8 ms·

Calibre is great. There’s a real lack of good quality ebook software and Calibre is an essential do-everything toolkit. The interface, however, is like some in

Calibre is great. There’s a real lack of good quality ebook software and Calibre is an essential do-everything toolkit. The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom. As a UX designer it gave me some trouble at first, but now I’ve genuinely come to appreciate it. There’s no way the interface could be ‘improved’ by conventional standards of aesthetics or usability without losing the thing that makes it special in the first place.

webwielder2 5y ago
This is how I feel about the Libby app for iPhone. What is it with book apps? https://twitter.com/bendansby/status/1334717731925417986?s=20 https://twitter.com/bendansby/status/1334717731925417986?s=2...
- stinkytaco 5y ago
  I'm genuinely curious to hear any specific changes you might make. I'm a librarian and I can say that Libby was a huge improvement in usability over the Overdrive app and we spend much less time on basic user support now. There are weird quirks for me as well, but I'm always hard pressed to say exactly what I would change.
  - philips 5y ago
    It is a huge improvement over the low bar set by Overdrive. I use Libby everyday with my children and I think my three complaints are: 1. Filtering and categorization can be confusing: I have a difficult time finding books that are age appropriate for my daughter and available. I end up memorizing favorite authors as that is easier than the filtering. 2. The four buttons at the bottom are… interesting? The “library card” button the second from the left does… what exactly? I have never really understood the purpose of that button or why it is shaped like a card. 3. Figuring out how to exit a children’s book that is read “within” the libby app is inconsistent. I can never figure out how to reliably call up the UX to exit or change books.
    - abawany 5y ago
      Re. 2 I just checked: for the currently selected library, it shows you what looks like curated content from the library, to enable you to pick up on things that you might not necessarily do when just interacting with the app with searches and etc.
the_af 5y ago
I agree the UI is confusing. However, I'm glad Calibre exists, solves my needs, and is so versatile. And in the end, I decided the confusing UI didn't matter all that much. I'd rather they* spent their efforts in improving stability and features rather than making a fancy intuitive UI -- assuming of course you can't have both. If you can have both, all the better! *I'm never sure if Calibre is a one-person effort. If it is, more kudos to the author.
tomc1985 5y ago
Calibre's UI is an artifact from a superior and more civilized time, IMHO Extremely functional and just a little bit incomprehensible. Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am
- colechristensen 5y ago
  It reminds me a bit of something you would find running on solaris in the 90s.
- paxys 5y ago
  > Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am Because most average users of any software absolutely fall in that bucket. My mom can use the Facebook app on her phone just fine, but I wouldn't even dare to suggest that she try to convert an eBook on Calibre and transfer it to her Kindle.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    Both things can be true - a person can prefer a more complicated and feature rich UX, while most people prefer a simpler UX that doesn't provide as much control.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      You can definitely have a simple to use UI that still has all the same complex functionalities of an esoteric one. The more advanced features will just be more hidden away. To me, the only real advantage to an esoteric UI like calibre is the ability to do things faster and easier once you have learned it. But honestly, for that i prefer a CLI.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    And yet, Facebook app is actually more complex (and arguably, chaotic and ever changing) UI - but she handles it fine. So does everyone.
  - totetsu 5y ago
qwerty456127 5y ago
The UI is not the only weird part of it, probably the least weird one. What I miss are first-class attachments (i.e. code archives and CD/floppy images) support, raw file naming (without automatic romanization of non-ASCII alphabets), flat storage (without creating a separate folder for every book). Using a Calibre-managed library from outside of Calibre (i.e. on a PocketBook reader) feels quite unnatural. Another thing I always wanted is a simple viewer app without library management features. Like Adobe Acrobat Reader but for ePub and other book formats. The Linux app closest to this concept also comes with Calibre (Sumatra does the job on Windows). All the other book viewers I've seen insist on maintaining your library.
- schwartzworld 5y ago
  What's the benefit over just converting to html and using a browser? As far as I know epub is just html anyway.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Mostly; the structural information is in a mix of XHTML and various XML schemas. Conceptually it's more like that weird "HTML archive" format that IE used to do back when, but considerably more complex, and much less terrible thanks to being a W3C standard and not MIME-encoded. The .epub file itself is just a zip archive. You can open it that way and pull the HTML content out, if you want, although it may be a pain to work with absent some kind of conversion - I think Calibre can linearize an epub into a single HTML file, but I haven't actually needed to do that so can't say for sure.
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      That's among the reasons why I actually dislike ePub and prefer to convert (which involves pandoc/calibre + some hand-written scripting and hand-editing) epub to FB2 (which I love, it only has some minor imperfections). FB2 is a well-structured straightforward single-file XML designed with data-presentation separation in mind.
imwillofficial 5y ago
This is the best attitude I’ve ever seen in a rebuke of a poor interface. I wish I treated every criticism this way.
- m463 5y ago
  It's obviously a labor of love. Sort of like a house that was built by someone's grandfather ... also subject to grandfathered building codes. :)
dmix 5y ago
> The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom. That was a wonderful way to put it. Excellent writing.
dav 5y ago
I’d really love a post that just analyzed this take.

