FEEDBACK WANTED: New Resource Toolbar on Desktop
Comments
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BTW . do you have a link to documentation describing what should happen in this situation?
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Just watched the webinar on ver 39.0 and what is coming in ver 40. Still no mention of fixing the dynamic toolbar. Am I missing something here? I have used it and used it and still abhor the amount of clicks it takes me to get what I need.
Solid Deo Gloria,
Justin Walker
1689 Media1 -
At this point many/most have already voiced their thoughts, so it's just a matter of sitting tight with hope high and fingers crossed.
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I agree with Justin Walker, it would appear LOGOS is not listening to the volume of users who have clearly said, "The 'Dynamic Toolbar' is a total catastrophe." It requires far to many clicks to get common tasks done. It is clumsy, distracting, and highly unproductive. The "Dynamic Toolbar" is a radical step backwards.
My only hope is that LOGOS will listen when enough users cancel their subscription simply because that is the only way to revert back to the original toolbar. What a sad solution.
LOGOS why ask for our opinion (the purpose of this particular blog LOGOS created - now 27 pages of complaints) if you are not going to listen to your customers?3 -
Now, now. Each month Faithlife gives me an extra $10 or so, to not use that awful menu (not counting all the libraries I'm not buying).
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Being a non-subscriber, you don't get a vote 🤐 Just kidding. However, the new menu is not awful nor is it perfect. My first reaction was negative but I quickly learned to appreciate what it did well and that, for me, what it does poorly on does not matter. And if we were to remove all the posts of individuals repeating themselves, our perception of the dept of dislike would be radically revised. For myself, I see the merging of options from the task bar and the panel menu as a major improvement that enhances the discoverability of features. In general, I find the compactness of the menu makes it faster for me (I am primarily mouse driven). As for the loss of the toggle capability on the Interlinear and similar features, I suspect that the majority of users are like myself - they set it once per layout and rarely change it. As for statistics for evidence - I have none.
However, I do not equate "Logos has not changed it the way I want" with "Logos isn't listening" - and I withhold judgment on the keyboard shortcut solution to the toggle issue as I rarely use it …okay, I tried it once. I will, admit with a bit of embarrassment, that I have pretty much quit reading the dynamic resource toolbar complaints - it takes a new name in the fray to get my attention. Unfortunately, this means that recent reports of actual bugs or unfortunate design flaws that have been uncovered after people have adjusted to it, have not gotten the attention from me that they deserve,
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 don't recall ever having a 'sleepless night', but I'm sure, I'd have one, if that menu appeared. My gorgeous layout would be devastated. And the visionary nightmares are just too fearsome to even imagine.
More seriously, the problem occurred, when they equated app.logos.com usability (initial test) with desktop usability. By the time they got to the latter, it was too late.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Being quite out-spoken against it (still against it BTW) and having given in to give the LFL a one time chance to keep me as a customer - which was easier knowing that the toolbar would be forced on me eventually anyway, whether I subscribed or not…
I find the following:
Like I have said in the past - the look and feel are well done….
As a user I care less about 'look' and more about efficiency (IMHO, the new toolbar fails in this area)
The missing single click toggles are still frustrating and keyboard shortcuts are a poor 'fix'
The failure of the secondary toolbar to remember it being closed on each resource is very annoying
My concern of having to change my layouts wound up not being as necessary as originally thought
The 'NEW' label/link/button is ridiculous for experienced users or those who know how to navigate the Forums - four weeks is four weeks too long - there needs to be an option to get rid of it without waiting.
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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The main Toolbar allows you to select whether you want to display an icon or a resource name. Something like this option would be great for the Resource Toolbar.
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M.J. Smith, if the Resource Toolbar was actually intended to help separate the sheep from the goats, it may be doing a better job than anticipated.
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Lots of improvements in this tool bar. But for goodness sake, please restore the simple toggle for the interlinear. Frustration arises when one has to hunt for it, make it easily accessible by putting the toggle button back.
