Bug or Poor Design? Toolbars always appear when scrolling
In the Android app, scrolling up (ie swiping down) in a resource in continuous scrolling mode causes the header and footer toolbars appear, which is both unnecessary and irritating.
Showing the toolbars with a tap is fine, but having it appear automatically when scrolling must be either a bug or poor design because it gets in the way when navigating in a resource.
So is this working as intended or not? If so, could I put in a vote for the toolbars to only appear on a tap, not on a scroll?
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Previously in one of the older versions for iOS, the toolbar showed whenever I swiped down (except if I do it really slowly).
A recent update changed this behaviour. As long as I keep my finger on the screen when swiping down, the toolbar no longer appears. Better.
But the best way to do this is, as you've said, to only show the toolbar on tap. This was the behaviour of the previous Logos app in full screen mode (before they introduced tabbed browsing).
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In the Android app, scrolling up (ie swiping down) in a resource in continuous scrolling mode causes the header and footer toolbars appear, which is both unnecessary and irritating.
I'm using the iOS beta, and that's not what happens now.
The toolbars will now only appear if you tap, or if you scroll up* aggressively (i.e. a big swipe designed to scroll past several screens in one go). If you scroll up by less than a screenful, the toolbars won't appear.
*By 'up', I mean swipe down in order to move backwards through the text.
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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In the Android app, scrolling up (ie swiping down) in a resource in continuous scrolling mode causes the header and footer toolbars appear, which is both unnecessary and irritating.
I'm using the iOS beta, and that's not what happens now.
The toolbars will now only appear if you tap, or if you scroll up* aggressively (i.e. a big swipe designed to scroll past several screens in one go). If you scroll up by less than a screenful, the toolbars won't appear.
*By 'up', I mean swipe down in order to move backwards through the text.
I've just tried doing a quick swipe downwards (no more than 4 lines) and the toolbar shows up. It seems to happen once your finger leaves the screen.
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I've just tried doing a quick swipe downwards (no more than 4 lines) and the toolbar shows up. It seems to happen once your finger leaves the screen
At least on beta, that doesn't happen if you scroll gently, only if you flick. The behaviour I see is exactly the same as iOS Safari.
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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I've just tried doing a quick swipe downwards (no more than 4 lines) and the toolbar shows up. It seems to happen once your finger leaves the screen
At least on beta, that doesn't happen if you scroll gently, only if you flick. The behaviour I see is exactly the same as iOS Safari.
I see. I'm not on iOS beta - hopefully they've improved the behaviour!
Here's what I'm trying to describe for a gentle scroll with my finger not maintaining contact with the screen.
5483.RenderedContent-5AE9869D-BC62-431A-ACD8-13A035B0B261ex.mov
Here's what I'm trying to describe for an aggressive scroll with my finger maintaining contact with the screen.
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I've just tried doing a quick swipe downwards (no more than 4 lines) and the toolbar shows up. It seems to happen once your finger leaves the screen
At least on beta, that doesn't happen if you scroll gently, only if you flick. The behaviour I see is exactly the same as iOS Safari.
To clarify: I'm using version 6.1.1 (6.1.1.0054) and the behaviour is different from same as that of Safari. In addition the Logos menu bar is actually ~1.63x the height of Safari's expanded menu bar - which makes it all the more apparent/distracting.
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Unfortunately the behaviour is still the same in the latest Android beta - was using stable release until Mark mentioned the beta on this thread, so decided to try it and see. I can't perform a downward swipe without the toolbars appearing.
The only exception is if I first perform an upward swipe, and without lifting my finger, changed direction and swipe downward, then the toolbar remains hidden if I swipe slowly, but it does appear if the swipe is more "aggressive" to use Mark's term.
But if the first swipe is downward, the toolbar always appears, regardless of how the speed or duration of the swipe.
Yes the Android toolbar is very chunky indeed and could do with being a lot more compact.
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Like Mark said, the behavior on iOS is the same as iOS Safari. That said, due to the differences of use between a Bible software and a web browser, I think the menu bar appears much too easily. In a browser the most common way to use it is reading from top to bottom, and any movement (with momentum) in the other direction is almost sure to indicate that the user wishes to "go back", hence it makes sense to quickly expose the back arrow and address bar.
In a bible software, on the other hand, many users will scroll to a verse instead of navigating if that verse is within ~20-30 verses in EITHER direction.
I would like to see the menu bar wait to appear until the screen has scrolled (VIA momentum) for at least one second in addition to it moving at a certain speed threshold.
