Calibre Companion prerelease 3.3.0a

[chaley]

CC prerelease 3.3.0a has been published and will available soon to people who are members of the CC prerelease program.

This prerelease contains the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Allow closing the grouping pane with a right-to-left swipe. This works best if you swipe over empty space because there are some interactions with group selection.
• Add an option to tell CC to auto-close the grouping pane when a leaf item is selected.
• Sort by calibre's publication date.
• Add an option to move the Sort, Connect, and View commands from the action bar to the app's menu. This makes space available in the action bar for more "current grouping" text. This option is mostly useful on phones.
• Left and right swipe in book details now change the book being displayed.
• Reorganize some of the preferences, separating grouping preferences from more display-oriented preferences.
• Change the URLs to use the new Calibre Companion mobileread forum.
• [BUG FIX] Fix a few cases where out-of-memory errors crashed the app.
• [BUG FIX] Fix problem where the "Use grouping drawer buttons" required an app restart to take effect.

IMPORTANT NOTE: installing this prerelease will force a database upgrade to allow sorting on publication date and to prepare for adding a synced "book read" feature (checkbox). The upgrade will take approximately 1/3 second per book. You can use CC while the upgrade is running, but you will not be able to use grouping features until the upgrade finishes.

As before, Google Play will offer you the opportunity to upgrade CC. There is no requirement that you do so immediately, or even at all. For example, if you have a large library you might want to wait until you have the time to let CC's database upgrade finish before you need to use the app.

[kaufman]

This sounds fantastic. With one exception, this is every change I was hoping for. I'm very excited to get it. Thanks.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

This sounds fantastic. With one exception, this is every change I was hoping for. I'm very excited to get it. Thanks.

The missing one is the clickable (tap) identifier links, yes? That is on my list for this beta cycle. I just need to work out how to do it.

[kaufman]

That's it. But just to be clear, I was saying I am excited to get what you have done, not complaining about the clicked links.

One piece of feedback. I started the database upgrade and it appears that it got halfway through while I was sleeping and then quit. I restarted it just now and it picked up from where it was when it quit.

[kaufman]

Ok, banged on it a bit. One issue. If you have "group by first letter" turned on, then tapping on a letter closes the grouping pane even though the letter is not the leaf.

Also, there is a noticible lag when swiping from book to book. Perhaps you could preload the information for the two books on either side.

Other then that, everything seems to be working so far. Love the changes.

[jackie_w]

@chaley,

Very nice, thanks very much

Love the book to book swiping in Book Details. As kaufman, I noticed the lag when swiping. It's not a serious problem for me but if I try to swipe too fast (frequency rather than speed of swipe) some swipes don't seem to register.

Also good to have the option to unclutter the top line of buttons when using a phone.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Ok, banged on it a bit. One issue. If you have "group by first letter" turned on, then tapping on a letter closes the grouping pane even though the letter is not the leaf.

Will be fixed in the next beta release, probably tomorrow. I want to wait overnight to see what else might come in.

Originally Posted by kaufman

Also, there is a noticible lag when swiping from book to book. Perhaps you could preload the information for the two books on either side.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Love the book to book swiping in Book Details. As kaufman, I noticed the lag when swiping. It's not a serious problem for me but if I try to swipe too fast (frequency rather than speed of swipe) some swipes don't seem to register.

I can't make responding to a swipe instantaneous for various reasons, but I have found a way to remove much of the delay. After the changes, on my galaxy nexus a swipe now takes approx .2 seconds instead of around .6 seconds. This change will be in the next release.

One consequence is that when you return to the book list, it will jump to the last swiped-to book instead of "just being there". I am not sure anyone would notice if I didn't mention it.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Also good to have the option to unclutter the top line of buttons when using a phone.

I was unsure about whether this would be really useful, but now that I have it I am convinced that it is. On the other hand, we hope that we don't get too many support contacts saying that the sort/connect/etc buttons mysteriously went away.

Thanks to you both.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

...On the other hand, we hope that we don't get too many support contacts saying that the sort/connect/etc buttons mysteriously went away.

Well, as you have to ask for them to go away, it shouldn't be 'mysterious', but y'never can anticipate folk ...

[Dhevi]

I must say, this pre-release is top notch in my book. I definitely love the moving the top lines to menu. So sleek. And "yes!" to book swipe from details, and open close/grouping drawer. So much win contained in this update for me. Have not come across any unnamed issues. But will keep you updated.

Edit: Question: Has the Books with Missing Files view always had "Grouping Disabled" appearing on the top menu bar? Maybe I just haven't noticed before.

[DoctorOhh]

I have noticed the same pluses and minuses that others have reported. Well done, looking forward to future enhancements.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Dhevi

Edit: Question: Has the Books with Missing Files view always had "Grouping Disabled" appearing on the top menu bar? Maybe I just haven't noticed before.

Yes. There was no reasonable way to limit the items shown in the grouping menu to the set of missing books.

[chaley]

Moderator Notice
@kaufman: I took the liberty of moving your last two posts to the V3.3.0b thread (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=234547) as they mostly are about that release.