Thanks!
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I completely agree with Dean here, PLEASE restore the simple toggle for the interlinear. It would make it so much easier and faster.
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Hi Dean and Paul
Just checking if you know about the keyboard shortcuts to toggle the interlinears:
- Ctrl/Cmd-I for the inline interlinear
- Ctrl/Cmd-Shft-R for the reverse interlinear pane
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Yes, I know the keyboard shortcuts, and they are great for keyboard users, but I am more of a mouse guy (lol). I find using it is much faster except looking for a button (even if you know where it is it's a minimum of 3 clicks) that was and could be much more convenient. But thanks for the comeback!
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I'm sorry I haven't been as active in this thread as I intended. We've been reading all your posts, and we discuss this thread and other feedback we get on the dynamic toolbar frequently.
But, an update from me is overdue, so let me try and be as transparent as possible as to where our thinking is.
First, change is hard, especially when you've been used to the old way for years. Maybe you've built layouts that struggle to cope with the extra height of the dynamic toolbar. Maybe there are certain features on the toolbar that you use frequently that used to take one click and now take three or four. Maybe you memorized where your favorite visual filter was on the old toolbar, and now you can't even remember whether it's on View or Formatting. We get all that. And we're sorry for moving your cheese. We don't take those decisions lightly, especially on something as fundamental as this. We spent 18 months researching, designing, and building the dynamic toolbar — more, I think, than any other feature we launched last October. Much of that time was spent learning how people currently interacted with the toolbar because it mattered to us that our changes would be disruptive to some people's study, and we wanted to mitigate that as much as possible.
Second, the dynamic toolbar is here to stay. I know that will displease some of you who were happy with the old minimalistic toolbar. It certainly had some advantages, not least the amount of space it took up. But it had become hopelessly overwhelming for new users and even many experienced users. For their sake, we needed to change, and we aren't going back.
Third, the "old" toolbar will eventually disappear for all users, very likely this year. We can't maintain two entirely different systems indefinitely, and removing the old toolbar will ensure our entire focus will be on making the dynamic toolbar work for everyone.
Fourth, we've made around a dozen small improvements to the dynamic toolbar since it launched in version 37. Two are worth mentioning specifically. First, we added a keyboard shortcut to turn the interlinear on and off. That toggle was the one that had most extra clicks, and was also one which a small number of users used extremely frequently. Second, we made some improvements to inline search, so you didn't have to switch tabs to navigate.
Fifth, we're improving the accessibility of the dynamic toolbar, and those improvements should come in v40 and v41. This should make the dynamic toolbar much more usable than the old toolbar for blind and partially-sighted users.
Sixth, we're planning to add a prefer minimized Program Setting, hopefully in v41 (but it may be later). When this setting is toggled on, two things will happen. Whenever a panel is opened, the dynamic toolbar will be minimized. Whenever a panel is no longer active, the dynamic toolbar will automatically minimize. (By "minimized", I mean that you'll see the toolbar's tabs, but not the second row that contains all the buttons and menus.) You'll be able to unminimize any toolbar by clicking on a tab. It will stay in that state until manually minimized or until you select another panel. We hope this improvement will help users for whom vertical space is key.
But, you might say, even with those improvements, my Logos experience is still worse! Our experience has been that many people find the dynamic toolbar really helps them, some people find that its pros and cons roughly balance, but a small number (thankfully a decreasing one) find their experience is worse. If that's the category you're in, then I'm sorry. I wish that wasn't the case, and I wish that all change was positive for absolutely everyone.
Unfortunately, that isn't always possible, and I have to take responsibility and admit that we've made the dynamic toolbar a little bit worse for a small number of people in order to make it a lot better for a much larger number of people. I wish we didn't have to make that tradeoff. We tried very hard to minimize the trade-off so it could be a win-win. But the unfortunately reality is that it has been disruptive for some — and if you're in that small number, I'm sorry. This sort of thing will hopefully happen extremely rarely, but no software can guarantee that every change is always better for 100% of users.
