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The tag tabs, OMFG the tag tabs! (they are bad)
#1
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.
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#2
Aw. I was really hoping the images were actually going to display inline, the way the post editor implied they would be.

*sigh* Oh, well. Sorry about all the clicking.
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#3
(06-12-2017, 01:57 PM)'FeRDNYC' Wrote: 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)
 

In fact, how messed up is this? I noticed that if Vuze dies unexpectedly (rather than cleanly shutting down), on the next startup it will retain the Tag Buttons configuration the way it was before crashing, instead of running whatever migration process would normally change the buttons into tabs and unset the tags' "Visible" property. So, I've been intentionally using `kill -9` to close Vuze, instead of letting it shut down cleanly, just so that it won't reset my buttons configuration.
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#4
The tags tabs were one of the reasons which lead me to try out the Vuze interface instead of the classic one (I don't mind losing a little horizontal real estate). If you decide to try it beware when switching interfaces: I recall that when changing from one of them to the other some (minor) tag-related property got reset.

I don't understand why you have to reenable the "Show Tag Buttons in Library" each time you restart Vuze: I have that option set and it persists across restarts. Interaction with some other preference? Broken preferences file? OS-specific issue?

I follow your reasoning as to why you would like tag tabs not to have a split view. However, insomuch as it is a filtered view of the whole-library view, it makes some sense that the interface remains consistent. (Also, I sometimes have many unfinished downloads, but I cannot say how much not having a split interface would  matter to me at those moments.)

If you think that tag tabs should go away, isn't it possible to hide them? On each tag's settings (Tags Overview window) there is the option to "View in Sidebar", which I believe that in the classic interface makes the tab go away. (Actually, this might be the option that got reset when changing from one particular interface to the other.)
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#5
(07-23-2017, 12:19 PM)'detelosk' Wrote: The tags tabs were one of the reasons which lead me to try out the Vuze interface instead of the classic one (I don't mind losing a little horizontal real estate). If you decide to try it beware when switching interfaces: I recall that when changing from one of them to the other some (minor) tag-related property got reset.

I don't understand why you have to reenable the "Show Tag Buttons in Library" each time you restart Vuze: I have that option set and it persists across restarts. Interaction with some other preference? Broken preferences file? OS-specific issue?

 

I'm running 5.7.5.1_B10, which could explain it. I suspect there was some misguided intention to "automagically" convert everyone who was using the buttons over to tabs instead, so on (normal) startup it automatically disables the buttons option and all the tags' visibility flags ("View in Sidebar"), and clones the buttons that were visible into tabs instead. I can't say for sure that was happening with 5.7.5.0 release, perhaps not. Regardless, I'm sort of stuck in the beta for now since it contains the fix for a different bug I was encountering. And since the beta's behavior is theoretically what would be in the next release, I felt I had to say something to try and prevent that.

Quote:If you think that tag tabs should go away, isn't it possible to hide them? On each tag's settings (Tags Overview window) there is the option to "View in Sidebar", which I believe that in the classic interface makes the tab go away. (Actually, this might be the option that got reset when changing from one particular interface to the other.)

Problem is, that same option also controls the visibility of the corresponding button! So even though the tabs don't necessarily need to use that setting (when they're created on startup, it's automatically switched off for all tags, but the tabs are left open), the tabs still control and are controlled by that switch. Turning it on after startup restores the button for that tag, and leaves the tab visible. That's part of my manual "un-reconfigure" process. But after that, turning it off again removes both the tag and the button. And once it's turned on, closing the tab also causes the option to be automatically turned off — which (of course) removes the button!

It's insidious, I tells ya. Waaaay too many "smarts" were tied into the tag tabs so that they can guide the configuration a certain way, which I can feel actively fighting against me trying to configure things the way I actually want.
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#6
Oh, on this...
(07-23-2017, 12:19 PM)'detelosk' Wrote: I follow your reasoning as to why you would like tag tabs not to have a split view. However, insomuch as it is a filtered view of the whole-library view, it makes some sense that the interface remains consistent. (Also, I sometimes have many unfinished downloads, but I cannot say how much not having a split interface would  matter to me at those moments.)
 

