BUG: (Major annoyance) Search Window doesn't remember my last setup

When you close and then re-open the search window, it doesn't remember how you last used it. It defaults to the All search even if you used the Books search last.

The Books search re-expands all the sections each time you re-open the search window after closing it. Logos 9 remembered what you had expanded and collapsed. I usually only like to have Downloaded books expanded and all the others (especially the Factbook and Bookstore sections) collapsed. Now I'd like to have the Downloaded and Print books expanded and the others collapsed. I don't use the Factbook in the search window and I usually search the Bookstore by itself after I've searched my own library.

Having things I'm not using collapsed makes sure I'm not overwhelmed with too much information at once, and it makes sure I search the books I already own first and then move to other resources/info next.

Please restore the ability to have things start collapsed and remember my last use to the Search window. It's annoying to have to keep clicking things closed unnecessarily and switching away from the All tab when I open a new search window.

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Comments

Wolfgang Schneider

A possibility might be to set your Search panel according to your liking (type of search, collapsed sections, etc.) and then drag the Search panel to the shortcut bar. Next time you need search, open it from shortcut bar ... you could do this even for multiple different search setups.

Instead of shortcut bar, one could drag it to favorites ... e.g. if a certain search with complicate search rule, etc. is part of a certain project and any resources related to the project could be included in a Favorites entry.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231624#Comment_1231624

A possibility might be to set your Search panel according to your liking (type of search, collapsed sections, etc.) and then drag the Search panel to the shortcut bar. Next time you need search, open it from shortcut bar ... you could do this even for multiple different search setups.

That's definitely a workaround but not ideal. I have limited space for more shortcuts. Logos normally remembers when you have stuff collapsed so that searches don't all have to run at once (which slows things down), and so that we're not overwhelmed with info we don't yet need. I don't want to have to create a shortcut for something the software should do on its own.

Instead of shortcut bar, one could drag it to favorites ... e.g. if a certain search with complicate search rule, etc. is part of a certain project and any resources related to the project could be included in a Favorites entry.

I'm not really trying to do any complicated searches. I already use Favorites to save special searches. I'm just talking about everyday searching. I just want to go to whatever tab I last used (instead of it defaulting to All) and want things to remain collapsed that I have collapsed. So if I'm doing multiple Book searches or multiple Bible searches I don't have to keep clicking to select those tabs since those were the tabs I was just using.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231628#Comment_1231628

I'm not really trying to do any complicated searches.

I keep two Search tabs in my layout. You could keep one there and avoid the inconvenience of opening from the toolbar.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231698#Comment_1231698

I'm not really trying to do any complicated searches.

I keep two Search tabs in my layout. You could keep one there and avoid the inconvenience of opening from the toolbar.

I have a basic layout with a search tab but I always end up adding more.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231700#Comment_1231700

I have a basic layout with a search tab but I always end up adding more.

Duplicating a search tab might be more satisfactory. And I use "Send searches here" to control which tab is used by Context menu and other features.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231703#Comment_1231703

I have a basic layout with a search tab but I always end up adding more.

Duplicating a search tab might be more satisfactory. And I use "Send searches here" to control which tab is used by Context menu and other features.

I would really just prefer that it work like it used to. The standard Logos function is to have sections remain collapsed if you collapsed them with the last use. Guides, the Factbook, and Search used to work this way.

I also always like for the Factbook and Bookstore sections to remain collapsed until I want to use them (especially the Bookstore). If I want the Factbook, I just go to the Factbook. There are certain instances when I actively want to search the Bookstore. But I want the search window to be focused on searching my existing library first. I've spent a lot of money building my library over the years and I want to get the most out of it.

I also want Logos to remember how I work so that I don't have to create shortcuts or use workarounds for stuff that should be basic functionality.

