GLO Beta: Rearranged annotations and notes

[mevans]

I don't like the rearrangement of annotation tools in the beta. I use GLO every day for study. The existing arrangement works fairly well. I find the new effort requires much more mouse travel and mouse clicks to accomplish things.

The annotation bar used to be on the left side and moved to where your annotation was. It was a short mouse distance to interact with it. Now it's at the bottom of the page. And if you have a tall window, it's even worse. It's a long distance to travel. And it sits on top of text, rather than to the left, where it's out of the way.

Also, annotations are inline instead of on the right sidebar. I really want to see my annotations as I'm reading, I can glance at the right sidebar and see what notes I've made and what other things the church has provided. Now I have to click to see. Please put them back on the right sidebar. We can now resize the right sidebar, which makes it easier to review when you have long annotations.

Perhaps the right sidebar is more mouse travel than the inline annotation, but I find problems having it inline. It seems like more mouse clicks and mouse travel to add comments, add labels, add notebooks, etc. The inline comments also get in the way of me trying to read the text. When it's on the right sidebar, it's quick and easy to glace to the right and see annotations and decide if I want to interact with them. When they're inline, I have to click to see the annotation.

[barkeraj]

I appreciate all the feedback!

The current beta is updating of a lot of behind the scenes things as well as some of the UI changes you have mentioned. It is not the full version we will end up with. Some of the things you call out will hopefully make more sense as we get a few more things in place in the coming weeks.

As with any change, opinions will be all over the place. We have some feedback that match yours of dislike of some changes and others that absolutely love those changes. We are gathering the feedback, fixing obvious bugs, and giving appropriate time to things that fall into the opinion category so that we don't react too quickly to every complaint or praise.

When they're inline, I have to click to see the annotation

Presuming they will remain inline, would you want some kind of way to inject all annotations so you don't have to click each one? That isn't currently in our list for the future, but it has been mentioned a few times over the development of the site. That would likely collide with your concern of it getting in the way of trying to read the text, so it is definitely a balancing act.

[mevans]

At first I thought I would like the inline stuff, but after using it, I've found that so far, I don't like it that much.

Presuming they will remain inline, would you want some kind of way to inject all annotations so you don't have to click each one? That isn't currently in our list for the future, but it has been mentioned a few times over the development of the site. That would likely collide with your concern of it getting in the way of trying to read the text, so it is definitely a balancing act.

If I had to live with the inline stuff, a "show all" button might be helpful. I often times want to see which tags I have applied, if it's in a notebook, and if I've added any commentary. I don't use study sets, so I'm not sure how that feature fits into the puzzle. Perhaps give the inline annotations a slight indent so that it's visually separate from the main body of text I'm reading. That might make it easier to visually skip if I'm not interested in my notes at the moment.

[barkeraj]

Thanks for the additional thoughts!