06-12-2017, 01:57 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-23-2017, 10:57 AM by FeRDNYC.
Edit Reason: Add link to screenshots album w/ explanation
)
ETA: Since they're not showing inline here, I've compiled the screenshots into an Imgur album (since that's where they're hosted anyway) with captions that correspond to the text here. So, you can "follow along" without having to click individual screenshots by viewing the album:
Screenshots album at Imgur
I apologize for taking so long before finally posting this, but it's been one of those slow-burn things where a change initially led to confusion, which I expected would develop into either understanding or resignation, but has instead festered to become frustration, then irritation, and finally outright hatred.
I hate the tag tabs. I hate every single thing about them and how they work. To the point that, every single time I restart Azureus (which is, fortunately, not very often at all), I will go through the annoyingly involved procedure of re-enabling the old "Show Tag Buttons in Library" functionality (growing more frustrated with the change each time through) — and still, after that, I'm annoyed by the useless redundant tabs that continue to sit there at the top of the interface and mock me, because every button I have enabled forces a corresponding tab.
Why do I hate them? Oh... how much time do you have?
In order from most to least fundamental, here are my objections. They're illustrated with screenshots. (Forgive the censoring of both tag names and torrent details. I realized that a few items were unfit for public consumption, so I just decided to blur everything for consistency.)
Oh, and as a final disclaimer/caveat, let me say that (except for the technical bugs) these arguments are all merely my personal opinion, based on how I use the software. Other people may completely disagree, or have very different experiences. (In which case, I feel like it's even more important that I contribute "my side" of this. But it is not necessarily the only "side", and I acknowledge that up front.) As far as the technical bugs go, it's possible these are only issues on Linux, and may not be a problem for Windows users. But at least in my experience, on Linux there are... problems.
OK, anyway: Why do I HATE the tag tabs?
They Fundamentally Misunderstand How I Use, And Want To Use, Filtering In The Interface
I use the Tag Buttons feature with the sub-feature "Only show in the Complete section of the Library" enabled. (In fact, IIRC that option was added specifically at my request.) That's because, I only ever want to filter the Complete section of My Downloads. The upper section, containing active/incomplete torrents, never needs to be filtered, because it's incredibly rare that it even contains more than a single screenfull of rows TOTAL. Filtering that part of the interface just feels dumb, it's hiding useful information when there's absolutely no reason not to display it.
My "vision" of the interface, really, is that the upper pane of My Downloads is "docked" — always on screen, always the same (hell, I wouldn't even object if that extended to other screens like Torrent Details and Options) — and only the lower pane contains enough information to justify filtering or recofiguring its view.
So, I really like that I can select my Green Tag's button and see all of my completed Green-tagged torrents, and still have all of my (one) active torrents visible above, even if it/they aren't tagged Green:
[Image: Z9AAyIQ.png]
Compared to that, the Green Tag Tab's view — which unnecessarily filters the top pane, too — is just less useful:
[Image: NfP93KP.png]
Honestly, it seems silly to me that the tag tabs use a split display at all, if they're going to filter both panes to only show torrents with that tag. It would make more sense to me to use a single-pane display, like the Download tag's tab... just mix incomplete and seeding torrents together (maybe sort the incomplete ones to the top of the list). The split view makes sense for My Downloads, but are there honestly people who regularly operate Vuze with that many incomplete torrents active, that they'd need a split view of the torrents for a single tag? (I'm honestly asking. Are there? If so, then my use patterns are probably very different from theirs, so as I said they may strongly disagree with what I'm saying here.)
They Clutter Up Basically The Entire Tab Area, Colliding With The Torrent Details And Other Tabs Which Need To Be Displayed There
I run Vuze on a headless server, displayed on a remote Xvnc desktop that I tunnel in to access. The desktop geometry is 1280x720, and the window is sized to... well, my current instance is exactly 1046x671.
