New Feature: Dynamic Resource Toolbar
We’re thrilled to announce the rollout of our sleek new resource toolbar design on app.logos.com!
After gathering feedback and brainstorming ways to enhance user experience, we’re confident that this update will make navigating your books much easier than before. Our primary goal was to make the toolbar more intuitive, ensuring that every feature is easily accessible and understandable.
Here’s what you can expect from our revamped toolbar:
- Simplicity at its Best: We’ve simplified the layout and removed any clutter, so you can focus on what matters most - reading your books efficiently.
- Clear Visual Cues: Each button is carefully designed to represent its function, making it easier than ever to find the tool you need.
- Streamlined Navigation: Say goodbye to endless menus and submenus! With our new toolbar, everything you need is just a click away.
We’re committed to continuously improving your experience with our app. We’re planning to bring this new toolbar to the desktop app in the near future, so we’d love to hear your thoughts of it on the web app. It’s available to anyone using the web app right now!
Try out the new toolbar and let us know what you think in the Web App Forum. We can’t wait to hear your feedback!
Note: If you are in Limited View, you will not see this toolbar. You can change this in Settings.
Ali Pope | Logos Desktop and Mobile Program Manager
Comments
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APPLICATION TOOLBAR: You forgot to mention the other thing I'd expect -myopic design that ignores the majority of Christians - liturgical/semi-liturgical churches. Where do I find the quick action to open a lectionary, a prayer book, and the calendar of saints?
In Verbum, I was surprised that the Daily Devotional pulled up a Saints book -not the calendar of saints. (Yes, I figured out why.)
Note that handling of the Calendar of Saints (sanctoral cycle) is something Logos did well until the redesign that confused books of saints by date with calendars of saints.
The bar lacks the shortcut bar I hope that is unintentional
RESOURCE TOOLBAR:
In the NRSV at least if I open to Mark 1:1-8 then press ^ to go up on article, I get to the Chapter 1 heading not the last pericope of Matthew as expected.
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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Interesting. I can see why it is more intuitive and it's kind of a cool evolution of the UI.
Everything comes at a cost. If one uses the locator bar, you are going to tie up more screen space with this change, but I think that is a fair trade off.
One small request, please do not lose the L4 links in the desktop app with this UI change. If you do this, you will break my ability to make links from Logos resources to my markdown notes.
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Donovan R. Palmer said:
f one uses the locator bar, you are going to tie up more screen space with this change
FYI, you can click the category tab in order to collapse the bar below it in order to free up the space.
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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MJ. Smith said:
You forgot to mention the other thing I'd expect -myopic design that ignores the majority of Christians - liturgical/semi-liturgical churches. Where do I find the quick action to open a lectionary and a prayer book?
Just to set the expectations, the goal here was to redesign access to existing functionality, not to add new functionality.
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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Donovan R. Palmer said:
Everything comes at a cost. If one uses the locator bar, you are going to tie up more screen space with this change, but I think that is a fair trade off.
It is possible to temporarily minimize the second level of the toolbar.
Donovan R. Palmer said:One small request, please do not lose the L4 links in the desktop app with this UI change. If you do this, you will break my ability to make links from Logos resources to my markdown notes.
Understood. Although we're also working on a way in which it will be possible to link to Logos using a ref.ly link, without going to the browser. That might give us the best of both worlds.
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Andrew Batishko said:
FYI, you can click the category tab in order to collapse the bar below it in order to free up the space.
Clever. I like it!
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Andrew Batishko said:
not to add new functionality.
I know - but I will continue to nag, carp, complain, grumble ... at the functionality that was lost/screwed up in the conversion of the ribbon to the home page cards.
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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This looks really interesting and will be really useful.
Two questions (for now!):
1) Under the Go menu - in a Bible - the up / down options are only for articles (a commentary also includes pages).
Are there any plans to extend this to verse, paragraph or pericope?
2) And I would have thoughts that Insights and Info would have more logically gone under the View menu. Was there a particular reason for putting them here?
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Graham Criddle said:
Are there any plans to extend this to verse, paragraph or pericope?
I wondered the same thing.
Also, the labeling of ‘go’ threw me at first. I think my first thought was from Series X!
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Graham Criddle said:
This looks really interesting and will be really useful.
Two questions (for now!):
1) Under the Go menu - in a Bible - the up / down options are only for articles (a commentary also includes pages).
Are there any plans to extend this to verse, paragraph or pericope?
This functionality was moved directly from the locator bar. In the web app, most books don't support as many step units (e.g. article, verse, paragraph, etc.) as they do on desktop, and we don't currently have plans to change that, but always happy to hear the feedback.
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Am I missing something or does this mean the end of parallel resources button?
Also, the button to include another Bible in the same window? i.e. esv with na28
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Donovan R. Palmer said:
Am I missing something or does this mean the end of parallel resources button?
This is available from the Change book button
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Ah, missed that!
Ok, that leaves the ability to put more than one Bible in a window.0 -
Graham Criddle said:
And I would have thoughts that Insights and Info would have more logically gone under the View menu. Was there a particular reason for putting them here?
We debated this quite a bit. Your comment has made one or two developers very happy because they've been advocating for the same thing! The reason it's currently here it because the Go tab is the first and, therefore, primary tab. It's intended to be the place where most of the commonly used actions belong.
- Should Insights belong in Go, because it allows you to go to your study Bibles and commentaries?
- Should it belong in View because the user is choosing whether to view Insights or not?
