Two UI ideas

[Ron]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm planning a major UI overhaul in the next release cycle. That will probably be somewhere around july/august because that is when I have my summer vacation. I wasn't planning on doing much more fiddling with it now, but I'll see what I can do.

School ain't fun! :-) *yawn*

-Ron

[Mark F]

Girder 3.1.x is leaps and bounds ahead of 3.0.x in terms of function, speed and, in some ways, user interface (UI). Here are two things that, IMHO, are still lacking a bit. As if you need another person suggesting UI changes ... :D Please feel free to ignore these ideas as the FUNCTIONS work fine (this is NOT a bug report!).

When choosing the enable or disable device command, it would be nice to be able to choose the device from a list. Much like when choosing a target of the "On all events from" in the learn event stuff. While I'm suggesting, how you store the information in the command tree is up to you; but, displaying the name of the device in that field would seem more user friendly than the number of the device. OK, this is a third idea. :evil:

In the case where an edit field in the UI can be used for multiple things depending on which command is selected from a drop-down box, it would be nice if the title of the multi-use edit field would track to the command chosen. For example, the multi-line edit field titled "Icon / Device" in the Girder tab might change to "Device" when a disable/enable device command is chosen or "Script" when the Variable Manipulation Script command is chosen. You track the changes in the drop-down boxes already to enable and disable the controls so this might not add much more than one SetWindowText() call to that processing. Places where this would be nice are:
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(Window tab) the X/Timeout(ms) field
(OS tab) the step size field
(Girder tab) the Icon / Device field

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I recently used these parts of the interface a bit more than I normally do and found them to be a bit unpolished.

Have fun at school today. :P

[Mark F]

I can only address one of your points. Under or above the anit-repeat time field (depending on the version you are using) is a large, blank, edit field. This is for comments. :)

26*16 IS a big number to try to remember! I would have a hard enough time remembering the 8 devices. ;)

[kev]

Another UI improvement would be to be imformed if you are trying to control two different things with the one button code.

I am using an el-chepo universal remote control (£7.99) and just selected some codes that didn't control any of my stuff (Sony one's are good!) and was getting frustrated when it wasn't having the disired effect (Winamp was ffwding and then pausing.

I found the cause of the problem was that FFWD and Pause (and Rwd for that matter) all outputted the same code.

Also i have manually been setting Girder up and it's getting a bit confusing keeping track of which button is assigned to which function, a comment's field would be nice to hold this sort of information.

The remote i've got can control 8 (yes EIGHT) devices and has a shifted mode for each of these - 26*16 buttons, that's a helluva a lot of functions to try and remember.

Also when changing the keyboard commands etc (bottom right) a "do you want to keep changes" prompt would be nice when moving away.

Little erratum in the help stuff. In the "Making your first Girder action !" section of the Getting Started page it say's "Then learn a IR code by pressing learn IR, and pressing a button on your remote control."

This had me confused for a while before realising what you meant was "Then learn the IR code by pressing Learn Event, and pressing a button on your remote control"

Apart from these Very Good program and keep up the good work.

[kev]

A little label saying comment's would be nice then :D

[kev]

I've got another one.

I have inadvertantly closed girder a few times now, so would it be possible to turn the X into a minimise to tray button, like what digiguide does?

Right click the remote icon and select exit would still close girder.

If not a "do you wish to exit" box would be better than nothing. :D