I'll leave you with a chart, which might help you to better understand our position. The chart shows the behavior of a those people who used Logos throughout 2024 and are now subscribers, and have "Send Feeback" set to "All". (Thanks, it really helps!). It shows how many people in that group toggled the interlinear display on or off. I'm using this toggle as an example, because it's the one that we've had most complaints about, and therefore the one we've been most closely looking at.
You'll see that before version 37 was released in October, typically about 16% of those users toggled the interlinear on or off each month. But since version 37 was released, that's risen by nearly half, to around 24%. So, although this toggle can feel much less accessible to some of you, it's much more discoverable, which means it's being enjoyed and being useful to so many more people. That was always our goal, and that's why the dynamic toolbar is here to stay — and hopefully, to keep on improving.
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Excellent explanation, Mark. Thank you!
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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@Mark Barnes (Logos) Thank you for the detailed explanation. One quick suggestion for a possible improvement that would possibly help. Microsoft Word has a Quick Access toolbar where you can add icons for quick access to to frequently used commands. Why not add the equivalent to Logos?
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Prefer Minimized Setting in v 41 sounds very good to me.
That will make life in Logos much better, so far as I'm concerned.
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I'm in the camp of those who prefer the new toolbar. And I really appreciate your post, Mark. Excellent.
I'm also excited about the positive changes set to come to the dynamic toolbar. The prefer minimized setting sounds like a fantastic solution to a commonly expressed complaint. I can't wait! (Though I'm not even sure if I'll use it sometimes/always/never, but so glad to hear it's coming nonetheless.)
I'm still one to push for change, because why not make good, better? It was expressed by a Logos team member in this thread that eliminating words from the toolbar and just having icons was "doable." This is another setting I would love to see, because I dread the "More" tab (in an all-icon setting, "More" could be represented by a double-down arrow like in the 2nd row) and like to push it as far away as possible as my panels multiply and shrink in size. I also like uniformity vs having some icons in the second row with words and some without. I think both rows of the dynamic toolbar could function perfectly well with icons, and I would love to have this option.
Thx for the update. Much appreciated!
Edit: I like how features on the toolbar are easier to turn on and off in v40 Beta (no more aiming for that tiny oval - YES!!). I think this also will be a very positive change and makes me miss the on/off buttons of the old toolbar a little (ok…a lot) less.
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I appreciate finally having an update. It is disappointing to see some of it but I am too invested to not use the software. As one dead set against the way the new toolbar works, I will put up with my dislike if it is actually being used by more people to dig deeper into the word. I may even cheer that fact a bit, although quietly and in secret as I lament the days of the old easy toolbar. 🤣
The "prefer minimized" is going to be helpful and the sooner the better on its release. I also like Steven MacDonold's suggestion above for the quick access. That might keep those of us who are clicking much more than we like to decrease that a bit for the vast majority of our needs.
Thanks again for the update.
Justin Walker
Solid Deo Gloria,
Justin Walker
1689 Media1 -
Yes, icons that show the text of what they represent would be best of both.
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Agree👍(v 38 would have been better)
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This would be great. I love customizability for quick access.
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Another in the list of minor improvements for the dynamic toolbar can be found in today's v40 Beta 1: For toggle menus like Interlinear and Reformat, clicking anywhere in the header will toggle the feature - you don't need to get your cursor on the exact spot of the toggle. I know it's small change, but we hope that can make it even a little bit easier to toggle features like interlinears.
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For me, this is no small change. Going from a nice fat toggle button to a tiny oval buried in the corner of a dropdown menu was the #1 thing I disliked about the toolbar change. This change feels to me like a glimmer of sunshine cresting over the hill at the break of dawn. The future is bright!
