Inconsistencies in Logos User Interface
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I agree, I posted it here https://community.logos.com/forums/p/198131/1148249.aspx#1148249
Too soon old. Too late smart.
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I agree, I posted it here https://community.logos.com/forums/p/198131/1148249.aspx#1148249
Thanks, Bill, for pointing this out. Yes, it is another inconsistency.
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Here are reports of two more inconsistencies:
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If I select text, then highlight it by clicking on one of the color icons in the pop-up, a "highlight" is created in the Notes Tool. When I then select again the same text and click on "Remove Highlighting" in the pop-up, the highlight disappears. However, the Notes Tool still shows the selected text under the filter "Highlights". Unless I go into the Notes Tool, select the "Highlight" and then click "Delete this note" (by the way, it is a highlight, not a note), I cannot delete this already removed highlight. - This is very weird.
I noticed that I have quite a few of these orphaned "highlights", i,.e., they are still in my Notes but neither contain a note nor do they highlight anything. Having filtered my Highlights by "Text Range" (rather than Reference), I still have several thousand highlights. A few of them are orphaned. How can I filter them so that I can delete all orphaned highlights? I don't want to go through all my highlights individually.
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Here are some more issues with notes:
When selecting previously highlighted text and right-clicking, I get several options, two of which are:
"Open notes and highlights"
"Delete notes and highlights"
The first one opens the entire notes tool. The second deletes the selected highlight and associated note. Given the similarity of the two options, this is confusing. The first option opens the notes tool, i.e., ALL my notes and highlights. This then seems to indicate that the second option deletes ALL my notes and highlights. However, this is not the case.
Here is a screenshot:
Here is another issue:
In the notes tool, I can delete a note. Although the option states "Delete this note", it not only deletes the note but also the highlight. In other places (see above), the option states "Delete notes and highlights", i.e., clearly states that both are deleted.
I really would love more consistency in Logos.
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I still have several thousand highlights. A few of them are orphaned. How can I filter them so that I can delete all orphaned highlights?
Bump
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I still have several thousand highlights. A few of them are orphaned. How can I filter them so that I can delete all orphaned highlights?
Bump
yet another bump
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I haven't tried it but on the selection panel have you tried highlight + no anchor?
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I haven't tried it but on the selection panel have you tried highlight + no anchor?
Hi MJ, Many thanks for your suggestion. I assume by "selection panel" you mean the "Filters" in the Notes tool. Yes, I used the Highlights filter, but I am not sure how I can filter by "no anchor". Can you expand?
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Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I see. I now realize that these notes still have an anchor (I actually don't have any unanchored notes). These "orphaned" notes have no Note Icon color and no Highlight Style. So they are invisible in the resource in which they are anchored.
So far, the only way that I am aware of how I can find them is by scrolling through all my highlights in the Notes Tool and looking for those notes that have no highlight color:
But doing this with over 15,000 highlights and the time Logos takes to load the notes, this will take me days / weeks.
Is there any faster way?
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Here is another minor inconsistency:
The following icons have tool tips: Sync, layouts, account, help. However, the close all icon has no tool tip.
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Armin..... I appreciate your efforts in this thread... Good suggestions! I have noticed some of these inconsistancies as you pointed out and didn't have time or thought I just misread something.... Thanks for pointing these out.
The more consistent a program is, the less confusion there is.
xn = Christan man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".
Barney Fife is my hero! He only uses an abacus with 14 rows!
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Armin..... I appreciate your efforts in this thread... Good suggestions! I have noticed some of these inconsistancies as you pointed out and didn't have time or thought I just misread something.... Thanks for pointing these out.
The more consistent a program is, the less confusion there is.
You are welcome. If these issues get fixed, it was worth it.
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I realise this is an old post:-
So far, the only way that I am aware of how I can find them is by scrolling through all my highlights in the Notes Tool and looking for those notes that have no highlight color:
But doing this with over 15,000 highlights and the time Logos takes to load the notes, this will take me days / weeks.
You can run a Search for {Highlight *} on a subset of Highlights e.g. Resource + Bible Book. The Search result count will be lower than the count in Notes if there are highlights with no style. Hopefully you will have a small enough range to manually detect the Notes with no style.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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If I do a Basic Search in "All Resources". I can order the books in my downloaded library by "Ranked", "By Resource", or "By Count". However, if I do the same Basic Search in "Everything", I do not get these sorting options for the books in my downloaded library. It would be great if this sorting would be possible in all search results.
I would really really love it Faithlife would prioritize fixing this inconsistency. Like for 9.11. This is probably my most frequently encountered (and annoying) interface inconsistency. And I almost always prefer to sort by resource and always want to have that option. I actually view this as a Bug rather than an inconsistency.
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I would really really love it Faithlife would prioritize fixing this inconsistency. Like for 9.11. This is probably my most frequently encountered (and annoying) interface inconsistency. And I almost always prefer to sort by resource and always want to have that option. I actually view this as a Bug rather than an inconsistency.
You are responding to a 1 year old post when you should start a new thread for the issue if you regard it as a Bug.
