Thoughts on the book menu

[forteller]

Hi. I have a few thoughts on the menu you can open from an open book. Would love to hear what you think about them :)

I want to start out by saying I am very happy with your work, and I'm sorry that I only come here with ideas, not any code. I only want to help out the way I know how, and these are not meant as any demands on your time and energy, only suggestions. I also understand that my intuitions might be completely wrong, I might not be the regular CrossInk user.

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Organization

I am impressed by how fast moving up and down trough the options are. But it's not instant, and so I think it's important that the options are sorted and organized in the best way according to what is most likely used the most. The top and bottom options in the list are the easiest to reach, as you just need one press on the Up or Down button to get to them. The next easiest to reach are the second option from the top and second from the bottom, and so on.

Here are my suggestions:

First tab

1. Book Options, Controls and probably also Auto Page Turn are all settings type options, and probably changed/used infrequently. For both of these reasons I think these options should be moved to the tab with the cogwheel (an icon that symbolizes "settings" to me).
2. I don't believe people manually marks books as finished often enough for this option to be one of the two most easy options to get to. I would either move this to the middle of the first tab, or also move this to the Settings tab. It might not be a classical setting, but you do set the status of the book, and I think it should not take up this prime real estate.
3. I think that if you want to look at reading stats, you'd much rather look at that from the main menu on the home page rather than open the book and go to its menu. I see two scenarios where people want to use this option, though:

• 1. You might want to look back at your stats for a previously read book. To do this you have to open the book anyway, and then why not open the stats from the book menu instead of from the main menu? This could be solved by letting you see each books stats from the list of books I ask for here: List the name of all read books in Stats #448 and/or by letting you see a books stats from the pop-up options when you long press Open on a book in Browse or Recent Books.
• 2. You might want to look at the stats while reading a book. This is of course totally valid. But how often do people do this?

Based on this I would suggest also moving Reading Stats to either in the middle of the first tab or to the Settings tab. This is obviously not a setting, so I don't really find that solution completely satisfying. This is just based off of what I think should be done less accessible so that other things become more accessible.

Second tab

This tab's symbol suggest that these options are all about remembering specific things in the book and getting back to them later. Create Clipping, Add Bookmark and Take Screenshot obviously belongs here. Less obviously Sync Progress, Nearby Position Sync and Show page as QR also kinda belongs here. Send to Nearby Device does not seem to belong here.

4. Show page as QR (shouldn't page be capitalized here, btw?) seems to me to be a very niche feature, that does not belong in one of the two most easily accessible positions on this tab.
5. Send to Nearby Device also seems like something most people would use very seldom. Seldom enough to move from this tab to the Settings tab? It's not a setting, but it also does not seem to belong on this tab either, so…
6. Should Sync Progress be moved to the main menu, at the home screen? Where there could be a new option: Sync only current book or Sync all books?

New tab: Sharing

I would suggest a new tab, between the second and third, for all Sharing and syncing related issues. It could use the Share icon. I would move Send to Nearby Device, Show page as QR, Sync Progress and Nearby Position Sync to this tab.

Merge tabs?

If you do all of this you'll end up with 4-6 options in the first tab (depending on what you do with Reading Stats and Mark as Finished), and only 3 options in the second tab (clipping, bookmark, screenshot). Some people might argue then that these two tabs would be better merged. I really don't know what I think about that. The order of the options would at least have to be thought trough. Some important things could get too hard to reach, but also easier to find?

Other stuff

7. If I open any of the three options on the third tab and press Back, I'm taken all the way out of the book and back to the home page. This seems like a bug.
8. Under Book Options there should be a way to reset to the default book options that you've set under Settings, I think?
9. Holding Up or Down in Settings switches between the top tabs. This is great, but does not work in the book menu. Would love to have this be a consistent feature everywhere it fits :)
10. I also have thoughts on what I think would be a really cool and novel way of using the white space at the bottom of the first tab. But I'll spare you the trouble of all that, for now… 😅

Thank you again so much for all you do, and for listening! I know this is a lot, so don't feel any pressure to answer right away!

[forteller]

Oh, sorry, one more thing:

I mostly do not need the Sunlight Fading Fix, so I have this turned off almost always. But then sometimes I start reading a book and notice that I need it. So to me, the most logical place to have this option is in the book menu. Since it's a setting, I'd prefer to have it in the third tab, the cogwheel.

Thanks again! :)

[anjgia]

Oh this is cool, yeah I totally agree with you with mostly all parts, especially the "other stuff" notes. But I think if we are to cater to everyone's preferences of where things should be, something like cpr-vcodex's settings could work (there's a setting there where users can rearrange how their home icons appear and also arrange how the apps in the "apps" list appear.)

There's also a setting there where users can choose where things are located, either in the "home" screen or the "apps" list, but in this one, maybe the option to "hide" book menus would be useful for users to hide menus they don't use (for example, for me, i don't really use the ones you mentioned that could be placed in the share tab.)

That's all I have:)) Also truly love the work they've done for CrossInk,, would love to see how this'll turn out^^

[forteller]

Thank you! I appreciate your thoughts on the matter! I personally love to have options for everything 😅 but I am wary of asking for that, because I know it can cause a lot of work for the devs, and also be used by very few people. That's why I'd rather give my opinions on a better default placement of options than to ask for a way to move things around myself :)

[uxjulia]

What people use and don't use frequently is very subjective so whatever order I end up putting the menu items in, someone is going to say it could be improved. Since Crossink is a personal fork, I generally design the UI in a manner that makes sense to me. I use book options and auto page turn very frequently. I'm constantly changing my font choice, line spacing, size, etc. while reading, and actually having to press down past the dictionary lookup has been annoying to me lol, but I can see how people may use dictionary lookup more often than book options (for me that's not the case). I also listen to audiobooks a lot so I'll have auto page turn on while I do other things so that I can easily get right back to where I am in the book.

I can see moving "Mark as Finished" to the 3rd settings gear tab as valid, since this would only happen once during the lifetime of the book. I can also see value in moving Controls there too.

I can't presume to know how people look at their reading stats, but given reading stats was one of the reasons I even created Crossink, I think it makes sense on the first tab.

The second tab is meant to hold all the things that can get you back to a certain place in a book, either from a literal position like a bookmark, or through interesting clippings/highlights, or by syncing your position with another device. QR code shows the current page as text. I've heard people use this to save the text like a clipping or to use it to quickly search something on their phone. Since it extracts a specific text from a location in the book, it's kind of like a clipping so felt fitting here. Send to Nearby Device is in this tab because it's conceptually the same idea as "I want to sync my position on two devices". Users wanting to read on two devices would use Send to Nearby Device and then later possibly Nearby Position Sync. So this tab is all related to position/text within a book.

For number 7, can you open an issue, otherwise I'll lose track of this.

To reset book options, from recent books or file browser, press and hold to see the option. I put it there to not clutter the in-reader menu since this shouldn't be happening often.

Holding Up or Down in Settings switches between the top tabs. This is great, but does not work in the book menu. Would love to have this be a consistent feature everywhere it fits :)

I didn't even know this was possible lol

[OzzyMcBean]

I totally agree! I came on here to suggest moving book options back to the top again! :'D It's a little annoying having to go so far down to it now, but it's definitely a minor inconvenience compared to using the stock firmware and I'm still super grateful for all the work you've done!

[OzzyMcBean]

Book options is by far my most used setting! It is handy having that one further up the list when trying new fonts and formatting options.