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Do you mean having the text of what the icon represents show in a pop-up as one hovers over the icon? I could see how that would be useful.
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If you narrow the panel so there is no room for the labels, the text labels will disappear, but the hover tips will remain. Steven and others suggest there should be a setting whereby the labels will disappear even when there would be room to show them.
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Yes :-)
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Yes! That would work :-)
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People complain about almost everything. How about we stop using the program, go back 25 years, and see the difficulty of getting a Surman together? You can find everything in books. I think Logos is fantastic.
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@Steven MacDonald I think there may be a bit of confusion here (at least on my end). After checking (interesting, the details one misses when one doesn't look closely), the pop-up text already exists, so I don't see that anything would need to change except for having an icon-only setting. I think this would be a great feature!
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No … people complain about what bothers them. It doesn't bother you. So, it shouldn't bother anyone, right?
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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These are discussion forums. We discuss what works and what doesn't work as well as what we like and don't like all the while trying to be respectful to one another. This is feedback for Logos and has been valuable in moving it forward. We all have different ways of working and finding something that can come close to satisfying and providing flexibility for different workflows is one of those goals.
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Or go back 25 years and hang out in the Newsgroups by himself, if he doesn't want to read "complaints" LOL
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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I have difficulty deciding if a function is under View or Formatting and then not finding it in either. Then I realised that I was missing VF's because I did not recognise the icon. Factbook icon is Ok, the VF icon is undistinguished.
But I just hovered the Factbook icon and it said "Show Reading Plans"!!…
I would appreciate some customization as with the Shortcut bar i.e. Show Image and Show Label (w/out renaming).
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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I do NOT find the 'Dynamic Toolbar' a total catastrophe. It was different at first than the preceding version, but I have quickly come to like it. My two cents for free😊
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I appreciate the level of thought that has gone into this… I'm now a few months into using the new toolbar and unfortunately for me, I'm still finding it hard to find my way around. One thing which might help… The toolbar is now not the same between tools. So with books it is new but e.g. with the sermon editor it is still the old style. Can I assume it will be homogenised over time?
גַּם־חֹשֶׁךְ֮ לֹֽא־יַחְשִׁ֪יךְ מִ֫מֶּ֥ךָ וְ֭לַיְלָה כַּיּ֣וֹם יָאִ֑יר כַּ֝חֲשֵׁיכָ֗ה כָּאוֹרָֽה
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Actually, if you create, AND CLEARLY LABEL,shortcuts for everything on the dynamic toolbar, then those of us who find it deplorable can simply ignore it.
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Can we have the option for the old bar back? Everything takes so much longer. When I search I have to click search, search for a word, then if I need to use the interlinear I have to go to that tab, then I have to go somewhere else to change the font size, then I have to come back to the search tab to remove the search. Everything on one bar was so much faster. Were people really complaining about it? Who is employed at Logos that says "lets make this take more time." I appreciate their passion but I think they don't understand what logos is, a productivity suite to help people study, the more time we spend navigating menus the less time we are actually studying.
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Interesting in that one of the reasons I like the new layout is that it is more compact and faster to use despite the extra clicks. Do you use a mouse or some other device. It is on the mouse that I find it faster.
The problem that was being solved was not speed but the discoverability of features especially for newer users (some claim newer users are anyone without 2 decades experience - I'm kidding)
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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We've been chatting about the 'new menu' for quite some time. In normal app design, getting that much push back would suggest the design needs work. Saying it's 'discoverable' (which it is) just illustrates the poor previous designs (and the app, overall).
The funny part, is that the 'discovered' people now how to trudge thru the menus like the already-discovered people. I don't view that as a big win for FL. The obvious solution (for subscribers!!) is customized menus.
But Mark says it's for everybody … which means not me … turned my updates off earlier. Happy as a clam.