- Should it belong in Tools because the sidebar is a tool that helps you find related information about the passage?
I honestly don't know if there's a right answer to that question.
But this is exactly the feedback we wanted and the sort of thing that we might change based on feedback. At the same time, this new design might take a bit of getting used to, and we want everyone to feel they've not just kicked the tires but properly taken it for a test drive before we make any big decisions.
0 - Should Insights belong in Go, because it allows you to go to your study Bibles and commentaries?
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Donovan R. Palmer said:
Ah, missed that! Ok, that leaves the ability to put more than one Bible in a window.
That feature has never been available on the web app. When we bring this toolbar to the desktop, there will be an option to add a parallel text on the View tab.
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This is excellent. Great work! Looking forward to it being on the desktop.
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The Your top Bible shortcut under Tools is very helpful indeed, as I regularly change my top Bible for different projects. Will this be a part of the desktop update as well?
Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. - Colossians 3:14
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Sam Shelton said:
The Your top Bible shortcut under Tools is very helpful indeed, as I regularly change my top Bible for different projects. Will this be a part of the desktop update as well?
That's kind of as far as I could figure out... my top Bible was given a volume reference. In any event, on an iPhone??
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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This seems to have introduced a bug that messes up the view.
If I just click "Go" it returns the text to the proper size and formatting but I have to do that every time I change to a different resource tab.
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I have noticed a similar formatting problem. If I have my NIV and NRSV open, and click from one to the next, I'm fine. But if I click to put, say, a commentary into focus (in the same tab as the Bible), then click the NRSV's tab to put it into focus, the fonts are very large and very pixelated.
Here's the pixelated version:
Here's the normal version. Note: I don't have to click "Go", but just go to another Bible and back to this one. Maybe that's not the significant action, but that's one that works.
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Additional playing with this reveals that it (the weird display) doesn't only happen to bibles. For me, it tends to behave a bit better in Edge than Chrome, although I can see in the former a quick flash to weird display for a fraction of a second, but then it returns to a normal display.
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I'm also curious what platforms this changes appears in. My Windows browsers see it, but my Android devices' browsers do not.
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I can do an inline search which I never use because of how it displays results - but I can't do a find which I use all the time. Is that a web limitation or should I be worried. Note the greyed hint says find not search.
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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Micah Gafford said:
This seems to have introduced a bug that messes up the view.
If I just click "Go" it returns the text to the proper size and formatting but I have to do that every time I change to a different resource tab.
Thanks for reporting this. It appears to be related to a separate change that happened to go out about the same time as the toolbar. We can reproduce it internally and are actively looking into it.
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MJ. Smith said:
I can do an inline search which I never use because of how it displays results - but I can't do a find which I use all the time. Is that a web limitation or should I be worried. Note the greyed hint says find not search.
"Find in this panel" was not previously supported in web. Our plans for desktop include continued support for "Find in this panel" (i.e. Ctrl+f / Cmd+f).
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At first try I like much of the simplicity and I will continue to test.
For right now, I have one question.
I see I can turn notes on or off, but unlike the Notes and Highlights function in the Visual Filters Menu in the Desktop App, I can't select which notebooks to turn on or off. Will this be available in the Web App?
If not, I hope we don't lose this ability if this toolbar goes to the Desktop App.
Too soon old. Too late smart.
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- I like the handling of parallel resources.
- The label "Go" confuses me as I don't see the rationale for the label
- I prefer the old style of selecting the content of the sidebars but see the rationale for the new method.
- I HATE the word "find" as the prompt for the inline search
- I love the panel history visibility
- The integration of notes made me expect to be able to access highlights within the panel.
- Where are my visual filters beyond the reformatting?
- I like the "resource tab" that shows as the panel is building the tab.
- I like the view tab content ... much clearer
- I'm not fond of the new application tool bar. For quick actions open lectionary and open sanctoral cycle are standard for many of us. I would also expect a resume workflow and resume sermon option at least on the desktop.
Overall, decently done. The improvements don't excite me either for myself or for teaching others but I'll get used to them quite quickly which to me is a critical measure. So kudos to all of you who worked through this.
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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DMB said:
That's kind of as far as I could figure out... my top Bible was given a volume reference. In any event, on an iPhone??
It looks like you've selected Request Desktop Site in Safari on your phone. That's likely to cause problems. To change this, click the AA icon in your address bar, and choose Request Mobile Site.
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Bill said:
At first try I like much of the simplicity and I will continue to test.
For right now, I have one question.
I see I can turn notes on or off, but unlike the Notes and Highlights function in the Visual Filters Menu in the Desktop App, I can't select which notebooks to turn on or off. Will this be available in the Web App?
If not, I hope we don't lose this ability if this toolbar goes to the Desktop App.
Our approach on this feature was to take the existing functionality in the web app and put it into a new toolbar. We tried to focus on building a new toolbar and limited the number of additional features that weren't present previously in the web app.
Our approach for the desktop app will be similar and we do not intend to regress functionality that currently exists in the desktop app.
Of course, we are always happy to hear the things that appear in that space that are valuable to you.
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Bill said:
I see I can turn notes on or off, but unlike the Notes and Highlights function in the Visual Filters Menu in the Desktop App, I can't select which notebooks to turn on or off. Will this be available in the Web App?
If not, I hope we don't lose this ability if this toolbar goes to the Desktop App.
Desktop will continue to allow you to select which notebooks you want to turn on or off. We don't have plans to bring that functionality to the web app.
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