GUI proposals - Images for the wikipage

[Eleazar]

Counting clicks and the distance the mouse must move to accomplish a task, is one legitimate way to measure the ease of using a UI set-up. Since many actions on a computer willl be repeated hundreds or thousands of times, saving a few clicks can add up. But sorting through an excessively long list takes time too.

At this point in Wesnoth's history i don't think we need to divide them into tabs, but with enough campaigns that may change.

but the big picture:
This is movment in a very much needed direction.

[Sangel]

How about check-boxes at the bottom or top of the list?

[X] Show Mainline Campaigns
[X] Show User-created Campaigns

Both would be on by default, but if you tick one off, those campaigns would no longer show up in the list?

I'm not sure what the code implications would be, but from a human-user perspective I believe this would help with both the "overly-long list" problem and the "tab being an extra click" problem.


Oh, and I agree with Eleazar's comment - while we may quibble over details, these proposals are great improvements to Wesnoth in general. Thanks for getting the discussion going, freim.

[martenzo]

Personally, I would prefer two different tabs. All of these are IMO, very good proposals. I wonder why aren't they in trunk yet (or mabye they already are?)?

[romnajin]

Personally, I would prefer two different tabs. All of these are IMO, very good proposals. I wonder why aren't they in trunk yet (or mabye they already are?)?

I believe it's because(correct me if I'm wrong, frame) these are just art...not actually coded UI.

[Soliton]

Personally, I would prefer two different tabs. All of these are IMO, very good proposals. I wonder why aren't they in trunk yet (or mabye they already are?)?

Because you haven't implemented them yet and we didn't want to spoil the fun.

[irrevenant]

How about check-boxes at the bottom or top of the list?

[X] Show Mainline Campaigns
[X] Show User-created Campaigns

(or alternately tabs)

How many official campaigns do we plan on having? Unless it's more than half-a dozen or so, it's probably simpler all round to just use this sort of a setup under the same tab:

== Official Campaigns ==
Heir to the Throne
[...]
== Unofficial Campaigns ==
Aardvarks Adventures
[...]

(I could do example graphics but hopefully it's clear what I mean so I can save the server space...)

[freim]

Sapient has started implementing several of the ideas from these mock-ups now. The slate border/black bg selection box turned out to look quite cool imo, but it has some problems:

* It's most common that bright/light colors show the selected part, so people tend to look for this. The black bg selection box switch this around making it harder to see what is selected (this is also agrevated by the bg of the selection list widget is brighter than the selection box and the window bg
* The attack dialog is problematic since it uses the same border for the attack icons themselves

I'm trying out some modifications which I will post here. They use the same color scheme as the buttons, and I think they look quite ok. Maybe not as good as the black bg one, but they make it far easier to recognize which part is selected I think.

Fire away, give me some feedback so we can work out how to make the GUI more consistent and better looking without loosing usability.

[freim]

Zookeeper suggested grayscaling the non-selected icons, could be a good idea I think:

[Sapient]

If I am interpreting that right, it is a horizontal black-blue-black gradient. I assume this would also change the color of simpler selections (such as editable text, username lists, drop down statusbar menus, and progressbars) from red to blue. Or would some still be red?


Oh, and I don't like the grayscale for non-selected items; visually, it's confusing rather than informative, and it does detract from the artwork somewhat. Still, it was an interesting idea.

[freim]

If I am interpreting that right, it is a horizontal black-blue-black gradient. I assume this would also change the color of simpler selections (such as editable text, username lists, drop down statusbar menus, and progressbars) from red to blue. Or would some still be red?

No, it will not be red. This is a possible replacement for the black/slate border one. It's not a gradient, but a texture.

[Jetrel]

My comments:

• I like this, by and large. Especially:
attack_dialog4.png
campaign_gui5.png

• The grayscaling - or perhaps partial grayscaling of the icons seems to be a reasonably good idea. I might shy away from full grayscaling, but partial is alright.

• The attack icons must have a border of some sort. Not having it built into the icon is good, but they must have some kind of a border. A more solid, less grainy version of what they currently have would be nice, and other things might also be welcome.

[freim]

Sapient, the border and bg texture:

When using these you should make the bg of the nonselected part darker again.