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Comment by piokoch | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those application that I love. Does it job well, nobody is trying to make interface "modern", that is use sweet colors, big squares everywhere with weirdo icons that you need to guess what they are supposed to mean. Starts fast, works fast, does not encourage me do buy some subscriptions, register somewhere, connect to some "service", just does it job perfectly.

Unfortunately with every year there are less and less such applications, but they are still out there, e.g. SumatraPDF or KeePassXC.

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Calibre has the worst possible UI, it's just that nobody knows how to improve it. Icons are beyond meaningless, menus are nested and super-specific, functionality is hidden behind context menus and unintuitive click behaviour, hover title text is abused for option documentation.

Calibre is an incredible piece of software, but of all the things it does great, the UI isn't one of them.

I agree I hate to use it because of that, super un-intuitive

I expect that a dozen humans coming to Calibre for the first time would articulate at least a half-dozen mutually conflicting perspectives on what would be "intuituve". I further expect that each of them would be mostly articulating "what I'm used to". If you unpack "Intuitive" it's mostly a tribal ingroup statement.

The FOSS author has a choice: they can attempt to chase whatever UX rabbits are scared up by The Market, or they can try to make it straightforward to learn their tool, despite its differences from the momentary fashion. I think the Calibre dev's done an excellent job there.

I really want to make a stand for Kovid Goyal here, because he has indeed done an excellent job with Calibre. But every time this discussion comes up, people act like pointing out a user interface isn't intuitive is throwing shit at the developer, which it isn't.

Maybe there is a reason people do spend years studying interaction design, and we can agree there's probably things that could be improved on the interface to make it more intuitive by someone who's specialised in that?

The interface can be definitely improved, but that requires actual research and resources to pull it off. But as of now, it's not that complicated and very well documented.

I understand that, it’s a lot of work and resources are needed. The most important aspect in this regard is features over UX. But for a casual user, not finding UI elements we’re used to makes it harder to want to learn it for a few use cases. So maybe I’m not the target (power user in ebook domain). But dismissing any UI change as useless … maybe it’s far fetched.

> I further expect that each of them would be mostly

> articulating "what I'm used to".

This is true, but most users spend most of their time away from any given application. Very few people become experts at using Calibre. So there's nothing wrong with taking cues from the most popular applications, the kinds of applications where people form their intuitions.

I use Calibre a few times a year, and I'm quite confused every time. I usually just Google the steps to do the thing I need to do, and even after I understand how to do it, it never makes a lot of sense to me.

Having said that, if the developers like the way it works, then that's all that matters. I'm glad it exists either way.

The fact that webdevs believe it is shit UI is a big indicator that it is quite good.

I'm not a webdev, but still think it's shit. And I'm even old enough to know most of those Icons from the days in which they were considered modern. The whole interface is dated and with strange hacks. It's useful, but could be made better. But I think there are two different parts coming together here, namely UI and UX. The UI is old school and a bit ugly, while the UX is very basic and sometimes strange. And together they make a criticizable interface.

But actually, who cars? It's still doing its job well enough, while delivering a very powerful experience. On that level of ability, it's quite hard and demanding to build a good interface, and a dev who is so deep in CLI that he even builds his own terminal is unlikely to have the necessary competence in that area to make something better.

> The whole interface is dated

Oh, so you're advocating redesign for the sake of redesign?

No, I'm saying it's justified to update the interface to reflect the state of todays interface-language.

Find the warts, optimize them, let it evolve and bring the workflows to the next level. The app is old and grown, one doesn't need to reinvent it, to make it better. And with its complex purpose, you would end up with something similar anyway.

> No, I'm saying it's justified to update the interface to reflect the state of todays interface-language.

Which one? GTK, QT, MacOS, the myriad in today's web?

Interface-Language has little relation with the used GUI-Framework. And Calibre is already using Qt.

