Re: [Mldonkey-users] GUI cleanups, continued

[Ivo]

> I'm far from good at designing icons, I rather get some from there and there,
> sometimes puting two icones into one. But if you're good at this, or if you
> find better icons, feel free to send them to me so i can add them and replace
> the old ones. BTW, you can change the icons in the ~/.mldonkey_gui.in file,
> in section icons = { .... }

Maybe I'll give it a go, but I'd like it better if a really good designer type
would sink his or her teeth in this. I've never even made a theme for anything
:), but I can find my way around The Gimp.

I'm also looking into ocaml. :)

> In the File/Settings -> Gui/Layout, you can choose wheter buttons contain
> icon, text or both.

Will check that out. The icon+text combination isn't really a horror to me,
really, but "expert" will likely prefer (small) icons only.

> I know the icons look cheap for the moment, but it was better than nothing
> :-)

I realize this, but at some point one must decide it's been long enough and
it's time to get something better in place. :)

> *** About missing space between fields : I'll try to make things look better,
> but don't expect huge spaces, because there is a lot of information to
> display and we must think about poor users with small screens :-)

Sure, but one must try and be a little creative with this. There are certain
interface designing rules and if you break then, rest assured most new users
will get confused. I am confident there is a way to stuff a lot of information
in to a not-so-large portion of a window. However, if it really gets too
crowded, I suggest a reorganisation or information hiding (clicky for more
detailed info).

One thing that's just plain wrong is putting absolutely NO spaces between a
prompt and input field, so that they are adjacent. Also, I despise people who
put spaces in front of comma's , colons and such : like that. Arrrrgh!

> I agree that fields labels should be corrected to be consistent regarding the
> colon (':').

And let's not forget aligning the input fields neatly beneath eachother as in
a table. :)

> These are called Paned widgets in Gtk and they're designed for this. I don't
> know about draggable borders in gtk.

Hmm, could be just me then. I'm sure I've seen GTK apps do this. But it's not
a big issue, neither. Much of my disklike for GTK is targeted against the
default theme; it's just that many badly-written apps break with custom themes. 
:(

> I'll try to stick to the recommandation of Goswyn for column sizes.

He did make some good points.

> The let download is to doanloa w whole directory, for protocols keeping the
> structure of friends's shared directories (eg Soulseek).

Is this important? Maybe it should be more in the background. *shrugs*

> '&' means that the field in the frame will be in the query in the form of
> field1 & field 2 & ...  You can define your own skeletons of queries in the
> searches.ini file.

Ahah, I see. The point is that it should look and be more user-friendly. It
feels almost like a poorly formatted ASCII file pulled into a frame. :)

> I agree that the render could be improved but that's quite a pain to do and
> time is missing.

That's why people are helping out. :) I'll try and get more into it. It looks
like fun. :) In the meantime I think every graphics guy who's ever heard of
mldonkey should contact the devteam. :)

> For the empty combo fields with no value, leaving them blank is good for me
> since that means 'no value' so 'no constraint in the query', rather than
> 'select a value' making the user think this value is mandatory.

I would prefer a default selection option of <None> or <Ignore> or <No value>
or whatever, then.

> > Perhaps the 'x results' status line could stand out a little more, as could
> > the tabs for the different queries.
> Agreed for the number of results. And I'll see what can be done for the tabs.

The tabs thing is a question mark for me. I really don't know what is wrong
with them or what should be done to them.

> Rooms barely work by now, if I remember well. Don't really know how to
> display the information (all rooms, rooms wher i am, people in the selected
> room where i am, chat window). Any good idea ? Four vertical frames should be
> avoided because it does not leave enough space for chat on small screens.

Those are difficult design decisions. Maybe we could look at some IRC clients
for some ideas. Perhaps a pull-down menu/select instead of a frame would help.

> The fields in the settings box won't be aligned because i use a library of
> mine to easily create the fields, and it does not take all fields's width
> into account. I don't have time to change this by now and does someone else
> think it's ugly ?

I'm not a educated designer, so I can't tell you *why* it's ugly, but it is.
I have to search the screen for certain parts of the form. Fields I want don't
catch my eye and I tend to point to the wrong items with my mouse pointer. It
is definately not very user-friendly, in my opinion.

But what I meant is that the left sides of the input fields should all have the
same X position. Like so:

Keywords:      [             ]
Media:         [             ]
Bitrate:       [             ]
Hell-I-dunno:  [             ]

So it doesn't have anything to do with the width, I think (again, very little
GTK experience).

Compare to:

Keywords:[             ]
Media:[             ]
Bitrate:[             ]
Hell-I-dunno:[             ]

Unfortunately, we all have time constraints and the mldonkey developers are all
volunteers. This does however not mean that certain issues should be dismissed
forever, because they are deemed not important enough. Mldonkey needs some
polish, and although it won't make it find more results or make your downloads
faster, it will add to a more pleasurable mldonkey experience. :)

In any case... more developers needed, obviously!!!! Apply inside.

> But i agree that the 'columns titles' tab should be cut into various parts to
> be more readable and not to hide buttons.

That's quite annoying, yes. I repeat: to me the details are always important.:)

> I can't promise this will be done quick since i'm quite busy for the moment
> (beginning of a new job...).

I never asked for it to be quick; I just wanted to address it. Throw it in a
TODO file and take care of it whenever there _is_ time, possibly employing a
couple of other volunteers, who'll have thrown themselves into the fray by
then.

> anyway, thanks for your report,

Anytime. And sorry for another very long email. :) I get that way.

Ivo