I know you're trying to help, but sometimes endless workarounds won't do. The program should simply remember that I have things collapsed and keep them that way until I change them. I don't use a ton of layouts because I don't always work just one way. I work more dynamically so I just want the Search tab to remember how I last used it. If I want a specific more precise Search layout, that's when I use shortcuts or favorites.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231725#Comment_1231725

I would really just prefer that it work like it used to. The standard Logos function is to have sections remain collapsed if you collapsed them with the last use. Guides, the Factbook, and Search used to work this way.

I also always like for the Factbook and Bookstore sections to remain collapsed until I want to use them (especially the Bookstore). If I want the Factbook, I just go to the Factbook. There are certain instances when I actively want to search the Bookstore. But I want the search window to be focused on searching my existing library first. I've spent a lot of money building my library over the years and I want to get the most out of it.

I also want Logos to remember how I work so that I don't have to create shortcuts or use workarounds for stuff that should be basic functionality.

Agree completely. And I did the send search here thing, plus dedicated search panels. I really wish they'd replace the designer guy; they're just treading water, with design repairs masquerading as features. Each update demands a new set of work-arounds from the designer guy.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231726#Comment_1231726

Agree completely. And I did the send search here thing, plus dedicated search panels. I really wish they'd replace the designer guy; they're just treading water, with design repairs masquerading as features. Each update demands a new set of work-arounds from the designer guy.

They need a whole design philosophy and a unified set of design standards. The desktop app is like Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together and inconsistent. They should have all of the common design elements of the program work the same throughout the program, (e.g. scrollbars, find boxes, expandable/collapsable lists and sections, sidebars, dropdown lists, panel menus, etc.) All of these things should look and function in a consistent manner. There is no other program installed on my computer that has a more inconsistent, cobbled-together interface than Logos.

People just get used to working around design flaws instead of demanding that Faithlife fix them. Frustrating.

I have so many more complaints about the interface but it would take up literally all of my time reporting all of them, so I just report them when I'm annoyed enough and when I have time.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231728#Comment_1231728

They need a whole design philosophy and a unified set of design standards. The desktop app is like Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together and inconsistent.

I don't disagree with you, but I also think that the other half of the picture needs to be recognized. For example:

Faithlife is a small company with limited programming resources
Faithlife spread itself too thin across too many products -- a reality they have admitted and corrected
Faithlife tries to respond to the feature requests of its customers -- resulting in a need to provide new features but without the resources necessary to bring all the old features up to modern standards
The customer base has to convince Faithlife that we have the patience to allow them the time to standardize the code and interface without demanding new platforms and input devices be supported, that our personal pet peeves be "fixed" etc., that we are willing to try more recent design preferences that are not to our personal liking . . .

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231764#Comment_1231764

MJ, how many times have you seen short-sighted planning? Major function re-dos? They waste a LOT of hours. Don't say you couldn't do it considerably better?

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231765#Comment_1231765

MJ, how many times have you seen short-sighted planning? Major function re-dos? They waste a LOT of hours. Don't say you couldn't do it considerably better?

I don't disagree ... but I have seen many IT managers who lack disciple, fail to value discipline, jump from one great idea to another without considering the effect on the current production plans ... I think we all noticed the improvement when FL went to a 6 week development cycle which added some of the discipline they had been lacking.

David Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231728#Comment_1231728

People just get used to working around design flaws instead of demanding that Faithlife fix them. Frustrating.

I have posted dozens if not hundreds of threads and comments asking and even begging FL to just RESTORE functionality that I have relied upon for over a decade that has disappeared, and the typical response is 1) no response, 2) forumites telling me I'm wrong for voicing my issue, 3) FL staff telling me that "a decision was made" to abandon my daily use feature, 4) no response, 5) no response, and most recently 6) an email with a link to Feedbear for me to list my "broken program" fix request for others to upvote (or not) as to whether it will even be considered much less addressed.

I have had a few things addressed, usually things that relate to me not understanding how the program works...Graham has been particularly helpful over the years. But if I had to pin a figure to the percentage of issues that have been resovled or helpfully addressed in the last dozen years, it would probably be around 5%. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that it is essentially impossible for me to currently use the program effectively in the way I have for almost 15 years. There seems to be a virtual gauntlet of bugs and intentional design flaws that clog every one of the half-dozen typical use cases that I have used Logos for in my study.