This is how Vuze starts up for me, now, with the set of tags I have set to Visible exported into tabs. (And this is actually a pared down set, when I was using them as Tag Buttons I had a couple more showing that I've had to turn off.)
[Image: IL0MuNx.png]
Practically the entire width of the window is already taken up by tabs, right from the start! I might be able to fit one more tab, if it's got a short title like Options, but the moment I open a single Torrent Details tab I'm going to run out of space and the tab area is going to overflow.
Compare that to the same set of Tab Buttons, which are only this wide... and yet, up in the tab area I still have almost the entire width of the window available to open any needed tabs.
[Image: b7WceEh.png]
The Fact That They Force The Tab Area To Overflow Is Especially Bad, Because Its Overflow Display Is Glitchy And Annoying
For whatever reason (some wxWidgets SWT brokenness?), anytime the tab area needs to display an overflow indicator, all of the tabs get double height. So, that's annoying, since like I said it's practically always going to be the case that the tabs are overflowed:
[Image: PQDfBiP.png]
Occasionally, the overflow height glitch gets really out of hand:
[Image: J365RBN.png]
I don't know why that happens, I just know that it does, and when it does suddenly like a fifth of my window height is eaten up by useless glitchy empty space.
You'll also notice, in that last screenshot, that the My Downloads tab is no longer visible. That's another problem with the Tag Tabs — since My Downloads is the left-most tab, they end up forcing it out of the visible space whenever a Torrent Details tab is accessed on the other side of them. My Downloads should never be pushed out of view or made less easily-accessible. Ever.
Just For Fun, Sometimes The Tab Names Glitch Too
I wasn't initially sure I'd have a screenshot of this one, but I should've had faith because it really does happen quite frequently. Whatever's responsible for resolving the tag labels on their tabs apparently likes to fall down on the job, so some or all tabs are labeled with some internal identifier instead of the actual name of the tag. (You'll also note that this makes each tab significantly wider, exacerbating the overflow problems discussed above.)
[Image: 8wewJjG.png]
In conclusion, this new feature may have been well-intended, but it is actively making it a chore to work with Vuze. Please, just make it go away. Completely. I'm begging you. And thanks for listening.
Screenshots album at Imgur
I apologize for taking so long before finally posting this, but it's been one of those slow-burn things where a change initially led to confusion, which I expected would develop into either understanding or resignation, but has instead festered to become frustration, then irritation, and finally outright hatred.
I hate the tag tabs. I hate every single thing about them and how they work. To the point that, every single time I restart Azureus (which is, fortunately, not very often at all), I will go through the annoyingly involved procedure of re-enabling the old "Show Tag Buttons in Library" functionality (growing more frustrated with the change each time through) — and still, after that, I'm annoyed by the useless redundant tabs that continue to sit there at the top of the interface and mock me, because every button I have enabled forces a corresponding tab.
Why do I hate them? Oh... how much time do you have?
In order from most to least fundamental, here are my objections. They're illustrated with screenshots. (Forgive the censoring of both tag names and torrent details. I realized that a few items were unfit for public consumption, so I just decided to blur everything for consistency.)
Oh, and as a final disclaimer/caveat, let me say that (except for the technical bugs) these arguments are all merely my personal opinion, based on how I use the software. Other people may completely disagree, or have very different experiences. (In which case, I feel like it's even more important that I contribute "my side" of this. But it is not necessarily the only "side", and I acknowledge that up front.) As far as the technical bugs go, it's possible these are only issues on Linux, and may not be a problem for Windows users. But at least in my experience, on Linux there are... problems.
OK, anyway: Why do I HATE the tag tabs?
They Fundamentally Misunderstand How I Use, And Want To Use, Filtering In The Interface
I use the Tag Buttons feature with the sub-feature "Only show in the Complete section of the Library" enabled. (In fact, IIRC that option was added specifically at my request.) That's because, I only ever want to filter the Complete section of My Downloads. The upper section, containing active/incomplete torrents, never needs to be filtered, because it's incredibly rare that it even contains more than a single screenfull of rows TOTAL. Filtering that part of the interface just feels dumb, it's hiding useful information when there's absolutely no reason not to display it.
