Feedback: Logos Web App UI and Font-Size Gradients
Thank you for all of your hard work on the Logos Web App! It looks very promising and is becoming more useful all the time.
I was wondering if there are plans for significantly reworking the UI and/or providing additional customizability over time? The amount of wasted screen space is the one thing—besides some desktop-parity features that are already in development—that would prevent me from making regular, daily use the Logos Web App. It wastes a lot vertical pixel space even with my browser in full screen mode (which isn't always preferable). Add to it a rather compact, minimalist toolbar like Google Chrome, and still yet more space is wasted. The interface for the Atlas takes yet another large strip out of my screen real estate. And that's on a 27 inch 1080p monitor! It's all the more painful on my Surface 3, which has a relatively small screen (for a laptop), although with a pretty good 1920x1280 resolution (214 ppi). All of this diminishes and obscures the content that I want to see and interact with, to a degree that I often find unnecessary and unhelpful. I assume that Web App's UI is a work in progress, like everything else. However, I hope to see Logos learn a thing or two from more economical and adaptable browser and app UI's. (The mobile apps obviously don't have this problem, although they obviously have less functionality. In Logos 6, I often open a second floating window that doesn't have—or, in some contexts, isn't bogged down by—the main UI [i.e., the homepage, library, and search menus, etc.].)
Also, another thing that has been frustrating with Logos applications on every platform (including the Web App) is the intervals between font-size gradients. The jump between the smaller and larger font sizes can be quite large, which sometimes prevents me from finding a more preferable font size. Hebrew fonts, in particular, set to the smallest setting in the BHS are HUGE (bold, italics, underscore! 
). This has been reported before, but it seems that nothing has ever been done about it. For all I know there could be limitations that I'm not aware of, although it seems odd that this design choice (a poor one, in my opinion) would be repeated—and suffer the same limitation(s)—on so many different platforms. An excellent Bible application like Logos should display Hebrew well!
Overall, I really like the direction the app is heading and look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor. Feel free to take this feedback for whatever it's worth!
Comments
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Adam Olean said:
I was wondering if there are plans for significantly reworking the UI and/or providing additional customizability over time? The amount of wasted screen space is the one thing—besides some desktop-parity features that are already in development—that would prevent me from making regular, daily use the Logos Web App. It wastes a lot vertical pixel space even with my browser in full screen mode (which isn't always preferable).
Like other Logos users, I've been very impressed with all of the recent progress on Logos Web App. It appears that all of the background and under-the-hood work is paying off!
In light of this, I was wondering if there are any future plans to address just how much screen real-estate is wasted by the current user-interface design (e.g., "through reworking the UI and/or providing additional customizability", as suggested above). It looks like this will remain the one thing that prevents me from making extensive use of Logos Web App in the near future. The amount of vertical viewing-space lost in the Web App compared to opening resources in a floating window in Logos 7 is too great for some of my main purposes (especially any extended reading and listening).
Would anyone else like to see a more economical UI (even modestly so)? Perhaps the desktop UI isn't always the best model for the Web App in every aspect (although at least there I can escape the large menu-bar by opening a floating window!).
The app really seems to be taking shape. Keep up the good work!
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Thanks, Adam. We appreciate your feedback and I've pass it on to our design department.
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Adam Olean said:
even with my browser in full screen mode (which isn't always preferable)
In Chrome, at least, it's possible to remove almost all the browser UI without going into full-screen mode. To do this:
- Go to https://app.logos.com/
- Click on the three dots in the top-right to bring up the menu.
- Select More Tools then Add to Desktop. Make sure Open as Window is checked.
- You'll then get an icon on the desktop, which you can use to open the app in the future.
You can open multiple copies of the app. This, coupled with the app's Reading View, allows you to simulate floating windows.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Thanks, Mark. I didn't realize that I had the option of removing Chrome's browser UI. On its own, it isn't quite as trim as the floating window, but being able to combine that with full-screen mode and/or the Reading View, does help save some space while preserving more or less functionality. I'll probably combine this with full-screen mode especially when I'd like to use an additional column or two for resources or tools (such as a lexicon and the Information tool).
Another benefit is that Chrome's UI no longer takes up additional space when the window is left "un-maximized". Perhaps Faithlife's design team will tweak/improve the Web App's UI over time, but this at least makes it more usable in the meantime. [Y]
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Alan Palmer (Faithlife) said:
Thanks, Adam. We appreciate your feedback and I've pass it on to our design department.
Thanks, Alan. It's clear to me that you all have been listening and responding constructively to feedback. The reworked Atlas tool is just one recent example!
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Something I just learned that I will share with you in case you find it useful. While resource panels are the only panels which currently have "Show Reading View" in the panel menu, there is a way to put any panel into reading view.
Just select the panel you want and type "?layout=reading" into the command bar. [:O]
Doing so will open that panel in reading view as shown below:
We plan to eventually bring this to the panel menus of all those panels as well, but in the meantime you can use this power user feature. [H]
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Thanks for the tip. This is a great way to maximize the content in this format [Y]
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