You misunderstand slightly. As I said, I'd prefer that the tag tabs... well, I'd prefer they go away completely, but failing that I'd prefer they not filter out active downloads from other tags, in which case I'd absolutely want them to retain the split view! All active torrents (regardless of tag) in the top half, all completed torrents from the selected tag in the bottom half. Not because it's consistent or particularly makes sense, but because that's how I've always used the tag buttons, it's the exact reason why I find the tag buttons useful, and I think tag tabs are a fucking stupid idea because I just can't understand why anyone would want to see both their active transfer activity and their completed-torrent library filtered to only a single tag. Completed? Sure! Active? #DONOTUNDERSTAND.

So my further argument was to simply, and not very seriously, suggest that if they're going to only show torrents from one tag, why waste the real estate of a split view? But I'm not arguing that makes sense or is consistent either, I'm just saying if they're going to implement something as stupid and nonsensical as separate tab views for each tag, why not go all in? And there's precedent, sort of: Go to Tags Overview and double-click Downloading. Voila, a tag tab view that contains a full-window display of only the top pane of My Torrents, because of course it does. Ditto if you double-click Complete, which shows only the bottom-half My Torrents pane. (The columns displayed also match the ones configured for the corresponding pane, which is smart and cool.)

Not that I'm saying the tag tabs don't have a reason to display both panes, and if they were going to only display one list then there are all sorts of thorny questions like "Which set of columns should it use?" Granted, conceded, and I have no good responses to those objections/questions since it wasn't a serious idea anyway. Because the tag tabs are just stupid.
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#7
(07-23-2017, 09:06 PM)FeRDNYC Wrote: Oh, on this...
(07-23-2017, 12:19 PM)'detelosk' Wrote: I follow your reasoning as to why you would like tag tabs not to have a split view. However, insomuch as it is a filtered view of the whole-library view, it makes some sense that the interface remains consistent. (Also, I sometimes have many unfinished downloads, but I cannot say how much not having a split interface would  matter to me at those moments.)
 

You misunderstand slightly. As I said, I'd prefer that the tag tabs... well, I'd prefer they go away completely, but failing that I'd prefer they not filter out active downloads from other tags, in which case I'd absolutely want them to retain the split view! All active torrents (regardless of tag) in the top half, all completed torrents from the selected tag in the bottom half. Not because it's consistent or particularly makes sense, but because that's how I've always used the tag buttons, it's the exact reason why I find the tag buttons useful, and I think tag tabs are a fucking stupid idea because I just can't understand why anyone would want to see both their active transfer activity and their completed-torrent library filtered to only a single tag. Completed? Sure! Active? #DONOTUNDERSTAND.

I had certainly misunderstood you; thanks for reexplaining yourself. As a tag button user I also find it very convenient that the filtering can be applied independently to each half of the split view. However, given that there are per-tag settings which apply to non-seeding torrents (e.g. the download limit or the actions on completion), being able to filter them by tag seems like a reasonable expectation, and for people who don't enable tag buttons each tag's tab seems a reasonable place to do so.
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#8
Do you want to actually be able to get help with your TAGS issues AND get new TAGs features that actually HELP with your torrenting and Library Management?

Come with me to BiglyBT .  .  .  . 

Since Spiggot sacked their main developer, these forums seem to rely on the goodwill of ONLY other users.  I suggest you UPGRADE to BiglyBT and enjoy what is essentially the same client with more features, without the bullshit and is in constant development by one of the original Azureus developers.  Plus, there are dedicated support chat channels built into the client and during the install process, you can easily migrate all of your Vuze/Azureus settings/statistics and torrents to the BiglyBT client.

I run over 3,000 torrents, so don't worry, the client will handle your torrents with ease and I had no problems with the migration of settings and torrents. It was all seamless. BBT looks the same as Vuze and it is legal because they (BiglyBT, Vuze, Bit-Tyrant, OneSwarm) are all based on Azureus under a GPL License.
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