User Interface Feedback Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
persistently available "home" button
I think I've mentioned this before somewhere, but just in case, I'd like to request a shortcut that's always easily available that will take you back to the "top" of the app from any context. You could label the button "home" or "new search." The idea is that, no matter how many levels deep you are in examining a word's characters other words, etc., you never have to hit the back button like six times to get out of it once you're done just to start a new search. If such a shortcut can't be available 100% of the time, then as much as possible. A context menu item always available via long press, or an that's always one of the available ones when you press the menu button in any situation.
I think I've mentioned this before somewhere, but just in case, I'd like to request a shortcut that's always easily available that will take you back to the "top" of the app from any context. You could label the button "home" or "new search." The idea is that, no matter how many levels deep you are in examining a word's characters other words, etc., you never have to hit the back button like six times to get out of it once you're done just to start a new search. If such a shortcut can't be available 100% of the time, then as much as possible. A context menu item always available via long press, or an that's always one of the available ones when you press the menu button in any situation.
preserve the context when multitasking?
Regarding my above request for a universal "home" button, I'm able to achieve this functionality by switching to another app and then back to Pleco. But that's not the best solution. In fact, wouldn't it be better to preserve the context when switching back to Pleco? It's kind of frustrating to have to lose your place and be thrown back to the top of Pleco whenever you need to quickly take a note, check your email, etc. Is it possible to preserve Pleco's context when multitasking?
Regarding my above request for a universal "home" button, I'm able to achieve this functionality by switching to another app and then back to Pleco. But that's not the best solution. In fact, wouldn't it be better to preserve the context when switching back to Pleco? It's kind of frustrating to have to lose your place and be thrown back to the top of Pleco whenever you need to quickly take a note, check your email, etc. Is it possible to preserve Pleco's context when multitasking?
Re: persistently available "home" button
Would you mainly be looking for this in dictionary definition screens, or would you need it in flashcards / settings / etc too? It's easy to add this in the former (and a pretty good idea), so that's doable for Beta 7, but doing every screen would be harder since some of them don't have menus yet and others already have all 6 slots occupied.
It would be, yes - we actually designed it to work the current way because we thought it more important for people to be able to quickly look up words (go back into Pleco -> want to do whatever you were doing before), but it would probably be best if we added a separate launcher icon that always took you back to the dictionary and had the main app icon resume whatever you were doing before - we'll see about changing that in an update.
JimmyTheSaint said:
Would you mainly be looking for this in dictionary definition screens, or would you need it in flashcards / settings / etc too? It's easy to add this in the former (and a pretty good idea), so that's doable for Beta 7, but doing every screen would be harder since some of them don't have menus yet and others already have all 6 slots occupied.
JimmyTheSaint said:
It would be, yes - we actually designed it to work the current way because we thought it more important for people to be able to quickly look up words (go back into Pleco -> want to do whatever you were doing before), but it would probably be best if we added a separate launcher icon that always took you back to the dictionary and had the main app icon resume whatever you were doing before - we'll see about changing that in an update.
Actually, I'd like a "home" button to be available in every context, so I guess that means that I'm asking for an implementation of that puts it in as many places as possible, whether as the "search for headword" button or something else. In fact, it would be nice if "search for headword" always presented a blank text box. I guess there's a use for "search for headword" that grabs the current selection (though I've never done it), so that's why I call my request a "home" button.
As for switching to and from the app, there's two different working modes: if you're launching Pleco after a substantial period of time away from it, I would think you're always going to want it to open to a new lookup. But if you're in a busy Pleco session, you're inevitably still going to want to periodically do stuff on other parts of your phone. In that case, you're going to want Pleco to preserve the context. I would think all users find themselves in both modes over the course of time. So I guess I'm asking for a setting that lets the user choose which mode they prefer to be the dominant one. Personally, if I had the desired universal "home" button described above, I'd surely always have Pleco preserve the context. I mean, even if quite a while later I launched Pleco to a now-confusing context, there'd be the home button to abort that context and shortcut to the top.
As for switching to and from the app, there's two different working modes: if you're launching Pleco after a substantial period of time away from it, I would think you're always going to want it to open to a new lookup. But if you're in a busy Pleco session, you're inevitably still going to want to periodically do stuff on other parts of your phone. In that case, you're going to want Pleco to preserve the context. I would think all users find themselves in both modes over the course of time. So I guess I'm asking for a setting that lets the user choose which mode they prefer to be the dominant one. Personally, if I had the desired universal "home" button described above, I'd surely always have Pleco preserve the context. I mean, even if quite a while later I launched Pleco to a now-confusing context, there'd be the home button to abort that context and shortcut to the top.
JimmyTheSaint said:
Well that may have to wait, but we can probably get "Home" in the definition screen at least.
