FEEDBACK WANTED: New Resource Toolbar on Desktop

Mark Barnes (Logos) said:

It's incredibly rare for us to remove features from the software. And, to be clear, we have NOT removed inline search and have no intention of removing inline search. At the same time, we want to ensure that Logos is always improving. We work incredibly hard to understand how people use the software and to ensure, so far as possible, that any improvements are improvements for everyone. But we can't guarantee, of course, that we will please all the people all the time.

Thanks for making me sleep better tonight, Mark. I'm glad to hear that inline search will continue to be my most used function.

As for the toolbar, I'm in favor of it with two suggestions:

1) as it has icons and labels/titles, it would be great if there was an option for heavy users to hide the titles to make the Logos more minimalist (less polluted).

2) That there was an option to collapse the toolbar to save space and keep the look clean.

Mark Barnes (Logos) said:

We love our customers, and we love the passionate feedback we get. We work hard to balance the needs of all our users: newbies, power users, academics, lay-people, evangelicals, Catholics, former Bibleworks or Wordsearch users, Logos purists, and those who use (or used to use) Accordance. All those views –  and more –  are valuable and valued. You always give us plenty to think about, and we always value that.

You left out Bible nerds...

You know you are a Bible nerd when:

• You stay up most of the night playing around with a new resource that downloaded earlier that day.
• You take time off from work to be one of the first to use a new Bible software version release.
• Your expenditure on biblical resources merits a line item in your accountability partner meetings.
• You would rather talk about your current Biblical study project over politics, entertainment, or just about anything else that would come up at a social night out.
• You have great angst on the smallest changes to a little used or known Bible software feature, believing that the entire world will end as we know it if it disappears.
• You have a restraining order with a few theologians. (ok, this is pushing it)
• You use your Bible software notetaking feature to manage the rest of your life.
• Your name is frequently mentioned at staff meeting debriefs at your Bible Software company and your picture is posted at reception with a note on what the staff member on duty should do.
• Your fellow Bible software forum members begin to wonder if you ever sleep, have a life or talk to anyone in person.
• You participate in a little known activistic group that wants to reintroduce Biblical original languages into common life applications.
• You...

Surely there has got to be a few of us in the Logos community... 

Hoping that makes you smile @Mark as you and the team finish the race to v.11! [H]

Mark Barnes (Logos) said:

• We are always looking to make improvements to how Logos works for you all.

In this sense, I hope and would like to encourage what has already been denied by Logos previously - leave the traditional toolbar as an option. Improvements for the "new" users or the non power users can and will likely hinder the long time user and or power user that works efficiently without the "improvements".

If both toolbars are going to be maintained anyway, how difficult would be allowing it as an option in settings?

MJ. Smith said:

You realize that it currently collapses into a single line, right?

Thank you for drawing my attention to this detail. He's very good. I've only just started to really test it out since I got back from my trip. Until then I was just following the discussion on the forum and trusting you guys lol. Now I'm going to test everything “in loco”. 

I read that this applies to books only.  What constitutes a book in this case. I ask because bools tagged as monographs, commentary for example  seem to have a much truncated too bar. 

DaveG

After being able to test the new Toolbar thoroughly, I’d like to share my highlights and impressions:

• I really like how parallel resources are now accessed through the book cover thumbnail and that it's still possible to access parallel resource collections. (I was afraid that collections would no longer be accessible within parallel resources.)
• I appreciate being able to collapse the Toolbar options. This aligns with a suggestion I had previously submitted in Feedback.
• I’m glad to see that Visual Filters are now separated from other options (which were previously grouped with Visual Filters) and that they can all be toggled on or off with a single click. I had suggested something along these lines in Feedback, but in a different way. The current solution works very well for my needs.
• I love the ease of toggling Factbook Tags on and off! It’s excellent.

What could be improved:

• Having the option to hide the titles/labels on the bar, leaving only icons, would make the appearance cleaner for users who prefer it that way. In Portuguese (and probably other languages as well), the main titles (Home, Search, Notes, etc.) are not as concise as in English, but are much longer and take up more space.
• The ability to "Add to Quick Access Toolbar" the options that the user uses most. The new bar made many hidden tools more accessible but made those that were visible and accessed with one click more difficult to access, now requiring two clicks (Insight, Interlinear, Summarization, Auto Translation, etc.). It’s a gain on one side but a loss on the other.
• I often confuse the Favorites option (in the Home tab) with the Favorites tool (in the "Application Toolbar"). The icon is the same, but they serve different functions. I believe they need better differentiation.
• I now wonder if it would be better to also add the icons from the "Application Toolbar" Left/Top: Documents, Guides, and Tools, to the Toolbar. Since everything is in the Toolbar, I don't see the point of having these other functions on the "Application Toolbar" Left/Top. Also, the Factbook is redundant, appearing in both bars. In fact, I think there are too many bars in Logos, and they need to be streamlined to make the program cleaner and, more importantly, to save space for what matters most—Bibles and books. I left Feedback (link) about this earlier this year.

Indeed, I am liking the Toolbar, but it still needs a good amount of refinement and customization options to make it easier for power users (as well as for novice users).

MJ. Smith said:

The table of contents, favorites, and history are grouped together by the dividing line following history. This causes the user to think of the group as the left sidebar group. However, the styling of history is that of a popup. Shouldn't it also be formatted as a sidebar?

I agree that having history open a left sidebar would feel more intuitive. In addition, it would create additional space to more comfortably navigate.

MJ. Smith said:

I believe they are a single tool, one a subset of the other.

Thank you; you're right. I hadn't tested this thoroughly enough. Everything I do currently syncs in "both" favorites menus. It looks like my problem has to do with the fact that my previous favorites weren't incorporated into the toolbar favorites menu. Ideally when the toolbar is released, the new favorites menu should pull the resources that are already present in the old favorites menu. Also, as Anderson mentioned, consolidation will likely be needed eventually to minimize some of the redundancy in the toolbars. 

Aaron Hamilton said:

Ok, this is the last post I'm going to make about this, but the more I look into the new toolbar favorites menu, the more confused I get. The favorites menu appears to change whenever I switch resources, only reflecting the changes I made when I had that resource open. When I switch resources, it shows a new favorites menu that only reflects the changes I make while that resource is open, etc. The quick links, however, are uniform throughout. This behavior has me quite confused.

The favorites menu in the new toolbar only shows you the favorites that can be found in that resource. It's a resource-specific subset of the total list. (It took me a while to figure that out too... I even posted a bug report earlier in this thread before realizing what was going on.)