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~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2018 9:45 am
by mevans
I've been able to use the new experience for study for maybe the last 3 weeks. Generally, it's worked okay. I haven't had time to take detailed notes on my experiences, but I'm trying to do a quick dump here for others who are reading and I'm also going to submit a Feedback pointing to this. Unfortunately, I don't have time to take screen shots or go into great detail, but maybe that can be added later if it's helpful for discussion about things I see.

This is strictly using the web site; I haven't investigated how all this works with the LDS Tools mobile app to see if there are synchronization or other issues.

Bugs
  • There are encoding/decoding problems in notes. For example, if I type "God's love" in my note, when I see it in the sidebar, I see "God's love"
  • If I open a note to read it, the system assumes I have edited it and changes the note's date to today, even if I have changed nothing. I believe this has been an issue for quite some time with the system and isn't a new behavior. It's just more noticeable now because the date of your note is more readily visible in the new system (which I think is a good thing). This is more of a problem when reading a note in the scriptures, as opposed to My Study Notebook. Just opening it from the scriptures updates the date (viewing it in the sidebar does not). In My Study Notebook, I need to click in an editable field for the date to change.
  • I have to click on the "related content" icon on every single page to see notes. It needs to remember your current preference across every page.
User Experience Issues
  • It's very cumbersome to add a note. There are many more clicks than in the old experience. First a small panel pops up and then from that panel, I need to get another panel to pop up. Now I highlight something, click on style, then choose the style of my highlight. Then I click outside of it to get it to go away. Then I click on what I highlighted to get the first panel to pop up. Then I click on Notes and then a big panel pops up so I can enter notes. It's not a very friendly design, especially since many of the buttons on the first panel open up the same second panel and just put the cursor in a different location. At the very least, please add styles to the note-taking panel so I can do it all with fewer clicks.
  • The note-taking panel is huge and I covers the content on which I'm taking notes. With the old experience, I could almost always see what I had highlighted while I was typing my notes. Now I find it's rather difficult to take notes because I can't read the content that I highlighted that impressed me to take a note in the first place. So I click out of the note to re-read it, go back to the note to type more, etc. Again, it's much more difficult to gather my thoughts and write a note. Maybe made it editable in the side panel instead? Or make the window moveable and resizable?
  • I keep thinking I'd like an option to have the related content automatically scroll to where I am in the scripture/article. I'd want it to be an option that I could turn on and off. I know some people don't want auto-scroll from a previous discussion, that's why I suggest a button to enable/disable the behavior.

There are probably some other things, but these are the nagging issues that come to my mind pretty much every day when I try to use the New Experience. There are some nice things with the new experience and some things that are fixed that never worked well with the old experience (such as easily being able to add a note to more than one notebook).

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:24 pm
by dfechser
You say that it is very cumbersome to add a note. However, I cannot figure out how to add a note at all.
I've added several notes from my phone but cannot find any way to add a note from lds.org. I can see all of my phone-generated notes but that seems to be the limit.
How do I add a note?
Where is stuff like this documented?
If you can help me get started that would be great.

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:44 pm
by jdlessley
The first step to adding a note in the new experience is to select (highlight) the text to which the note will be attached. As soon as that is done a popup will appear. The second option in the popup is Note. Click that link. A different note popup will appear.

I have found with Firefox that note taking is not possible in the new experience. What happens in Firefox when making a selection in the first popup that the second popup appears briefly then disappears. I have to use Chrome to take notes in the new experience.

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:46 pm
by mevans
dfechser wrote:You say that it is very cumbersome to add a note. However, I cannot figure out how to add a note at all.
I've added several notes from my phone but cannot find any way to add a note from lds.org. I can see all of my phone-generated notes but that seems to be the limit.
How do I add a note?
Where is stuff like this documented?
If you can help me get started that would be great.
Do a click-and-drag operation with the mouse to add a highlight. Or should should be able to do something like just double-click a word and you'll see the user interface.

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 9:24 am
by mevans
jdlessley wrote:I have found with Firefox that note taking is not possible in the new experience. What happens in Firefox when making a selection in the first popup that the second popup appears briefly then disappears. I have to use Chrome to take notes in the new experience.
You inspired me to try Firefox this morning in my studies and I agree there are problems, although my experience might be a little different than yours. For reference, I'm using Firefox 64.0 on a Mac.

I find I can highlight a selection and the marking user interface appears; however, once the selection has been highlighted, I can never get the user interface to appear to edit or revise my highlight. If I happened to type a text note, I can get back to the edit window from the sidebar, but I can't change my highlight style at all.

Did you submit feedback about your Firefox issues?

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 12:08 pm
by jdlessley
I submitted feedback. FYI I am running Firefox Quantum 64.0 (64-bit) on Windows 10.

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 8:42 pm
by dfechser
I'm using Chrome. What's this about a "first popup" and "second popup"?
I see no way to create a note on Chrome.

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 8:59 pm
by jdlessley
Make sure popups are not disabled. If they are, you can set an exception for LDS.org.

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:14 am
by sbradshaw
jdlessley wrote:Make sure popups are not disabled. If they are, you can set an exception for LDS.org.
"Popups" that you can disable in browser settings are pages that open in a new browser window. The browser setting for popups won't affect elements that appear on the page inside the current browser window (such as the annotation menu).

Re: ~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2019 9:25 am
by mevans
You need to highlight a word in order to see the user interface for taking notes. As sbradshaw indicated, these are not browser popups.

If you are having trouble seeing the user interface, try the following. I am assuming you're using a computer with a web browser and a mouse. I am assuming you are using the "New Experience." I am assuming you are logged in with your LDS Account. I am assuming you are viewing in English. If you're using something like Windows 10 on with touch screen gestures, your experience may be a little different with your finger.

Option 1. Open the scriptures. Double-click on a word. you should see it highlight and see some note indication on the screen.
Option 2. Open the scriptures. Hover the mouse over a work. Click the mouse and then drag it over more words, as you would do in a word processor. Let go of the mouse button. You should see the highlighted text and some indication on the screen of notes.


Maybe if I have time I'll see if I can post some screen shots so people know what's going on. I don't know if the forum will let you post videos or not, but I don't have the tools installed at home to do the training videos. I have some tools at work, but I can't do this on work computers. Maybe the church can post some how-to videos to help members with this stuff?