It really doesn't imho. It does by no mean follow the kind of "sleekness" that you expect from contemporary UIs, but it's perfectly functional and takes the least amount of effort of getting used to, at least from the point of view of someone that does not otherwise particularly love to invest too much time in convoluted UIs (á la GIMP :))

> icons are beyond meaningless

What? How? “Add Books” is a book icon with a plus sign. “View” is a magnifying glass. “Remove Books” is a recycling symbol. “Preferences” is the usual settings-esque gear icon. “Device” is an e-reader. “Send To Device” is an e-reader with an arrow. I’ll grant you that some are vague, like “Download Metadata” being a globe, but the other major part you’ve glossed over is that all of these have their titles directly underneath them. There is no need to guess as to what they do.

> menus are nested and super-specific

I fail to see how that’s bad. Tree-like menus are extremely intuitive, and prevent having 50 items in a single column.

I wonder if this is a difference in perspective between people who use it as an ebook library manager and as an ebook reader. The ebook reader UI is terrible. Like how do you jump to a page:

1. Right click on the book to get menu at the top of the window.

2. Click go to

3. Pick which type of "go to" you want ("location")

4. You now get a full screen UI with a single input box

5. Now you get to enter a page number.

Other ebook readers, even the crappy DRM-encumbered web apps, give you a slider.

---

Also rendering a page is very slow, so you scroll to go to the next page, and apparently nothing happens for quite some time. Also it takes two ticks of the scroll wheel to paginate, even in the absence of any internal scrolling. So you're wondering if the page is rendering or if you need to scroll more and potentially overshoot.

---

Opening the bookmarks UI reflows the page, potentially pushing what you wanted to bookmark out of sight onto the next page.

> The ebook reader UI is terrible.

I don't think the reader UI is there for ... reading books. At best for checking out what the conversion steps did.

I just drag books to it, sometimes edit the titles and then export them to a Kindle.

When the Kindle gets fully locked down I'll get a Kobo or whatever is in fashion and works well with Calibre at that time.

No, it's just not great UI. It is functional, but that is not the same as good.

Oh, that may be entirely possible. Yeah, I don't use the reader at all. For one, I hate reading books on a computer. For two, agreed, its UI isn't great. I'm entirely referring to its use as a library manager / ebook converter.

Permanent deletions use a "recycle" symbol, advanced search a cogwheel columns a stylised greek pillar (creative at least, that one), while download cover and input options share a downward chevron icon. There's lots of instances where the icons do more to distract you than help usability. Titles are shown underneath main toolbar actions, but not in the statusbar or modal windows, for example.

> I fail to see how that’s bad. Tree-like menus are extremely intuitive, and prevent having 50 items in a single column.

Stuff like "Edit metadata > Merge book records > Merge only formats in first selected book - delete others" feels extremely intuitive for you? Calibre tries to cram every workflow under the sun into tree menus, because it's the easiest way to make commands accessible in a GUI. Meanwhile, stuff like the book details panel is completely underused. And we didn't even talk about metadata plugboards yet.

I love Calibre for being the Swiss army knife of ebook management it is, but sometimes I want to have merely a humble knife to spread butter on my reading habits; something that lets me intuitively CRUD an ebook library without forcing me to think whether I want to add files to my book records, add data files to my book records, or add from folders and sub-folders.

> Permanent deletions use a "recycle" symbol

So does Windows.

> while download cover and input options share a downward chevron icon

This may be version-specific to be fair; I checked 7.8 and the latest, 8.0.1, and the two icons are differentiated in both. In Preferences, "Metadata download" is a cloud with a downward arrow, whereas "Input options" is a downward chevron.

> Titles are shown underneath main toolbar actions, but not in the statusbar or modal windows, for example.

Mine definitely does for all of those. Are you sure you don't have something configured differently, or perhaps there are differences in OS default behavior (I'm on MacOS)?

> Stuff like "Edit metadata > Merge book records > Merge only formats in first selected book - delete others" feels extremely intuitive for you?

