Touch Screen Support Still Missing

In regards to the Logos 8 Desktop app for Windows:

The new look and feel has been modernized and appears great overall.

However, I noticed the home screen and some other screens (i.e. program settings) still do not fully support touch screen input. Specifically lacking is touch scrolling. This was an oft requested feature in prior versions and in the Logos 8 wish list so it's highly disappointing to see the touch interface is still crippled in Logos 8. The only way to scroll the home page is with a mouse or to touch and drag the tiny area of the scrollbar. This is very annoying.

Also is there a way to see which list items from the Logos 8 wish list actually made it into the initial release of Logos 8? Is there a wiki page that has this information?

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Comments

Harry Hahne

That is disappointing to hear. Does touch work for highlighting and for the context menu?

I was particularly hoping for active pen use for highlighting.

Daniel Di Bartolo

Thanks for your feedback. We do offer touch support on app.logos.com.

William Walker

That is disappointing to hear. Does touch work for highlighting and for the context menu?

I was particularly hoping for active pen use for highlighting.

I can hold down my finger to bring up the context menu and it highlights the whole verse which can then be highlighted with shortcuts. The context menu is responsive to touch. Cannot do word selection or partial verse selection with just my finger.

As far as active pen, on my tablet it was working with highlighting in L7 and still works in L8. Also with my pen I can do word and partial verse selection.

It would be very nice to see gesture support such as pinch and zoom to resize the content of a window.

William Walker

Thanks for your feedback. We do offer touch support on app.logos.com.

Thanks Daniel but I don't use app.logos.com.

Harry Hahne

As far as active pen, on my tablet it was working with highlighting in L7 and still works in L8. Also with my pen I can do word and partial verse selection.

That is good to hear. I gave up using the pen in Logos 7 in Windows because I found it could do some things, but not others. They must have improved these things along the way. I will revisit it, because I prefer to use a pen for notes and highlighting when I am reading.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

Any news about improvements to touch input will be posted to this suggestion: https://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/619605-focus-on-tablet-and-touchscreen-features

William Walker

As far as active pen, on my tablet it was working with highlighting in L7 and still works in L8. Also with my pen I can do word and partial verse selection.

That is good to hear. I gave up using the pen in Logos 7 in Windows because I found it could do some things, but not others. They must have improved these things along the way. I will revisit it, because I prefer to use a pen for notes and highlighting when I am reading.

Harry, let me know if you have a different experience with your pen or any specific questions about how I use mine.

William Walker

Any news about improvements to touch input will be posted to this suggestion: https://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/619605-focus-on-tablet-and-touchscreen-features

Thank you Bradley.

That suggestion thread has been around for a REALLY LONG time. Do you have any input as to whether this is actively being worked on or waiting for more votes? I'm a very happy Logos user, but at this point my perception is that FL is not listening to its user base about the need for a fully baked implementation of touch input. I would appreciate a reasoned response from FL regarding this issue instead of referring to the suggestion thread.

William Walker

Thanks for your feedback. We do offer touch support on app.logos.com.

I spent the afternoon working with the web app. I honestly haven't used it in a while and wanted to give it a try to see if I'm missing out.

While the app has improved quite a bit since the last time I looked at it (maybe a year ago) it has a long way to go to have parity with the desktop app.

Here are some hurdles to get over for me with the web app:

I don't like working with apps in web browsers. They just don't offer a nice UI experience compared to a desktop app and provide at best a generic UI.
It needs to function offline as well as online. I go door to door with my tablet as my bible and I can't depend on having internet access.
I work a lot with saved layouts and it does not appear to me that is a feature available in the web app.

There are more but those are the most important ones.

Web App Advantages:

All resources stored online.
No need for local resource indexing.

Those advantages are not compelling enough on their own and improvements could be made in the desktop app to have selective resource install per device to limit downloading and indexing.

In my opinion while it's nice for FL to offer a web app I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to use it on a regular basis for anything but simple reading and looking up scriptures. I'd be interested to know who FL sees as the target audience for the web app? I personally see it stealing away developer resources for sorely needed features and fixes to your flagship desktop app like search, touch, etc.

Howard

I am a Surface Pro and Surface Book user who would love to see the touch interface improved as well even though I've never said anything about it before. It does surprise me when I use those devices how lacking the touch interface is compared to say my Ipad app or my phone app.

Because of the limitations of the web app I use it mainly when I am on a computer that is not my own, for example at work. It is great to have a straightforward way to access my whole library and some great tools but it is still far from the full program installed on Windows.

I too am a happy Logos 8 user and very thankful for all the great tools but again the touch interface surprises me in a negative way when I use it on my Surface devices. Almost like in my subconscious it doesn't quite fit with how good the rest of the software is.

Nicholas Petersen

It's disappointing that this would be stated as a serious solution.

Even the touch support that does exist in the app is clearly not very good or fluid. I just bought a nice 2 in 1 PC (Yoga C940 14" 4k, i7 10th gen), largely so I can work with Logos for serious work but in more versatile settings (i.e. not at a desk). It's sad to see we're entering 2020 and the main desktop app still doesn't even have a dark mode, and the touch support is still so substandard?

I just have a bad feeling like there's not the care to make the core product improved. Dark mode and touch, that's so foundational, and surely not out of reach?

I know on Windows we have to deal with some WPF limitations, but I would love to get the feeling you guys care about the main app when more serious usability work needs to be done. The iOS app is awesome, but extremely limiting when trying to do everything on it, as often happens with me.

I also wonder if the app is going to be updated to be based on .NET Core? That would surely vastly improve performance.

For those of us that have invested 10s of thousands, please reassure us. To not do this work on touch and on a basic dark mode (so our eyes aren't killed looking at bright screens all day, and so battery isn't killed) sends a bad message. I do pray for blessings on the company and on all of you guys, because what you guys have done in Logos is a God-send.

MJ. Smith

Nicholas, welcome to the forums. You might express your opinion in https://community.logos.com/forums/t/187018.aspx which was started by and is watch by Faithlife employees.