DeleD Community Edition

chronozphere · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:31 am Post subject: Some tiny DeleD GUI improvements

Hi Delgine

I've bought DeleD Pro a couple of day's ago, and so far i'm very happy with it. However i've bumped into 2 little isseus concerning the GUI, that are worth mentioning:

Firstly.. i think the options window is too big. I have a screen resolution of 1280x800 and because i'm visually impaired, i'm not planning to try higher reso's. The options window is a little more than 800 pixels in height, which causes troubles with my reso. I cannot see the Apply/OK buttons unless i move the window as high as i can, and hide the taskbar. Other app's also show this problem, and it's a bit frustrating. I think i'm not the only one having this prob. Not everyone uses 1600x1200 these day's. Confused

Can you restructure the options window a little bit so that it fit's on my screen? I think this can be done by making the window wider, or adding some more tabs. 100 or 150 pixels less would make a BIG difference.

The second problem is a tiny thing. I noticed that the right sidebar with Scene/materials etc... is not wide enough for me. I get to see the [<,>] arrow buttons because all the tabs do not fit in that space. Could you make it sizable so i can give it some more room, and increase accesibility?

I think these problems all have to do with my reso and font settings. That's why you probably couldn't see these problems coming because y'all use higher reso's. I hope you can fix these things, because it makes DeleD more accesible for me. Razz

Thank u very much! Smile

P.S: I just noticed that on another PC with 1024x786 the options are not too big. Therefore i recommend to make the window sizable, and save the preferred size in an INI or in the register. When the controls do not fit in the window, scrollbars can be added to make them all accesible. Smile

Mr.Fletcher · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 11:46 am Post subject:

I too have a resolution of 1200*800 on my laptop but the options window fits perfectly, there's even still some pixels space left. Maybe you increased the standard font size of windows so your options window gets scaled up?

About the materials tab, I'm not very happy with it either. I'd rather prefer it to have a button to change the category instead of those arrows and tabs and when you click it, you get a list in the material tab that lets you chose another category. So you don't have to scroll though a load of categories, you can simply click on the list item.
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chronozphere · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:21 pm Post subject:

Daaark · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:33 pm Post subject:

Okay that makes sense. I was wondering why you were having trouble seeing at a much higher resolution than I used to run.

The right sidebar is undockable. You can drag it to wherever you want.

Basiror · DeleD PRO user Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 59

please implement splitter views instead of the blue bars on top of each editing view, that saves a lot of screen space

Dr. Zoop · Member Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

Daaark · Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 4:22 am Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 8:10 pm Post subject:

chronozphere: Thanks for bringing up the Large Fonts issue with the options screen (and other interfaces), we'll get it fixed.

Mr Fletcher: Am I correct in reading that you are suggesting replacing the material category tabs with a list view here, or is your suggestion more complex than that? We haven't decided on the revamped Material Editor GUI yet, but a folder tree in the bottom panel and a category list in the bottom panel, with thumbnails to the right, and a detail view of the selected material to the left... well things are getting a bit crowded. Very Happy

Seriously though, your suggestion is noted, and we'll do some more experimenting.

Barisor: We will. For now, you can always switch XP/Vista to the "classic" skin, to win an instant 8 (+/-) vertical pixels per view.

Dark: Are you sure you are attached to the separate views? You seem to be the only one thus far.

Regarding the tiling: it is the default Windows MDI tiling, which is plain silliness. The order in which they are tiled has to do with what window has been focused last, and is deterministic. They are placed top->bottom, left->right in the reversed order that they last got focus. So if you want
A, B
C, D

You'll have to click D, B, C, A then hit Tile. Yes, it's a crumpy workaround, and we will get a proper tiling algorithm in, but at least there is a workaround. Smile

Daaark · Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 8:22 pm Post subject:

Mr.Fletcher · Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 8:27 pm Post subject:

Daaark · Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject:

When you create a material in the editor, that material shoudl get auto selected so you can modify the settings right away, instead of having to go find it first.

chronozphere · Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:29 pm Post subject:

@Mr. Fletcher: I think a dropdown menu would be better (instead of that "choose category" button). It fits in the same space, and it saves us one click Wink

Mr.Fletcher · Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:05 pm Post subject:

Yeah, that would be just the same in the end.
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Starnick · DeleD PRO user Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 611

chronozphere · Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 9:25 am Post subject:

I like the idea of having splitter-views (i think it should be optional). Smile

Because i have bigger fonts, my title bars are thinker which i think is a waste of screen-space. And dragging the anchor point in the middle to change the window sizes is much more efficient than changing the sizes of all the windows one by one (saves alot of dragging). Moreover i like the screenshot (previous post) with the splitter-views very much. It looks very clean. The minimize, maximize and close buttons could be added to the popup menu. Options/shortcuts to change a function of a window (front, left, UV etc) would also be nice.

Is my little font request still on your todo-list? Haven't seen it in version 1.81 Confused

Cheers