I agree that the bar could also be more compact. At one time IIRC tapping on the resource title brought up the option to change the resource. Now however, as far as I can tell, the title is not a button and could there for come to within 5 pixels of the reference box without looking messy IMO. Below the reference box needs to stay as big as it is because of the scrubber.
Mentioning the scrubber... I would really like to see the scrubbing speed adjusted by how far away I take my finger from the slider. At the "finest" level of scrubbing, I would like to see the entire width of the screen only move maybe 5 verses or so. At this point it's too difficult to "hit" an exact verse, that I still don't use the scrubber for quickly getting to a verse as I follow along in a sermon. Having even just 3 levels would massively enhance the UX.
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Is the "scrubber" the horizontal line with the "ball" on it? I didn't know what to call it, except a navigation bar. I would love to see it go away completely, or at least be made optional. I find it completely useless and a waste of screen real estate.
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Oh, I meant to add that I agree with the comments of other about the current behavior of the toolbar. It is distracting.
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Is the "scrubber" the horizontal line with the "ball" on it? I didn't know what to call it, except a navigation bar. I would love to see it go away completely, or at least be made optional. I find it completely useless and a waste of screen real estate.
I couldn't agree more. Taking away another slice of screen real estate under the already chunky toolbars is a move in the wrong direction.
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I would love to see it go away completely, or at least be made optional. I find it completely useless and a waste of screen real estate.
Unless you are only ever reading a versified resource, the scrubber is vital and its design is less obtrusive than alternatives.
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I would love to see it go away completely, or at least be made optional. I find it completely useless and a waste of screen real estate.
Unless you are only ever reading a versified resource, the scrubber is vital and its design is less obtrusive than alternatives.
I never use the 'scrubber' regardless of the resource type I'm reading and have never understood what value it adds to the app. I have found it completely useless.
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What format are your video's Joshua? they do not play for me in chrome browser.
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I never use the 'scrubber' regardless of the resource type I'm reading and have never understood what value it adds to the app. I have found it completely useless.
Same here. I have yet to figure out the point of it. That said, it doesn't bother me; I find it easy enough to ignore.
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I never use the 'scrubber' regardless of the resource type I'm reading and have never understood what value it adds to the app. I have found it completely useless.
The scrubber is useful for two main reasons:
- At a glance, it allows you to see how far through a book you are. That can be very useful if you're trying to estimate how long it will take to finish, or even decide if you want to finish it!
- It allows you to quickly navigate to other parts of the book. You can, of course, use the TOC picker instead, but the scrubber can be quicker in at least two settings:
- TOC navigation might not be supported (e.g. in a Vryso/Faithlife eBook)
- You might not be able to remember the name of the chapter, but know roughly where it was.
- There might be a complex TOC structure: (e.g. Section A -> Part 1 -> Chapter 4 -> Sub-heading
, and you can't remember which chapter Sub-heading B was in, never mind which part or Section. The scrubber means you've got a better chance of finding it quickly, without going back and to in the various sections, parts and chapters.
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 for the explanation.
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Hi everyone, we're still tweaking this behavior to find the best sensitivity. As mentioned above, the scrolling works different in the beta. If you keep your finger on the screen when scrolling up, the toolbars won't appear.
Here's our reasoning for having them appear when you scroll up: many similar apps have this behavior, and we want our app to be intuitive to pick up for someone who has used other apps. For example, most mobile browsers will show their top bar when you scroll up. If you're thinking, "this is less intuitive to me", that's totally valid and sharing that opinion helps us figure out the best solution for all of our users.
Hope that helps clear things up!
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For example, most mobile browsers will show their top bar when you scroll up.
That's so. However, as I pointed out in my previous post, the purpose of a Bible app vs. a Browser (and consequently the desired behavior) are quite different.
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The scrubber is useful for two main reasons:
- At a glance, it allows you to see how far through a book you are. That can be very useful if you're trying to estimate how long it will take to finish, or even decide if you want to finish it!
- It allows you to quickly navigate to other parts of the book. You can, of course, use the TOC picker instead, but the scrubber can be quicker in at least two settings:
- TOC navigation might not be supported (e.g. in a Vryso/Faithlife eBook)
- You might not be able to remember the name of the chapter, but know roughly where it was.
- There might be a complex TOC structure: (e.g. Section A -> Part 1 -> Chapter 4 -> Sub-heading , and you can't remember which chapter Sub-heading B was in, never mind which part or Section. The scrubber means you've got a better chance of finding it quickly, without going back and to in the various sections, parts and chapters.
