23.0 RC-1 (23.0.28)

Is it a bad thing or a good thing!?

I'm not sure yet. My first reaction was it's a bad thing because collections were how I was searching only downloaded resources while also including/excluding certain types of resources. It kills two birds with one stone. I'd actually like to see Cloud resources in collections for library management purposes. But having them be excluded from Search when I search a collection was actually serving a positive purpose for me.

I know that doesn't really answer your question. But for me I'd like quicker/easier ways to search only my downloaded resources with precision (especially through exclusions, e.g. -bibles or -commentaries or -perseus, or -lectionaries). So my "Entire Library (No Bibles)" collection was serving as "Downloaded Books" minus Bibles, and now v23 renders that ineffective. My workaround was to create a new collection called "Downloaded Library (No Bibles)" with the rule "mytag:device -type:bibles". But that only works since I had already tagged all of my downloaded resources with the tag "device".

On the other hand, I also want flexibility in library management, and it would be great to see all the books that meet a collection rule in Collections and in the Library and not just the downloaded ones. This would actually help me determine which books to download since I could just download a whole collection that I had already created. Currently I have to copy the collection rule into the library, but if I added resources to a collection manually instead of through a rule that doesn't work. I can't even see the resources I added manually to collections unless they're already downloaded, but if I can't see them in the collection I don't know to download them in the first place.

Maybe knowing my use case helps you think about how to implement Cloud resources with Search and with Collections. Or maybe I just confused you further.

Is it a bad thing or a good thing!?

I just had another thought. I don't think I want Cloud resources showing up in my Guide sections like the Passage Guide collections. However, I do like the fact that they show up in the "Books From Your Library" section in the Factbook but not in the Dictionaries section.

So again my answer is I'm not sure. There's a balance I need between researching using only the best part of my library, and having access to my whole library and discovering new resources when I don't find what I'm looking for. So with tools I'm using for research I want to focus on downloaded resources, but with tools I use for library management and discovery I want to see my whole library. Search is a hybrid case because I want to search my downloaded library by default but with the ability to include/exclude types of resources, but also have the flexibility to move to my whole library when I'm not finding what I'm looking for in my downloaded resources.

The ability to search Cloud Books within a collection sounds like it might be an unintended side-effect of a change we made to ensure that tags, ratings, and series all included Cloud Books.

Is it a bad thing or a good thing!?

I'd say it was bad design if you did not adequately specify and test for that side-effect.

I don't want cloud resources in Collections, Guides etc. in any circumstances. If others like it then it should be a Setting.