JimmyTheSaint said:
That would be ideal, but actually it's really tricky to have that sort of flexibility in an Android app - activities are hard-coded to use a particular launch style (clear the context or don't) and overriding it requires a ton of hacking (have to direct all launch requests through a third "dispatcher" kind of activity that figures out what the user wanted to do and does it). And the extremely-important-to-many-users "search for clipboard on open" feature can easily be disrupted by a change like this, which is why we can't risk altering it for the first official release.
Supaiku said:Will you guys offer any different color schemes - like themes - for pleco? Maybe like an "Autumn", "Cool (colors)", "Alien" etc...? Not really that important, just curious
Since we already have a built-in color picker we'll probably let people make up their own schemes instead - you never know what unusual requirements someone might have (severe color-blindness, high contrast, etc) or what color theme for their status bar / vendor-customized UI controls / etc they might want to coordinate with.
mikelove said:Supaiku said:Will you guys offer any different color schemes - like themes - for pleco? Maybe like an "Autumn", "Cool (colors)", "Alien" etc...? Not really that important, just curious
Since we already have a built-in color picker we'll probably let people make up their own schemes instead - you never know what unusual requirements someone might have (severe color-blindness, high contrast, etc) or what color theme for their status bar / vendor-customized UI controls / etc they might want to coordinate with.
It's so fun and pretty!
I posted some part bug, part UI, part feature requests in the Bugs thread. I hope that's ok that I lumped them all in there
I understand that the UI colour is fully customizable and everything but it'd nice to be able to save them into profiles so I can switch between my favourites on the fly. This way, you can also make a few other default colour schemes that come ready with the app, but let people customize them if they want to too.mikelove said:Supaiku said:Will you guys offer any different color schemes - like themes - for pleco? Maybe like an "Autumn", "Cool (colors)", "Alien" etc...? Not really that important, just curious
Since we already have a built-in color picker we'll probably let people make up their own schemes instead - you never know what unusual requirements someone might have (severe color-blindness, high contrast, etc) or what color theme for their status bar / vendor-customized UI controls / etc they might want to coordinate with.
new home button?
oh, hey, I've been on such an auto-pilot with the way I use Pleco that I just noticed a "home" button available in several contexts. That's new, right? Wonderful. Now that I know it's there, I expect to be using it a lot.
oh, hey, I've been on such an auto-pilot with the way I use Pleco that I just noticed a "home" button available in several contexts. That's new, right? Wonderful. Now that I know it's there, I expect to be using it a lot.
Re: new home button?
Yep, not quite ubiquitous yet but it's a start at least. The whole menu system is probably going to be replaced in 6 months anyway when ICS devices hit enough of a critical mass that we can re-orient our UI around Action Bars and other newly-introduced constructs, but in the meantime we certainly want to do what we can to streamline things.
JimmyTheSaint said:
Yep, not quite ubiquitous yet but it's a start at least. The whole menu system is probably going to be replaced in 6 months anyway when ICS devices hit enough of a critical mass that we can re-orient our UI around Action Bars and other newly-introduced constructs, but in the meantime we certainly want to do what we can to streamline things.
It appears that "search pinyin" gives nearly the same behavior as "home," the only difference being what gets loaded into the search box, right? If that's the case, then I guess always having at least one of the two gives the basic desired "return to top" effect. Incidentally, in my case, when searching Chinese, I only ever use pinyin. I hadn't been using the "search pinyin" button when I first requested a home button because I didn't realize the function of "search pinyin." I feel it could well be labeled "home," but regardless of how it's labeled, if at least one of "search pinyin" or the present "home" were always available, that would effectively provide the desired shortcut back to the top. If I had to choose what gets loaded into the search box, I think I'd prefer it be empty every time I return "home."
Are there any plans to add search to the reader?
Please add to enhancement list (but it's OK if you just do it now in your copious spare time - haha):
When I press the "+" to add a card to flashcard, currently it shows the category added. What I want to suggest is:
I'd also like to see the configuration settings for stroke add-on to be a separate item, instead of buried under dictionary. Maybe that's just me... :shock:
When I press the "+" to add a card to flashcard, currently it shows the category added. What I want to suggest is:
- Allow configuring the amount of time to show the category, with a "tap" to immediately dismiss it. Example: I configure 5 seconds, but sometimes just "tap" to immediately get rid of it.
- Show complete category name AND all parents names, at least on a tablet. Perhaps a configuration to how many lines of parentage to show (for smaller screens)?
- Allow configuring the size of the font in the message. It's really a bit too small for me on the tablet.
I'd also like to see the configuration settings for stroke add-on to be a separate item, instead of buried under dictionary. Maybe that's just me... :shock:
stephanhodges said:
The first one would actually be rather tricky (those Android "Toast" notification messages aren't really very customizable) but the second one is certainly doable and the third might be as well.
stephanhodges said:
That one I'm not so sure about - I suppose the question is whether people are likely to look for stroke order settings under the dictionary or not. If we get a lot of emails asking how to change this then it might make sense to give it its own screen, but we sort of do things that way on iOS with the "Panels" screen and people find it very confusing.