Chronos > Software Dev
Updating the UI: Main Screen v2 + Dark Theme
DDR:
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! :D
--- Quote from: BiduleOhm on September 24, 2019, 03:22:23 AM ---Maybe add an option to make the bars disappear and re-appear when swiping (like on the Android OS for example).
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--- Quote from: jasonfish on September 24, 2019, 11:41:27 AM ---Maybe make the toolbars translucent so the image is visible, full-screen, behind them (see new iOS camera app)? Also allow users to "pin" one or both toolbars on screen, else they [fade to 50%? fade to 0%? auto-hide? compress down to one text line each?] until the next touch event. Personally I never really want any data on the screen while recording, it's not useful in that moment, should be hidden until needed.
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--- Quote from: NiNeff on September 24, 2019, 08:26:05 AM ---
* bigger Buttons are usually a good thing, but they should not intrude on the actual picture. There are a few obvious answers to this dilemma:
* Hide the UI if not needed
* Provide the most needed or customizeable buttons on the main screen and hide others in menues
* provide hardware buttons instead of or in addition to software ones (like the record button, use of the encoder knob where applicable etc)
--- End quote ---
Having a tap on the video image toggle full-screen could work well. I personally find swipe and most multitouch gestures quite hard to discover, since there's no good way to visually indicate what gesture will have the desired effect. Pinch to zoom and drag to move are the only exceptions, since they're reasonably intuitive and very common.
I know in the current UI, we had one internal release where the UI auto-hid after a few seconds of inactivity. It never made it to full release, because the auto-hiding had to be disabled because there were a lot of complaints about it. I've also had a lot of requests for some sort of a countdown timer so you know when you run out of memory, so I think that should probably be always-active.
Unfortunately, the UI has to be a bit of a jack of all trades I think. It will end up getting used by students, researchers, enthusiasts, and (hopefully) by folk in the film and television industry. This represents a very wide skill range! What's suitable for a beginner student - detailed, explicit controls - is not suitable for an expert enthusiast who may want to trade explicitness for density and ease of access to many functions.
I think a good solution would be to have the more explicit UI with the full text by default, but be able to fully configure the main screen in terms of geometry and content. The problem is that this is actually quite difficult to program in, since I think we would want a graphical editor with drag and drop, and all that sort of nice interaction. I'm certainly up for putting such a thing in, but I'd like to get an initial release out the door first. :)
--- Quote from: NiNeff on September 24, 2019, 08:26:05 AM ---
* provide hardware buttons instead of or in addition to software ones (like the record button, use of the encoder knob where applicable etc)
--- End quote ---
In the current version of the interface, there's a difference between the physical record button and the touch-screen one. I've unified them in this design, which I hope will work because the current situation is rather confusing. The jog wheel can control everything in the new design too, so you shouldn't ever actually need to use the touch-screen. (I'd love to add more hardware buttons - but that adds more cost and complexity.)
--- Quote from: NiNeff on September 24, 2019, 08:26:05 AM ---
* Please add the ability to select a color theme (light / dark)
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I'd like to. I think it should be possible without too much trouble, with the current tech stack. You're not the only person to request it, and I think the light version works quite a bit better in really well-lit environments. 🙂
jasonfish:
You make decent points. I guess the low-profile version, if we need to go with always-visible to please the masses, would be preferable.
And I'd skip the drag-drop customization idea. Just a huge can of worms, especially when trying to provide tech support.
BiduleOhm:
I agree with jasonfish, I don't think either that the drag to configure feature is a good idea here (usually it's very complex and time consuming to implement, and it introduces a lot of bugs) as we don't really need that much customization. But something configurable like enable/disable auto hide, auto hide delay, menu size: large/small, etc... would be perfectly adequate and far easier to implement ;)
--- Quote from: DDR on September 24, 2019, 05:42:58 PM ---I personally find swipe and most multitouch gestures quite hard to discover, since there's no good way to visually indicate what gesture will have the desired effect. Pinch to zoom and drag to move are the only exceptions, since they're reasonably intuitive and very common.
--- End quote ---
I'm not a fan of hard to discover features either but since Android does it and is very widespread I presumed people already know the swipe down thing, but I can be wrong.
NiNeff:
I agree with all of you here.
An easier solution to the configurable menu other than drag and drop would be to simply be able to enable / disable some elements via checkboxes in a configuration list. Or even more hardcore use a config file so only the true nerds can use it ;)
DDR:
--- Quote from: BiduleOhm on September 25, 2019, 04:21:30 AM ---I'm not a fan of hard to discover features either but since Android does it and is very widespread I presumed people already know the swipe down thing, but I can be wrong.
--- End quote ---
Hm. You're right, I should probably put it in there if I can. I don't think it'll hurt anything, and having things respond the way you're used to is nice. It's also the way the Blackmagic camera we have here works, so some might be used to it. I don't like the feel their implementation though, tbh, so I'll have to figure out why and see if we can do better.
As for the customisation, I think having disable/enable and the menu sizes is a very good start. I'll put that in the initial version. :)
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