My "vision" of the interface, really, is that the upper pane of My Downloads is "docked" — always on screen, always the same (hell, I wouldn't even object if that extended to other screens like Torrent Details and Options) — and only the lower pane contains enough information to justify filtering or recofiguring its view.
So, I really like that I can select my Green Tag's button and see all of my completed Green-tagged torrents, and still have all of my (one) active torrents visible above, even if it/they aren't tagged Green:
[Image: Z9AAyIQ.png]
Compared to that, the Green Tag Tab's view — which unnecessarily filters the top pane, too — is just less useful:
[Image: NfP93KP.png]
Honestly, it seems silly to me that the tag tabs use a split display at all, if they're going to filter both panes to only show torrents with that tag. It would make more sense to me to use a single-pane display, like the Download tag's tab... just mix incomplete and seeding torrents together (maybe sort the incomplete ones to the top of the list). The split view makes sense for My Downloads, but are there honestly people who regularly operate Vuze with that many incomplete torrents active, that they'd need a split view of the torrents for a single tag? (I'm honestly asking. Are there? If so, then my use patterns are probably very different from theirs, so as I said they may strongly disagree with what I'm saying here.)
They Clutter Up Basically The Entire Tab Area, Colliding With The Torrent Details And Other Tabs Which Need To Be Displayed There
I run Vuze on a headless server, displayed on a remote Xvnc desktop that I tunnel in to access. The desktop geometry is 1280x720, and the window is sized to... well, my current instance is exactly 1046x671.
This is how Vuze starts up for me, now, with the set of tags I have set to Visible exported into tabs. (And this is actually a pared down set, when I was using them as Tag Buttons I had a couple more showing that I've had to turn off.)
[Image: IL0MuNx.png]
Practically the entire width of the window is already taken up by tabs, right from the start! I might be able to fit one more tab, if it's got a short title like Options, but the moment I open a single Torrent Details tab I'm going to run out of space and the tab area is going to overflow.
Compare that to the same set of Tab Buttons, which are only this wide... and yet, up in the tab area I still have almost the entire width of the window available to open any needed tabs.
[Image: b7WceEh.png]
The Fact That They Force The Tab Area To Overflow Is Especially Bad, Because Its Overflow Display Is Glitchy And Annoying
For whatever reason (some wxWidgets SWT brokenness?), anytime the tab area needs to display an overflow indicator, all of the tabs get double height. So, that's annoying, since like I said it's practically always going to be the case that the tabs are overflowed:
[Image: PQDfBiP.png]
Occasionally, the overflow height glitch gets really out of hand:
[Image: J365RBN.png]
I don't know why that happens, I just know that it does, and when it does suddenly like a fifth of my window height is eaten up by useless glitchy empty space.
You'll also notice, in that last screenshot, that the My Downloads tab is no longer visible. That's another problem with the Tag Tabs — since My Downloads is the left-most tab, they end up forcing it out of the visible space whenever a Torrent Details tab is accessed on the other side of them. My Downloads should never be pushed out of view or made less easily-accessible. Ever.
Just For Fun, Sometimes The Tab Names Glitch Too
I wasn't initially sure I'd have a screenshot of this one, but I should've had faith because it really does happen quite frequently. Whatever's responsible for resolving the tag labels on their tabs apparently likes to fall down on the job, so some or all tabs are labeled with some internal identifier instead of the actual name of the tag. (You'll also note that this makes each tab significantly wider, exacerbating the overflow problems discussed above.)
[Image: 8wewJjG.png]
In conclusion, this new feature may have been well-intended, but it is actively making it a chore to work with Vuze. Please, just make it go away. Completely. I'm begging you. And thanks for listening.