webwielder2 5y ago

This is how I feel about the Libby app for iPhone. What is it with book apps? https://twitter.com/bendansby/status/1334717731925417986?s=20 https://twitter.com/bendansby/status/1334717731925417986?s=2...

stinkytaco 5y ago
I'm genuinely curious to hear any specific changes you might make. I'm a librarian and I can say that Libby was a huge improvement in usability over the Overdrive app and we spend much less time on basic user support now. There are weird quirks for me as well, but I'm always hard pressed to say exactly what I would change.
- philips 5y ago
  It is a huge improvement over the low bar set by Overdrive. I use Libby everyday with my children and I think my three complaints are: 1. Filtering and categorization can be confusing: I have a difficult time finding books that are age appropriate for my daughter and available. I end up memorizing favorite authors as that is easier than the filtering. 2. The four buttons at the bottom are… interesting? The “library card” button the second from the left does… what exactly? I have never really understood the purpose of that button or why it is shaped like a card. 3. Figuring out how to exit a children’s book that is read “within” the libby app is inconsistent. I can never figure out how to reliably call up the UX to exit or change books.
  - abawany 5y ago
    Re. 2 I just checked: for the currently selected library, it shows you what looks like curated content from the library, to enable you to pick up on things that you might not necessarily do when just interacting with the app with searches and etc.

the_af 5y ago

I agree the UI is confusing. However, I'm glad Calibre exists, solves my needs, and is so versatile. And in the end, I decided the confusing UI didn't matter all that much. I'd rather they* spent their efforts in improving stability and features rather than making a fancy intuitive UI -- assuming of course you can't have both. If you can have both, all the better! *I'm never sure if Calibre is a one-person effort. If it is, more kudos to the author.

tomc1985 5y ago

Calibre's UI is an artifact from a superior and more civilized time, IMHO Extremely functional and just a little bit incomprehensible. Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am

colechristensen 5y ago
It reminds me a bit of something you would find running on solaris in the 90s.
paxys 5y ago
> Compared to modern UI/UX which just slaps me with how stupid it thinks I am Because most average users of any software absolutely fall in that bucket. My mom can use the Facebook app on her phone just fine, but I wouldn't even dare to suggest that she try to convert an eBook on Calibre and transfer it to her Kindle.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  Both things can be true - a person can prefer a more complicated and feature rich UX, while most people prefer a simpler UX that doesn't provide as much control.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    You can definitely have a simple to use UI that still has all the same complex functionalities of an esoteric one. The more advanced features will just be more hidden away. To me, the only real advantage to an esoteric UI like calibre is the ability to do things faster and easier once you have learned it. But honestly, for that i prefer a CLI.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  And yet, Facebook app is actually more complex (and arguably, chaotic and ever changing) UI - but she handles it fine. So does everyone.
- totetsu 5y ago

qwerty456127 5y ago

The UI is not the only weird part of it, probably the least weird one. What I miss are first-class attachments (i.e. code archives and CD/floppy images) support, raw file naming (without automatic romanization of non-ASCII alphabets), flat storage (without creating a separate folder for every book). Using a Calibre-managed library from outside of Calibre (i.e. on a PocketBook reader) feels quite unnatural. Another thing I always wanted is a simple viewer app without library management features. Like Adobe Acrobat Reader but for ePub and other book formats. The Linux app closest to this concept also comes with Calibre (Sumatra does the job on Windows). All the other book viewers I've seen insist on maintaining your library.

schwartzworld 5y ago
What's the benefit over just converting to html and using a browser? As far as I know epub is just html anyway.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Mostly; the structural information is in a mix of XHTML and various XML schemas. Conceptually it's more like that weird "HTML archive" format that IE used to do back when, but considerably more complex, and much less terrible thanks to being a W3C standard and not MIME-encoded. The .epub file itself is just a zip archive. You can open it that way and pull the HTML content out, if you want, although it may be a pain to work with absent some kind of conversion - I think Calibre can linearize an epub into a single HTML file, but I haven't actually needed to do that so can't say for sure.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    That's among the reasons why I actually dislike ePub and prefer to convert (which involves pandoc/calibre + some hand-written scripting and hand-editing) epub to FB2 (which I love, it only has some minor imperfections). FB2 is a well-structured straightforward single-file XML designed with data-presentation separation in mind.

imwillofficial 5y ago

This is the best attitude I’ve ever seen in a rebuke of a poor interface. I wish I treated every criticism this way.

m463 5y ago
It's obviously a labor of love. Sort of like a house that was built by someone's grandfather ... also subject to grandfathered building codes. :)

dmix 5y ago

> The interface, however, is like some incredible piece of outsider art, gloriously free of best practice, convention or accepted wisdom. That was a wonderful way to put it. Excellent writing.

dav 5y ago

I’d really love a post that just analyzed this take.