Yes. "Book records" definitely sounds like metadata to me, so that's where I would look for it. The "Edit metadata" menu has 7 options on my build. Of those, only "Merge book records" expands, and it expands into 3 options, including the one you mentioned.

There may also be age differences at play here, specifically with respect to what GUI era your formative computing years were in. I got into computers in as a kid in the 90s (DOS, then Windows 3.1, 95, then a mix of Linux distros and successive versions of Windows). Calibre to me looks and feels like a slightly fancier version of programs I grew up with. Nero Burning ROM [0], foobar2000 [1], and of course, WinRAR [2]. Microsoft Office design peaked with 2000, IMO. 2003 was technically fine, just that it adopted XP's visual styling, which I found appalling.

In contrast to dense UIs, we have modern web apps. If I want to change the appearance, is that under Profile, or Preferences? How do I get to either one? Do I click on the vaguely person-shaped icon, the hamburger icon, or do I have to go Home first?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Burning_ROM

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar2000

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinRAR

> > Stuff like "Edit metadata > Merge book records > Merge only formats in first selected book - delete others" feels extremely intuitive for you? > Yes. "Book records" definitely sounds like metadata to me, so that's where I would look for it.

Not for everyone. I use this function to merge files into one entry after importing. So my mindset at that moment is on the files, and the metadata are just a secondary topic. But I can see how this is a topic where you can dispute endlessly, and no answer is perfect.

> The "Edit metadata" menu has 7 options on my build. Of those, only "Merge book records" expands, and it expands into 3 options, including the one you mentioned.

It shouldn't expand at all. This is the kind of complicated and dangerous job where a dialog with more information and feedback would be justified. Maybe something like a table where each row is a metadata, each column is a book, and you can select which source is used for the final result. The way it is now, I always have to be extremely careful to use the correct one, even select in correct order, and not screw it up.

> > Permanent deletions use a "recycle" symbol > So does Windows.

Where? Deleting to the recycle bin uses the recycle symbol, which isn't permanent deletion, you can undo it. And if you try to delete a file permanently, you get a red crosss

But also, it's not like Windows has great design to use as an argument

> Permanent deletions use a "recycle" symbol

That button isn't permanent, it moves the files into ~/.local/share/Trash/files/

(Unless it changed after the version I'm on)

Interesting.

I recently picked it up for the first time and had no issue whatsoever getting it to do what I needed it to do without any guidance.

Are tooltips abuse now?

> Are tooltips abuse now?

Here's an example screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/MSBDDmM

That's extremely useful.

Should it be also stated in documentation? Yes, tooltips alone should not be acceptable. But here they are doing their job; that's why they are called tooltips, because they give you tips about an option that might otherwise feel obscure.

I think it's excellent and descriptive, but I started with computers at the CP/M era.

that looks superb to me! I'm tempted to contribute a patch to generate documentation from the tooltips now.

That is the best possible experience

And what do you propose, make it dark grey on light grey and fill it with wizards that cover only 20-30% of the old functionality?

Realising my car is broken doesn't mean I can fix it. Likewise, being unable to fix it doesn't mean I can't tell it's broken.

Clearly that is what he meant, yes.

> hover title text is abused for option documentation

That's...why it exists?? What else would you do with hover titles besides showing additional information about an options?

Hover titles are supposed to display complementary information, not be the primary means of documentation about what an option does.

Not the worst no, but it definitely could be more readable/discoverable.

But the functionality as an ebook manager is insanely great in my view.

I like the retro style, but new users are always completely lost with the UI, its off putting to a lot. I know, I introduced (or tried to) introduce some people to calibre in an effort to show them that Amazon what not the best and only way.

But, again, hats off to those making calibre. I will moan publicly when my PR for GUI improvement are not approved, until then I’ll shut up.

works great for me and I had zero problems figuring it out. What it does is complex. I'm not sure why it would confuse anyone who has used a computer and wants to keep their book files in one place.

It had a perfectly fine UI before it transitioned to the current web-styled thing.

OBS is also a good example of that

Mumble too

www.mumble.info

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