Now to be fair, I'm also on the 'Kindle Classic' on my Mac … Amazon did just the opposite of FL … hid everything. Yesterday, I downloaded a sample to 'Classic' and it refused it. And I refused the book. No need for their designs.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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I use a mouse, but more clicks just means more work. I understand having features easier to find, but I feel like you can do both. Even just allowing us to pin the stuff we want would go a long way. There's no reason I need to click search to bring up a search bar that takes the entire width of the screen. Let me put interlinear, zoom, and whatever else I want on the same bar with it. Right now the "home" bar has 5 options that takes up very little space. Search I have already stated is just a bar with a few selectors (waste of space and time), notes has 4. Formatting is probably the one that actually makes sense having it's own tab. View is egregious, should just be in with home.
That's not even to speak about how some of the options work. Interlinear used to work with a single click. Now you have to click to view, which isn't where I would expect it. Click on interlinear, toggle interlinear on, the choose my options or reverse interlinear. That's 4 or more click for something that could be one. It's just frustrating.
You mention showing new stuff to new users. I am a power user of logos and it took me 20 minutes after the update to find it originally. I don't think this layout really helps people discover stuff. Good tech design isn't "hide stuff behind more menus" it's make things more obvious and easier to use. I feel like it was 1 step forward and two steps sideways.
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I still don't see the 'easier to find' that keeps getting mentioned…. What was so hard to find with single clicks to toggle features… Single click to open the Tools, Documents, etc… Single click to open the resource menu with everything clearly listed….
The new tool bar looks better - in my use, it is not more efficient nor easier to find features…..
As for the suggestion that it has led to more users discovering more tools…. That may be true to an extent, BUT there is no way to measure if that tool was meant to be discovered or if it was 'discovered' searching through menus for the tool a user actually wanted to use….
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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I'm using my Scribe's new feature (quite extensive). They sent me an email telling me how it worked. It's all icon-driven … and intuitive. I just don't understand how Amazon makes intuitive UI's without complicated menus (for discovery). Boggles the mind.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Can't argue…. I'd also love to know why I have to look at the 'New' link for a month…. Or why the secondary toolbar won't remain closed until I open it….
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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They didn't redesign it for us. We're used to the old way. They redesigned it because new users struggled with the old design in their testing and analytics. They figure we'll learn and get used to it. But new users will find things more easily.
With every change in UI this will happen.
Dr. Kevin Purcell, Director of Missions
Brushy Mountain Baptist Association1 -
Did you read Mark Barnes' recent comment in this thread? In it, he made this statement:
we're planning to add a
prefer minimizedProgram Setting, hopefully in v41 (but it may be later). When this setting is toggled on, two things will happen. Whenever a panel is opened, the dynamic toolbar will be minimized. Whenever a panel is no longer active, the dynamic toolbar will automatically minimize. (By "minimized", I mean that you'll see the toolbar's tabs, but not the second row that contains all the buttons and menus.) You'll be able to unminimize any toolbar by clicking on a tab. It will stay in that state until manually minimized or until you select another panel. We hope this improvement will help users for whom vertical space is key.Do you expect that this setting will accomplish what you're looking for?
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Again - this may be a possibility… Or has Logos put forth better effort in training and guides for the new toolbar vs what was available with the old?
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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I take a wait and see with what is said…. If we see it and it works without more bugs - it very well may be an improvement. Until it is in real world use - we won't know for sure…
As a sidenote - how much development time is being invested into this toolbar to try to make up for its shortcomings, bugs and customer complaint feedback vs working on 'new' LFL features? (Or new features in general?) In some ways, yeah… responding to the feedback in some ways is nice, but is this stealing time away from other possibilities?
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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It would be great if there were some Customer Success webinars showing efficient ways to use the toolbars or, better yet, to work around them. I have attended a couple of webinars where the presenters stumbled through the toolbars, like the rest of us. Maybe one webinar for mouseketeers and another for keyboard jockeys. I'd like to see pros demonstrate how great and efficient the toolbars are. Showing wide panels and narrow panels.
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