (Left to right) - CC, Mantano, Moon+, Pocketbook.
  1st image - Galaxy Note 3 phone, res 1080x1920
  2nd image - Galaxy TabPro 8.4 tablet, res 1600x2560
  
  As you can see, on the Note3, the CC shortcut compares favourably with the other 3 shortcuts. However, on the TabPro, the CC cover image is rather small compared to the other 3.
• Change to Mantano open book
  In the last couple of days I've opened a lot of epubs, both from within CC Book Details and from a CC widget/shortcut. I thought I ought to report that when choosing to open via Mantano I've had quite a lot of occurrences of 'Unfortunately, Mantano Reader Premium has stopped'. I don't think the epubs are at fault as I always make sure they are error-free in calibre Editor before transferring to CC. Also a book which fails to open in Mantano may open with no problem after a few attempts. I have a gut-feel that once Mantano has succeeded in opening the book then it is less likely to fail ever after, however I'm not totally sure about this. Perhaps other Mantano users can offer their experiences.
• CC Stacked widget - my £0.02. I also like to be able to tell which is the latest book.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@chaley, I'm creating this post primarily FYI rather than expectation of change.[LIST][*]It's quite interesting how widgets/shortcuts can look quite different on different devices, or possibly different screen resolutions. For instance the 2 attached images both show shortcuts from 4 reading apps for the same book:

(Left to right) - CC, Mantano, Moon+, Pocketbook.
1st image - Galaxy Note 3 phone, res 1080x1920
2nd image - Galaxy TabPro 8.4 tablet, res 1600x2560

As you can see, on the Note3, the CC shortcut compares favourably with the other 3 shortcuts. However, on the TabPro, the CC cover image is rather small compared to the other 3.

Oh, I love Android.

Apparently there are two values one can obtain: the "icon size" and the "preferred icon size". The "preferred size" can be larger.

In 3.6.3a I handled an icon that was 2.5 x icon_size so that systems could grow it if needed. This broke Lollipop, so in 3.6.3b I limited the icon to "icon_size". Apparently I must choose the larger of preferred size or icon size. Sigh ...

[*]Change to Mantano open book
In the last couple of days I've opened a lot of epubs, both from within CC Book Details and from a CC widget/shortcut. I thought I ought to report that when choosing to open via Mantano I've had quite a lot of occurrences of 'Unfortunately, Mantano Reader Premium has stopped'. I don't think the epubs are at fault as I always make sure they are error-free in calibre Editor before transferring to CC. Also a book which fails to open in Mantano may open with no problem after a few attempts. I have a gut-feel that once Mantano has succeeded in opening the book then it is less likely to fail ever after, however I'm not totally sure about this. Perhaps other Mantano users can offer their experiences.

The change in CC was to add an extra parameter to the open request, telling Mantano to do something special. This was suggested by another user who did all the heavy lifting to determine what worked.

Are you saying that incidence of failure has changed for the worse? If so, then perhaps I should remove the "fix"?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

The change in CC was to add an extra parameter to the open request, telling Mantano to do something special. This was suggested by another user who did all the heavy lifting to determine what worked.

Are you saying that incidence of failure has changed for the worse? If so, then perhaps I should remove the "fix"?

I honestly don't know because in recent day-to-day usage I've been using Pocketbook more than Mantano due to some recent glitchiness in Mantano. Maybe what I've just reported is a Mantano problem rather than CC. If possible I think feedback from other Mantano users would be desirable.

[Dhevi]

I've only recently experienced a single instance of Mantano crashing after the change which I can't honestly say it attributed to CC one way or the other as even before-hand Mantano could sometimes have erratic behavior. But I'll certainly TRY to replicate.

[DoctorOhh]

Is there anyway to increase the cover sizes. In the google books widget covers are large. I change the stack to 3x3 and the covers on my tablet would be better if they were larger.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

It's quite interesting how widgets/shortcuts can look quite different on different devices, or possibly different screen resolutions. For instance the 2 attached images both show shortcuts from 4 reading apps for the same book:

(Left to right) - CC, Mantano, Moon+, Pocketbook.
1st image - Galaxy Note 3 phone, res 1080x1920
2nd image - Galaxy TabPro 8.4 tablet, res 1600x2560

As you can see, on the Note3, the CC shortcut compares favourably with the other 3 shortcuts. However, on the TabPro, the CC cover image is rather small compared to the other 3.

I think I have both an explanation and a fix for this. Very high res "tablet" devices seem to use an icon size one larger than "normal". There is a separate API call to get this "preferred" size vs the "normal" size. The Oracle of Google leads to several StackOverflow conversations about this problem. The generally accepted wisdom is to take the larger of the normal size and the preferred size. The next beta release will do this. We will see if it helps.

FYI: I also yanked out the stuff to draw thumbs into square transparent bitmaps. It isn't needed now that I have implemented the portrait filled mode.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Is there anyway to increase the cover sizes. In the google books widget covers are large. I change the stack to 3x3 and the covers on my tablet would be better if they were larger.

I changed the thumbs from "2 times normal" to "3 times normal". This should help without overfilling the smaller boxes (I hope).