I agree! I wouldn't mind if we were given the option to display/hide the scrubber, but I don't want it simply removed. However, it is quite unusable until multiple scrubbing speeds are implemented. Please prioritize this.
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What format are your video's Joshua? they do not play for me in chrome browser.
They're in .MOV format. I think that's the format they're created in when I make a screen recording on my iPhone.
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I never use the 'scrubber' regardless of the resource type I'm reading and have never understood what value it adds to the app. I have found it completely useless.
The scrubber is useful for two main reasons:
- At a glance, it allows you to see how far through a book you are. That can be very useful if you're trying to estimate how long it will take to finish, or even decide if you want to finish it!
- It allows you to quickly navigate to other parts of the book. You can, of course, use the TOC picker instead, but the scrubber can be quicker in at least two settings:
- TOC navigation might not be supported (e.g. in a Vryso/Faithlife eBook)
- You might not be able to remember the name of the chapter, but know roughly where it was.
- There might be a complex TOC structure: (e.g. Section A -> Part 1 -> Chapter 4 -> Sub-heading , and you can't remember which chapter Sub-heading B was in, never mind which part or Section. The scrubber means you've got a better chance of finding it quickly, without going back and to in the various sections, parts and chapters.
I use the scrubber primarily for #1. And I understand there are others who'd like to do #2 (which I never found useful).
Hence, it'd be nice to have an option to display either the scrubber or just a thin progress bar (something like the following):
Or in case you can't view the video, here's a screenshot:
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Hi everyone, we're still tweaking this behavior to find the best sensitivity. As mentioned above, the scrolling works different in the beta. If you keep your finger on the screen when scrolling up, the toolbars won't appear.
Here's our reasoning for having them appear when you scroll up: many similar apps have this behavior, and we want our app to be intuitive to pick up for someone who has used other apps. For example, most mobile browsers will show their top bar when you scroll up. If you're thinking, "this is less intuitive to me", that's totally valid and sharing that opinion helps us figure out the best solution for all of our users.
Hope that helps clear things up!
The larger the top/bottom bars, the more unintuitive it feels.
My conclusion (obtained via unscientific means [:P]) is that every additional pixel added to the height of the bars increases unintuitive-ness exponentially.
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Something along the lines of the 1st & 2nd mockups instead of the current one (3rd) would help to save a little space. [;)]
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I'm definitely not in favour of further reducing the size. It's about as small as it can get without being fiddly to use, to my mind.
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The scrubber is useful for two main reasons:
- At a glance, it allows you to see how far through a book you are. That can be very useful if you're trying to estimate how long it will take to finish, or even decide if you want to finish it!
- It allows you to quickly navigate to other parts of the book. You can, of course, use the TOC picker instead, but the scrubber can be quicker in at least two settings:
- TOC navigation might not be supported (e.g. in a Vryso/Faithlife eBook)
- You might not be able to remember the name of the chapter, but know roughly where it was.
- There might be a complex TOC structure: (e.g. Section A -> Part 1 -> Chapter 4 -> Sub-heading , and you can't remember which chapter Sub-heading B was in, never mind which part or Section. The scrubber means you've got a better chance of finding it quickly, without going back and to in the various sections, parts and chapters.
I use the scrubber primarily for #1. And I understand there are others who'd like to do #2 (which I never found useful).
Personally I really would never use it for #2, I tried it and its to touchy feeling, hit and miss kind of approach to finding your way around a resource - it doesn't at all seem like a quick way to get to somewhere in a book. I use my mobile device for reading and I typically leave the resource open on my mobile till I've finished reading it so never have to worry about finding my way back to where I was reading last time.
I never worried about trying to work out how far into a book I am and how long it might take me to finish it, I'm either following a plan or just picking up and continuing to read from where I was last time, and I'll get to the end when I get there. I understand if your reading to a deadline it might be of interest but I don't have deadlines when it comes to reading as I'm do it for personal development and understanding and not for vocational or academic purposes.
So for me I'd rather have the option to turn this off but I realise FL don't like giving users choices - they think on size fits all is the way to go - so I am not holding my breath on it happening any time soon.
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Personally I really would never use it for #2, I tried it and its to touchy feeling, hit and miss kind of approach to finding your way around a resource
I agree 100% with your evaluation of th current implementation which is why I CURRENTLY NEVER use it. Let’s push to get it working “right“ rather than saying “go away”!
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