The $6K of L10 purchases in my cart will just rot there...I can't see spending another dime on a company that doesn't care one whit whether I am able to use their product effectively or that the last ten years of my life have essentially been invested into a broken cistern.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231725#Comment_1231725

I know you're trying to help, but sometimes endless workarounds won't do.

I appreciate where you are coming from - so I'm fine with that. There were a couple of hair-brained decisions in the Beta that were reversed after protests from many testers whilst some others will be fixed in 10.1, 10.2. I had the impression that programmers were adapting to .NET6 and reworking some old code; some/much being a legacy of Logos 4.

I'm pretty sure this will be fixed --- keep up with future betas to get your opinions across.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231764#Comment_1231764

Faithlife is a small company with limited programming resources

Faithlife spread itself too thin across too many products -- a reality they have admitted and corrected

Agreed wholeheartedly.

Faithlife tries to respond to the feature requests of its customers -- resulting in a need to provide new features but without the resources necessary to bring all the old features up to modern standards

Some new features I wonder who even asked for them. I feel like a lot of us have been asking them to focus on performance and refinement lately. I personally wish they would slow down on new features and focus on improving and refining existing ones with a focus on consistent design. (Sidenote: having all search sections expanded for every new search doesn't contribute to increased search performance, quite the opposite. Search is actually slower because it keeps trying to search everything--Factbook, Downloaded, Cloud, Print, and Bookstore--at once.)

The customer base has to convince Faithlife that we have the patience to allow them the time to standardize the code and interface without demanding new platforms and input devices be supported, that our personal pet peeves be "fixed" etc., that we are willing to try more recent design preferences that are not to our personal liking . . .

Faithlife has created this dynamic with its own inconsistency and lack of discipline as you mentioned. If they put out stuff that works well and adds value to our study customers will accept it. Customers don't have anything to prove to Faithlife, Faithlife needs to prove it can design a piece of software that works well and customers will trust them more to make changes.

I think another issue is that Faithlife is focusing on things they can sell to us to get us to upgrade. It's harder to sell "Interface Refinement" as a premium upgrade (although I would definitely upgrade for that). Lately their new "features" seem to be focused on things that prompt us to buy more and more books. The Counseling Guide was a total example of this. I could have done without that, I almost never use it. But it was an excuse for them to sell folks more counseling books to fill out that feature (and now they even have a Counseling Suite base package). The Theology Guide was a similar situation. Even the new Sermon quotes feature functions to show you more books with quotes that you don't own.

Faithlife needs to pause on new datasets, and we certainly don't need any more guides. Focus on improving the performance and design and data integrity of what we have.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231780#Comment_1231780

There were a couple of hair-brained decisions in the Beta that were reversed after protests from many testers whilst some others will be fixed in 10.1, 10.2.

I'm pretty sure this will be fixed --- keep up with future betas to get your opinions across.

Good to hear.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231810#Comment_1231810

Faithlife needs to pause on new datasets, and we certainly don't need any more guides.

Need more bell!! (Saturday Night Live). I know I'll be both unique in this respect, combined with theologically out on a limb, but FL's penchant for slice and dice is a theological diversion (a nice word for convorting, not cavorting, with you-know-who). I'm not a church historian (I have Verbum; no need), but I get the feeling it began around the time of the 'Protestants' (who were Catholic) ... and returning to the 3rd century 'greek for all its worth' approach to everlasting life.

But my morning's post, is that I seem to be seeing my Bible settings being carried into my layouts on L10. Meaning, on my layouts, none of my Bibles have their TOC's open (no need). But I often open a Bible from the library, and sometimes pop the TOC (this time, testing title page). And later my saved layout opening, mysteriously has its TOC open too. I'll shall keep watch; this may require some serious 'workaround'.

