One piece of feedback comparing 4.0 vs the legacy version: I really miss the longer, full-screen-wide search bar at top of the screen. There are times I want to input a long string of words, or sometimes I use the iOS voice input to capture an entire sentence, but the short search bar makes it harder to see and navigate all of the words that were input. Is there any way we could have the same narrow long UI element just containing the search bar at the top instead of an abbreviated one constrained to the left pane? thx.
Search bar size
- Thread starter alanshi
- Start date
That would be dicey, I'm afraid - we'd have to rewrite a whole bunch of code in order to have a single navigation bar across the search and definition screens. Two easier changes that we could consider:
- Add an option to make the search panel take up a larger portion of the screen width (say, half).
- Add an option to have the search screen be full-width with the definition only showing up when you tap on a result, as on iPad.
Related to this, comparing my overall experience with the legacy UI, I think one of the things I missed the most about the UI stylings from before was the information density was higher. The search bar being wider let me easily see and enter a large number of words at once, which I use a fair bit, but I also increasingly notice that the new left search pane also reduces the information density because there are a lot of new UI elements (the Chinese | English tab takes up a number of pixels) and the result is that when I am using landscape orientation on my iPad, because the keyboard is often up (since I just entered a word), I can only see 1 matching entry and have to click again to dismiss and scroll. The older UI was much more compact, and comparing it head to head, I can see 3 entries in the search results with the keyboard up before I have to click to scroll, which I really liked.
The bounding boxes in the definition pane on the right give more contrast, but I also find those eat up pixels also reducing the information density. This is less of a problem, but also something I notice.
Sounds like this would be a fairly big change to get a more classic-styled UI, but FWIW, I really did like being able to see so much more information in the old UI. Thoughts?
The bounding boxes in the definition pane on the right give more contrast, but I also find those eat up pixels also reducing the information density. This is less of a problem, but also something I notice.
Sounds like this would be a fairly big change to get a more classic-styled UI, but FWIW, I really did like being able to see so much more information in the old UI. Thoughts?
Sorry for the slow reply. (was on vacation and then in a frantic rush to get my house ready to sell)
The "legacy search screen interface" option should get rid of both the Chinese tab and the header (which we need in order to work around an iOS bug with keyboard opening) - does that help matters any? You could also play around with the layout / font sizes in list entries to see if you can make those more compact, for example by reducing the maximum number of definition lines to just 1 like it is in 3.0.
Are there any other areas you notice that the use of space in that part is less efficient than before? Pulling them up on a test iPad just now they seem to be pretty much identical after changing those two settings, legacy search screen interface + maximum definition lines.
A more compact definition screen option without those margins/padding - more important for iPhone users, I suppose - is still under consideration; it would be an ugly hack but it's not hard to do on our end. A larger search bar would be a lot more work and probably only something I'd consider after a LOT of feedback in that direction post-4.0. (issues like this are part of why we're keeping the Legacy version around until we can figure out what we're missing in 4.0 that makes people want to keep using 3.0)
The "legacy search screen interface" option should get rid of both the Chinese tab and the header (which we need in order to work around an iOS bug with keyboard opening) - does that help matters any? You could also play around with the layout / font sizes in list entries to see if you can make those more compact, for example by reducing the maximum number of definition lines to just 1 like it is in 3.0.
Are there any other areas you notice that the use of space in that part is less efficient than before? Pulling them up on a test iPad just now they seem to be pretty much identical after changing those two settings, legacy search screen interface + maximum definition lines.
A more compact definition screen option without those margins/padding - more important for iPhone users, I suppose - is still under consideration; it would be an ugly hack but it's not hard to do on our end. A larger search bar would be a lot more work and probably only something I'd consider after a LOT of feedback in that direction post-4.0. (issues like this are part of why we're keeping the Legacy version around until we can figure out what we're missing in 4.0 that makes people want to keep using 3.0)
I tried the legacy search interface option and it gave me some screen real estate back but not enough. Is there a way to shorten the definitions on the search results to first line only? I swear I thought I saw that at one point, but can’t find it now. if I could do that it might be closer. Here are some screenshots for comparison.
At this point the screen usage being less efficient is my biggest obstacle with the new version. The search bar size being so tiny it really is a blocker for me to use the new version regularly. I almost always have at least a half dozen words or more that I am accumulating in the search bar for various reasons (often because I am learning a string of new words together). The new interface scrolls at just a few characters, and trying to add more gives me cursor problems, and is just too troublesome for me.
I realize this is a difficult problem to address, but without it, I really don’t think I could abandon the old version for my primary use cases.
At this point the screen usage being less efficient is my biggest obstacle with the new version. The search bar size being so tiny it really is a blocker for me to use the new version regularly. I almost always have at least a half dozen words or more that I am accumulating in the search bar for various reasons (often because I am learning a string of new words together). The new interface scrolls at just a few characters, and trying to add more gives me cursor problems, and is just too troublesome for me.
I realize this is a difficult problem to address, but without it, I really don’t think I could abandon the old version for my primary use cases.