Hiding Books & Library Needs Fixing
It would be a big improvement in the software to make it much simpler to hide books from one's library. It is absurd for it to be so unintuitive. Must have been designed by an engineer. With libraries growing to thousands of books, controlling clutter is a problem. Library management needs some attention.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley
Comments
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Michael Childs said:
It would be a big improvement in the software to make it much simpler to hide books from one's library.
Do you mean on mobile, desktop, or both?
Michael Childs said:With libraries growing to thousands of books, controlling clutter is a problem. Library management needs some attention.
+1 [:S]
Personally, I wish there was a way to "hide" resources without deleting them. Also, it would be nice to have the option to have some books hidden on one device, but not another. For example, I have "purchased" a number of fiction titles (mostly freebies) through Vyrso. I want those on my iPad, but NOT on my desktop. When you use the "hidden" book feature (a misnomer) in L4/L5, it deletes them from mobile as well.
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alabama24 said:Michael Childs said:
It would be a big improvement in the software to make it much simpler to hide books from one's library.
Do you mean on mobile, desktop, or both?
Michael Childs said:With libraries growing to thousands of books, controlling clutter is a problem. Library management needs some attention.
+1
Personally, I wish there was a way to "hide" resources without deleting them. Also, it would be nice to have the option to have some books hidden on one device, but not another. For example, I have "purchased" a number of fiction titles (mostly freebies) through Vyrso. I want those on my iPad, but NOT on my desktop. When you use the "hidden" book feature (a misnomer) in L4/L5, it deletes them from mobile as well.
I really mean on both the mobile and the desktop. Hate to sound like a whiner, but Logos is too good a Bible program to have such terrible unintuitive Library management process. This would not seem like something too hard to fix. It is a no brainer, unlike some of the other things that I have whined about.
And your point is well taken about needing to hide books on the desktop, but not on the iPad. That is common sense. I only fuss because I love Logos.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0 -
Experience has taught us that people forget what they've done, and 'hiding' something is the easiest thing to forget -- because it's hidden. (Profound, I know... <smile>)
We really don't like offering 'hide' support, because the easier it is, the more inevitably we will get a call two years later asking 'Where is this resource I know I purchased, that someone just mentioned on the forums and I want to read?'
With that said... I'm open to your input.
One step we've taken is to offer a collection picker in the Library view. So you could tag everything you want to 'hide' with the tag 'hide', or everything you use frequently with the tag 'important', and then the automatic collection "mytag:important" is just your favorite books, and a quick collection for things that aren't mytag:hide would be everything you don't want hidden, etc.
This seemed to us like a more powerful, and more flexible, system than a binary "Hidden/shown" feature, and it allows you to have multiple 'levels' of importance, and to work with whatever sub-collection you like.
In the future, we'll probably extend the 'Download to mobile' control to the desktop, too, so you can have fine-grained control over which resources are on which laptop/desktop/mobile device.
I'm open to other suggestions, though... but please make sure 'easy to hide' suggestions (like right-clicking on a resource and hiding it) are accompanied by 'easy to find that thing I hid' suggestions!
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Bob Pritchett said:
We really don't like offering 'hide' support, because the easier it is, the more inevitably we will get a call two years later asking 'Where is this resource I know I purchased, that someone just mentioned on the forums and I want to read?'
Bob, what about automatic "You own this resource, but you've hidden it" with instructions how to view it. You do it with "locked" unpurchased resources, why not do it with purchased resources?
The issue is not just cosmetic. It is not jut clutter visually, it also impedes performance. How many megabytes of "unwanted" books does an average user have? How many times per month does an average user have to reindex? Multiply it by a million users (that you claim to have) and you can see the magnitude of clutter.
Bob Pritchett said:In the future, we'll probably extend the 'Download to mobile' control to the desktop, too, so you can have fine-grained control over which resources are on which laptop/desktop/mobile device.
You are on the right track here. I believe, there needs to be a comprehensive overhaul to the Library management. Including "per device" libraries - be it desktop, laptop, tablet or phone, let users control what they have on their devices. "All or nothing" approach does not work anymore.
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Apart from hiding things (what I'd rather not do) it would be amazing if a feature was added which made two level organizing possible.
Looking at the Logos site it has a very clear overview of recourses for the base packages http://www.logos.com/basepackages-a-long?utm_expid=44062-30&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.logos.com%2F#bp-compare. It has two levels of ordening, first the type, we can do that in many ways and it makes me happy! the only thing to improve might be to make the bars of the tags a bit bigger and brighter, these make me sad :P. The second level is that some sets and series show as one recourse with in brackets the amount of volumes. For example: "Calvin's commentaries (46 vols.)". That is wonderful.Well if now this multivolume resources would be 'clickable' (is that a word?) and show what is inside when you click on them, that we be a great reliefe. Espacially when commentaries, Perseus (!) etc are all put in this way.
off course, when you do a search for "Joshua" I want only my commentaries on Joshua to appear and not all of them, but when possible they shuold be held together.
I belive this second level of ordening would make a big difference!
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Well if now this multivolume resources would be 'clickable' (is that a word?) and show what is inside when you click on them, that we be a great reliefe. Espacially when commentaries, Perseus (!) etc are all put in this way.
+1 [:)]
Bob Pritchett said:I'm open to other suggestions, though... but please make sure 'easy to hide' suggestions (like right-clicking on a resource and hiding it) are accompanied by 'easy to find that thing I hid' suggestions!
I have suggested this before, but I'll suggest it again: I would like the ability to actually "hide" resources, (and rename the current "hidden books" feature to "archive"). This would work like a reverse prioritization. In the library, you could have a checkbox to show/hide hidden resources (using my definition of "hide"). When you perform a search, all "hidden" books (again, with MY definition of "hidden") would be separated into a drop down folder. The benefit of this is that there may be books you would not use regularly (i.e. Perseus), and so you don't want them clogging up your search results, but you don't want to archive (the current version of "hidden books") them either!
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Bob Pritchett said:
Experience has taught us that people forget what they've done, and 'hiding' something is the easiest thing to forget -- because it's hidden. (Profound, I know... <smile>)
We really don't like offering 'hide' support, because the easier it is, the more inevitably we will get a call two years later asking 'Where is this resource I know I purchased, that someone just mentioned on the forums and I want to read?'
With that said... I'm open to your input.
Thanks for always listening, Bob. It seems obvious that if "hiding books" is made simpler, then there needs to also be a simple way to see "books I have hidden" and to unhide them. An "unhide everything option" might be needed.
I don't know about the software's performance, but I know my performance would be better if this was simpler.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0