Wolfgang Schneider

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231628#Comment_1231628

Logos normally remembers when you have stuff collapsed so that searches don't all have to run at once (which slows things down), and so that we're not overwhelmed with info we don't yet need. I don't want to have to create a shortcut for something the software should do on its own.

After reading your posts in this thread, I admit that I do not understand what you are trying to say. For clarification, what do you mean with "have stuff collapsed so that searches don't all have to run at once"? what is "collapsing" (or "expanding")? How would one run different searches at once?

About resources "remembering" the last place at which they were open, e.g. I would at times actually rather not have my preferred Bible to open to the last place I had opened it, e.g. when starting a different study from the one before.
If I would like to have my various resources open to the same place where I left off because I want to continue a project, I save it in a layout and then open the layout later.

I'm just talking about everyday searching. I just want to go to whatever tab I last used (instead of it defaulting to All) and want things to remain collapsed that I have collapsed. So if I'm doing multiple Book searches or multiple Bible searches I don't have to keep clicking to select those tabs since those were the tabs I was just using.

What do you do when not wanting to do the same type of search in a study session (perhaps search something in a Bible, then next search to find something via a book search, followed by a morph search ...)? To what does "collapse refer in this passage?

When I want to do multiple searches of the same type, I just leave the search panel open and only adjust the search query, select a different Bible as needed, etc.
In addition, for searching from context menu I mark the search panel as target so that searches don't open a new search panel each time.

As you hopefully can see, I simply do not understand some of the points to which you are referring ... any help?

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231871#Comment_1231871

FWIW, I agree with Kiyah concerning the original issue in this thread.

After reading your posts in this thread, I admit that I do not understand what you are trying to say. For clarification, what do you mean with "have stuff collapsed so that searches don't all have to run at once"? what is "collapsing" (or "expanding")?

The searches have different sections. When the sections are closed/collapsed/minimized, they don't run. You may need to play around with (e.g.) a Passage Guide (which has sections that work the way desired) to understand what Kiyah is referring to.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231810#Comment_1231810

Search is actually slower because it keeps trying to search everything--Factbook, Downloaded, Cloud, Print, and Bookstore--at once.)

What platform are you speaking of or, if the desktop, are you speaking of the all search?

The Counseling Guide was a total example of this. I could have done without that, I almost never use it.

I never use it and leave nearly all resources used by it in the cloud. But there is a segment of users that requested it and are very pleased with it. I see it as an example of how different the needs of various church groups are. I also see the bias of the tools towards what Wikipedia calls non-liberal Protestant criticism and others call Fundamentalist criticism as a reflection of the different needs for various church groups.

Faithlife needs to pause on new datasets, and we certainly don't need any more guides.

I disagree. Some critical datasets for form, literary criticism, and rabbinic literature are missing; there is little support for the expanded canons used by progressive Christian groups (or in some cases, Oriental Orthodox groups). . . As for guides, we have nothing to support reception history or the various advocacy criticisms. Fortunately, data uses a different skill set than features. I hope to see a filling out of various data frameworks they already have in place.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231882#Comment_1231882

What platform are you speaking of or, if the desktop, are you speaking of the all search?

I was speaking of the Books search on the Desktop app. By "everything" I meant everything in the Books tab. It's running the search for all the sections in that tab because they're all expanded.

I hope to see a filling out of various data frameworks they already have in place.

Agreed.

Kiyah

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231889#Comment_1231889

Bumping to get this on the list of upcoming bug fixes.

EDUARDO JIMENEZ

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1231728#Comment_1231728

They need a whole design philosophy and a unified set of design standards. The desktop app is like Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together and inconsistent. They should have all of the common design elements of the program work the same throughout the program, (e.g. scrollbars, find boxes, expandable/collapsable lists and sections, sidebars, dropdown lists, panel menus, etc.) All of these things should look and function in a consistent manner. There is no other program installed on my computer that has a more inconsistent, cobbled-together interface than Logos.

Just like the platform of this forum![:D] We need likes&diskikes D and /