v41 Feature Refinement: Book Toolbar Auto-hide and Quick-toggle Buttons

Adam Borries (Logos) · 2025-03-28T00:44:18+00:00

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We've heard your feedback about the new book toolbar, and we're making some incremental changes to improve the experience. Since we shipped the new dynamic toolbar last year, we've had a ton of great feedback. This has already led to several small improvements, like the interlinear keyboard shortcut and inline search navigation.

In version 41, we are addressing two more frequent pieces of feedback:

Prefer Minimize Toolbars

If you need more space on your screen to read your books' content, you could already click to collapse the button toolbar. If you want to save yourself that click, you can now set Prefer Minimize Toolbars to Yes in Program Settings. The button toolbar will now be hidden by default. If you click a toolbar tab to expand the button toolbar, it will stay open until you leave the panel.

Shift+click to Toggle

Many buttons have menus with both a toggle to turn the view setting on or off, and options to choose the precise settings it controls. You can now control the toggle state with a single Shift+Click, without having to open the menu.

Instead of requiring this to toggle:

You can now also use this:

We hope you enjoy this update, and we'll look forward to hearing how we can improve Logos even more.

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Comments

Sean T

One thing I'm curious about is if people re-configure these more than they turn them on/off. If on/off is the most common (which it feels like it is for me, at least), then I'd expect just a single click to toggle and a bit more effort needed to configure (maybe a split at the dropdown arrow you have to hover over and click). Shift-click is also nearly undiscoverable unless you show something to indicate it does something.

If the more common use case is actually changing all the knobs, then this makes perfect sense.

Either way, it's great to have a faster way to toggle these off - would be even better if I could get a key bind for each of these to toggle or a way to choose one as a temporary toggle. For instance, I have a request in for Factbook tags to consider allowing the option to have them visible only while shift is being held down to make them available for navigation without interfering with the text the whole time.

Aaron Hamilton

Shift-click is also nearly undiscoverable unless you show something to indicate it does something.

I agree. I'm not sure how best to promote this functionality, but it seems it would have to be communicated somewhere…

Adam Borries (Logos)

If on/off is the most common (which it feels like it is for me, at least), then I'd expect just a single click to toggle and a bit more effort needed to configure (maybe a split at the dropdown arrow you have to hover over and click).

This is a fair point. What we are talking about here is a tradeoff between frequency and discoverability. The new toolbar design has a strong bias towards discoverability of all the buttons and settings. Grouping them under tabs by function, giving each button a label, and seeing all the settings each time you click the button are all done in service of making those things transparent to the user (especially for the new user).

Shift-click is also nearly undiscoverable unless you show something to indicate it does something.

Also fair. Full transparency, part of the reason we added shift-click so late in the beta was that it was quick and easy technically, and we didn't want to wait until a later version to ship something the could help users. There's certainly still room for improvement, and we want to hear from you (y'all) what you think.

would be even better if I could get a key bind for each of these to toggle

Many of the buttons, especially on the View tab, already have keyboard shortcuts. You find those in the tooltips, or by opening the menu. Let us know if there's a particular one you'd like to see added.

… a temporary toggle. For instance, I have a request in for Factbook tags to consider allowing the option to have them visible only while shift is being held down to make them available for navigation without interfering with the text the whole time.

Interesting idea, thanks!

Adam Borries (Logos)

I'm not sure how best to promote this functionality, but it seems it would have to be communicated somewhere…

That's certainly the motivation for sharing here in the forums, and we'll certainly update our help documentation as well. If you have an idea how we could expose it in the UI, I'd be happy to hear it.

Sean T

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1364522#Comment_1364522

I guess from my perspective there's already a pretty standard way of doing that kind of thing in other apps via the split and dropdown arrow I mentioned above. Here's an example of it in action in Microsoft Word:

I went to a Microsoft developer conference years ago where they were discussing why they made the move to the Office ribbon they have today. Similar to your concerns, it was all about discoverability. Nearly 100% of the feature requests they were receiving were for features they already had. 😂 With all of their research, it looks like they still landed on determining that a dropdown like this was sufficient for that goal.

Aaron Hamilton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1364523#Comment_1364523

I think it would be helpful if there was a section within Help that clearly listed the various click-related actions that could be completed in combination with Ctrl and Shift. I'm not aware of any location where these actions are listed.

xnman

I like the idea.

GaoLu

There are a very few functions which are nearly universal and very frequently used—like turning interlinear on and off. That is a top-of-the-menu function. Would it just be possible…? (I am unable to lose hope) I suspect that not one Logos user alive would object.

xnman

I like the "shift-click" idea in the dynamic menu. Things like "Interlinear" is now a 2-click…. 1. Click on view….then 2. Shift-click on Interlinear. I think this is about as good as we're going to get unless Interlinear is promoted to being on the first tier of the dynamic menu bar. 😎

And I like the ability to hide the 2nd row of the dynamic tool bar. Saves "real estate". LOL

GaoLu

I was smilingly testing out the two-click interlinear method, only to discover that I had apparently made Logos mad at me. Locating the dynamic tool bar, I clicked on View (format, view tools? I got lucky/blessed on the second "discovery"). Alas, no Interlinear. Dynamic dynamite (δύναμις) was at work. Nada. Hmm. Back through the menu. I must have missed it. Crazy brain, not enough coffee? F1 for help…hmmm…I am doing everything properly but my Interlinear button is missing! Either Logos is mad at me personally, or I am going crazy (more likely), or something is broken.

Turns out I am going crazy! Logos is off the hook. My Spanish NTV has no Interlinear. Dynamic toolbar dynamite has lots of δύναμις and has done its job well.

Due to my being a little crazy, I wonder if the dynamic toolbar has a little too much δύναμις? For folks like me, it might be nice to see Interlinear greyed out. But then I might wonder why it was grey. So, there is that.

xnman

@GaoLu Forgive me but I got a chuckle out of your post. Sorry. In Windows 11, when I am in my trusty ole NKJV (the ones the apostles carried in the hip pocket of their Levis 😁) I don't have to go to the dynamic menu do find the Interlinear. I just do "Contol -I " and my Interlinear is there. Another "Control -I" and I'm back in English.

Don't know about Apple other than maybe it's "Cmd-I"???

Hope that works for you.

Yasmin Stephen

I don't have to go to the dynamic menu do find the Interlinear. I just do "Contol -I " and my Interlinear is there. Another "Control -I" and I'm back in English.

One of my favorite things in the dynamic toolbar 👍🏽

GaoLu

Yes, that is good. I am practicing over and over (Control-I) hoping that shortcut will stick. It's virtually instant too. Logos gets several Brownie Points for that.