a sticky quick help...

[roger64]

Hi

I used the latest OTA update, to be welcome by a five page quick help file. After perusing it (t's intended for beginners), I realized I could not get out of it.... Not a single menu available, even to exit Koreader.

I had to turn nasty. Connect on USB and destroy this file (in Koreader/Help) and its sdr. Then (I have a PW3) pressing a long long time the button to force a restart.

Koreader informed me on restart that it could not find this damned file and let me free with the file manager.

I am not sure that this experience will help any beginner...

Edit: it's worse than that. Even with normal files, all access to menus is lost... The question now is how to revert back to the previous build. Unexpected OTA indeed!!

[Alan_S]

There's one change, access to menu is now with swipe from top of the screen downward (like on Android).

Probably you didn't read that part in new quick instructions? Or it doesn't work?

Before you accessed menu by tapping upper part of screen, but it collided with tapping some links, so they changed that. That is also reason why there's quick instructions, to notify users about this big change.

Of course, there is also possibility that there's some bug that is still not reported to GitHub. Try with swipe after you reinstall latest koreader, if it doesn't help, report it to GitHub.

[roger64]

Thanks for this surprising info.

I had absolutely no idea there could be such a drastic change in GUI without at least an explicit red flag warning!!

I cannot try it now because I exchanged the whole koreader folder (310 MB) to one I had saved from a previous jailbreak.

I'll wait some comments about this "wonderful" new feature before risking a new OTA update. I wish to be sure it's really a stable release. I have seen some mangled screen from screensaver to file display.

[Ken Maltby]

On Github it is looking like the crash/down swipe not working, is due to something with the statistics plugin. Deleting that fixes the crash, for some. The Developer channel OTA always picks the most current nightly, not always the best choice for beginners. Once this is fixed, the Quick Start info should be a big help to beginners, though.

Luck;
Ken

[roger64]

Somebody had to fall in the hole to raise the flag... I have been following OTA updates for the last year and a half, but this one is a radical departure from the incremental changes I had been witnessing.

In fact I tried to evidence the possibility of discarding the progress bar which has been announced as done for this current release. I failed too.

[Frenzie]

Originally Posted by roger64

Thanks for this surprising info.

I had absolutely no idea there could be such a drastic change in GUI without at least an explicit red flag warning!!

Well yes, that's what the quickstart guide was supposed to be. It starts with "Welcome to KOReader. You can activate the menu by swiping down." It's the main reason I created the quickstart guide actually, although of course having some kind of introduction for new users has always been a long-term goal.

A visual illustration is planned as a future improvement. Live and learn I suppose, but writing one enormous change is a lot harder to manage than small incremental changes. But at the same time the nightlies are a way to iron these things out. If all's working well then I tend not to update myself either unless I'm specifically testing something.

The statistics thing is completely unrelated to the quickstart guide, btw.

discarding the progress bar

Gear (settings) > Status bar > Progress bar (second item) > Show progress bar (toggle)

Originally Posted by roger64

I'll wait some comments about this "wonderful" new feature before risking a new OTA update. I wish to be sure it's really a stable release. I have seen some mangled screen from screensaver to file display.

An OTA-nightly is by definition not stable in the full sense of the word because it's completely automated. In principle the nightlies on https://github.com/koreader/koreader/releases are the exact same files, but the difference is that they've had (some) manual testing before someone put them up. Most of the time when a bug or regression is found automated unit tests try to prevent something similar from happening in the future, but unfortunately on real devices the only way to know for sure is to test manually.

I've seen some mangled screens on the screensaver as well (only in some PDFs I believe), but I've never seen that until I upgraded the firmware recently to be able to test 32-bit.

[roger64]

@Frenzie

Thanks for your info. Yes, I thought - without reading - it was just "another" guide, wiki-like... My mistake of course but maybe drrrums were needed.

Thanks for the progress bar thing. Very appreciated.

For the mangled screen, I've seen it too with a six-inch PDF instead of screensaver display. On wake-up, it disappeared quickly. (PW3)

[Frenzie]

My bad, I missed the Kindle part. In that case logic suggests the problem should be KOReader's. (Of course Kindle didn't have screensaver at all until recently.)

I've been seeing it with this book: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifi...=orthographies

But not consistently.

[roger64]

I came back to use the current OTA version, now that I know better.

It's indeed a big progress in terms of usability. The user can now reclaim control of the whole surface of the screen. You can turn a page clicking anywhere on the screen or launch an endnote by touching on the top or on the lowest part of the screeen wtihout triggering any annoying menu.

[Frenzie]

Incidentally, with this PR to fix the garbled screensaver (it turns out it was accidentally introduced back in January as a fix against a memory leak), plugins now being kept from crashing the program, and the accidental recent OTA-update loop being fixed, current stability is looking pretty good to me.