My opinion is that Everything is a very different Search mode, and deliberately presents a few results by Rank and then invites you to search All Resources; which exits Everything and allows you to search/sort by Resource. Everything also presents a few results from a Bible Search of your preferred bible. It is a mode that I avoid.Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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If I do a Basic Search in "All Resources". I can order the books in my downloaded library by "Ranked", "By Resource", or "By Count". However, if I do the same Basic Search in "Everything", I do not get these sorting options for the books in my downloaded library. It would be great if this sorting would be possible in all search results.
I would really really love it Faithlife would prioritize fixing this inconsistency.
It is definitely an odd inconsistency. Perhaps there is some obscure reason for it, but it eludes me at the moment.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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It is definitely an odd inconsistency. Perhaps there is some obscure reason for it, but it eludes me at the moment.
I think that Dave hit upon the explanation (and the reason I don't consider the two as parallel and therefore not an inconsistency). The everything search provides only a sampling of results. If you want the full results, you run a Search which is where the options for the order should appear. A sort on a "randoming sampling" leads to the erroneous assumption that the results are complete and meaningful.
The all resources search, however, does provide complete results and therefore the sorting is meaningful.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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My ultimate goal with this thread is to improve usability. The explanations for the potential meaningfulness of what I consider an inconsistency are just not intuitive. Only more questions are raised: Why should a "search everything" only return a "random sampling"?
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Why should a "search everything" only return a "random sampling"?
Good question. Usability is its own subfield in Computer Science and portions of it have been thoroughly tested in the labs. What is intuitive to one person may not be intuitive to the next because habit and familiarity are major components of the intuition of an individual. A prime example within Logos is the presentation of facets in order of frequency rather than alphabetically. This is because most people prefer their most frequently used facets to "just be there" and are willing to use a find box to find the remaining facets. However, in Bible study, the most frequent facets are not necessarily the most used facets; therefore, it is appropriate for Logos to also offer an alphabetic order. So it is reasonable for Logos to define useability with regards to facets lists as:
- default facet list in frequency order (what people are used to in other applications)
- a search box for all facets (again, what people are used to in other application)
- a choice of alphabetic sequence with the exceptions of the canon in canonical order and in some cases a liturgical year in calendar (date) sequence)
However, there is another principle of usability that Logos struggles with -- one that increases as one's library expands. Too much data is nearly equivalent to no data -- there is no way a user can plough through it to review all cases; it is difficult to find one's go-to resources to even find some basic sources. The everything search is designed in theory to give so much data as to be useless in some sections i.e. to be a user's nightmare. The solution is to return a sampling of the results and provide an option for a full search. This allows the user some very useful options:
- the ability to get a taste of the results and determine whether or not a full search would be useful.
- the ability to run the search for the full results, if needed
- the ability to take that full search and modify it to add more restrictions to make it more meaningful -- search fields, search terms, or resources searched.
That is why an everything search only returns a random sampling and why many users would never use it if it returned complete results.
Uniformity is one of several elements highly valued in UI design but it must not become the only value at the cost of usability. No, I have no computer science degree in UI/useability. But I interviewed and worked with a Stanford graduate who does.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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That is why an everything search only returns a random sampling and why many users would never use it if it returned complete results.
I don't think it is a "random sampling", otherwise search results would change if I re-run the same search. It is unclear to me how Logos decides which search results to show in this search.
Uniformity is one of several elements highly valued in UI design but it must not become the only value at the cost of usability.
For me and my limited understanding of the terms, I am not necessarily interested in uniformity, but in consistency.
In the end, the customer decides. While I invested a lot in Logos and decided to live with its quirks, none of the 5 (?) people whom I gifted a Logos base package uses it. The reason they gave me is consistent (sorry for the pun): Too difficult to use. And they were all people I considered to be potential future enthusiasts of Logos.
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It is definitely an odd inconsistency. Perhaps there is some obscure reason for it, but it eludes me at the moment.
I think that Dave hit upon the explanation (and the reason I don't consider the two as parallel and therefore not an inconsistency). The everything search provides only a sampling of results. If you want the full results, you run a Search which is where the options for the order should appear. A sort on a "randoming sampling" leads to the erroneous assumption that the results are complete and meaningful.
The all resources search, however, does provide complete results and therefore the sorting is meaningful.
As a description of why the inconsistency exists, this seems plausible. As a reason for it, I don't think it holds up.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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As a description of why the inconsistency exists, this seems plausible. As a reason for it, I don't think it holds up.
As we appear to use the words in a slightly different way, I can't disagree because I am uncertain what you mean.[;)]
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Here is another inconsistency:
When I search for "Colossae" in the Factbook, I get the following section:
This section contains Media related to Colossae. However, when I click on one of the maps, I don't get the Media Tool. I get the Atlas Tool. In my view, the Atlas Tool is a tool, not a media. My understanding of the relationship between media and maps seems to be confirmed by the fact that the "Search all media for "Colossae"" only searches for media, not for maps.
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Sorry, but I am pleased to have the atlas included in the media section rather than having multiple media sections as in the guides. I would expect the atlas to open the atlas. It is not as if the Atlas is alone in using alternative viewers - try some of the interactives
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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That is why an everything search only returns a random sampling and why many users would never use it if it returned complete results.
I don't think it is a "random sampling", otherwise search results would change if I re-run the same search. It is unclear to me how Logos decides which search results to show in this search.
I don't think it's random either.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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