[Steve H]

I'm starting this under Feature Requests rather than calling it a bug even though it seems to me that it was a design point that was incorrectly decided if it was considered at all. I am troubled that even in performance mode, the page slider (which I prefer always visible .. that way I also always see the page number in the same place) can cover music I need to see. I have been using the Android version and now use the iOS version also and, in this respect, I believe their behavior is the same. Yes, I do see that there are ways I can work around this by making manual adjustments but then I must consider if I am making an adjustment for one piece or for all pieces, rather than having a system that knows how to do the right thing. If I were a developer tasked with adjusting this, my quick fix for my situation would be to remove the title bar and move the page image to the top of the screen when entering performance mode, but there are many approaches.

I'm really enjoying this app, but having been a program developer for many years before I retired, I tend to look at things as they could be because once upon a time, it was under my control to change them!




With Brown versus Board of Education, we as a nation decided that segregated schooling violated the constitutional rights of black children. We promised that we would fix this wrong. And when it proved difficult, as we knew it would be, we said integration failed instead of the truth, which is that it was working but we decided it wasn't worth the trouble.
~ Nikole Hannah-Jones (1976 - )

[Zubersoft]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are asking for here. A system that "knows how to do the right thing" would imply that the software would happen to know at any given moment whether it's covering up the score, but most scores take up most of the screen, so how could it display the page slider without covering something up? If it has to cover something up, how does it know if the content is important or not? You said just to move it to the top of the screen - I don't see how that's any different than being at the bottom, as that would cover the top of most scores instead of the bottom. You said "Move the page image to the top of the screen" - what exactly does that mean? By default, pages are top aligned, so it already should be at the top of the screen. 

As a side note, your post has what looks to be very tiny text at the bottom along with an image that did not load. That doesn't seem to be part of your profile signature - why is that included with your post? I've seen situations in the past where a user's posts had text added to them due to malware, so I just want to rule this out.

Mike

[Steve H]

Sorry, Mike. I pasted a screenshot into the post that showed an entire page with a title header at the top and at the bottom music notes being obscured by the page slider. I don´t think it was an unreasonable assumption that what was visible to me then would be included in the post. Most software that doesn´t want graphics pasted in will do NOTHING when trying to do so.

What I suggested was that on entering performance mode where the page slider is supposed to be always visible, the header can be removed and the music page moved up without rescaling so that the music page is the same size. What MobileSheets does instead is always rescale the page to fill the screen including the space the slider uses.

You have built into the system a way that keeps the page slider from covering music in performance mode even when the setting requires it to be always visible.

1. Turn on performance mode.
   
2. Back out of the piece.
   
3. Reselect the piece.
   
4. Now the page slider never shows (tested only on iOS), but that, of course, is not what "always visible" means!
   

I've been thinking about this some more and if I were modifying the program I would integrate the page slider into the (what is it called?) bar below it that includes Display mode and Page Scaling. Without changing the size of that bar, move all the icons down so that there is only 1-2 pixels between them and the bottom. There is then plenty of room for the elements of the page slider above them.

[Zubersoft]

A few comments:

1) If I have a page that takes up the full screen, there is no way to shift the page up without it cutting something off. If I don't allow the page to use the space at the bottom of the screen where the page slider is, it's going to scale the page down to fit. Yes, I do this dynamically with a low quality zoom when the page overlay is displayed, as I wanted the full page still visible while the overlay is up. If you are saying to use that reduced page size all the time when the page slider is visible, I think most users would not want that, but I'd have to hear more feedback.
2) If the page scaling mode is set to fullscreen, the page slider will always be covering part of the page. I just mention this because I think the point I'm trying to make is that, in many situations, you can't avoid having something covered up by the page slider.
3) The bottom bar may have a little bit of room on an iPad Pro, but it certainly does not on a smaller iPad or iPad Air, and has no room at all on an iPhone. Regardless, pushing the icons so close together so that there is only 1 pixel between them causing issues with users accidentally tapping the wrong button. I have gotten many complaints about that over the years anytime I push the icons too close together, and I believe the UI guidelines normally call for a certain amount of padding between icons/buttons. So putting the page slider in the bottom overlay isn't really an option unless I did some major adjustments (like collapsing all of the icons into an overflow popup menu, making them less accessible).

What you have reported with the page slider visibility is certainly a bug - I'll get that fixed. I also don't think the page slider should be anchored to the bottom of the screen the way it is now as that causes issues with the multi-tasking bar in the OS. So I need to move the page slider up a little bit to prevent that.

Developing all this in a way that meets everyone's requirements/needs is never easy. A different way to solve the problem is to make the page slider less obtrusive, by removing the background and the labels and maybe just having partially transparent bar at the bottom of the page. forScore does this by just placing dots at the bottom of the creen with a circle for the handle, for example. I could look for a solution more along those lines.

Thanks,
Mike

[Steve H]

If you are saying to use that reduced page size all the time when the page slider is visible, I think most users would not want that, but I'd have to hear more feedback.

Mike, I see that on my Chromebook devices, the page is always constrained by the page width with plenty of room at the bottom, so if and when I use those, it's generally not an issue. But, yes, I would choose reduced page size all the time if the page slider is to be always visible. What if the page slider appears when the cursor is moved to the bottom of the page? Then, go ahead and cover music until the page slider is allowed to disappear.

 A different way to solve the problem is to make the page slider less obtrusive, by removing the background and the labels and maybe just having partially transparent bar at the bottom of the page. forScore does this by just placing dots at the bottom of the screen with a circle for the handle, for example. I could look for a solution more along those lines.

This sounds to me like a both/and approach. Perhaps I was not clear enough, but the page slider seems to take far more space than it needs. Thus I was suggesting that it can be slimmed down to fit in the box below where it currently lives, just above Display mode, Page Scaling, etc.

[Zubersoft]

That only makes sense when using a cursor - normal touch-based tablets don't have a cursor. 

As I explained before, the page slider is never going to fit in the bottom of the overlay on smaller devices. That is not a solution that is feasible. You have to remember I support phones, small tablets, large tablets, computer monitors and all this on three different platforms. So whatever solution is chosen has to work in every case. I don't want to have drastically different solutions for different device sizes/types, as that starts to make the code really difficult to maintain.

Mike

[Steve H]

Mike, can you possibly hope to allow reliable touches of all your elements on the smallest screens without accommodations? Where an accurate selection must be made in a thicket of choices, iPhone and others pop up a magnifier to assist. Rather than punish those of us who have invested in copious screen real estate, maybe you can rethink your approach just a little?

[Zubersoft]

Yes, I have to do that otherwise I can't in good conscience say I support those devices. Regardless, take a look at the changes I made with version 3.8.36 to see if it works better for you. The page slider is now just a progress bar at the bottom of the screen with no solid background, so it doesn't obscure the page.

Mike