The rest of the UI will also use the new font. Already in the works.
UI Feedback requested :D
- Thread starter Max
- Start date
The rest of the UI will also use the new font. Already in the works.
It is not drastically different. We bolded a few things in dialogs. Not really much to get used to. Here is a higher res version.
HaroldL
Alibre Super User
I guess that's not too bad a look. I think what was concerning to me was the bold fonts in your previous images. Do they bold when their field is selected or are they hard coded bold?
Would love to see the Type selection be via 1-click buttons rather than a drop-down menu.
Thanks for allowing some input/feedback. Looking forward to the next release with the new dialogs. Any idea how long?
NateLiquidGravity
Alibre Super User
I noticed full capitalization of the title and some things in the dialog. Is that part of the system wide changes or just accidentally included in the mock up?
I'm wondering how these changes work for more visual and tabbed dialogs like the sheet metal Flange tool?
I'm wondering how these changes work for more visual and tabbed dialogs like the sheet metal Flange tool?
Stu3d
Senior Member
motoxmuseum
Member
I think it is fine and don't see the dialog box as too cluttered.
domcm
Senior Member
stepalibre
Alibre Super User
it is unlikely any dialogs will have tabs. We are trying to go vertical, for a variety of different reasons, for everything. Some things it may not be possible, but we are going to try real hard.
The capitalization is there and part of the design. However, if people hate it, it's easy enough to change.
Height is not resizable. That wouldn't really make sense to begin with for most dialogs. That being said, there is a Compact and a Regular mode for the dialogs, and the Compact mode lessens the margins between controls making the dialog take less vertical space. Dialogs are horizontally resizable, within some reasonable limits.
WinForms via the DevExpress toolkit.
HaroldL
Alibre Super User
Something like that, just that the icons would be unified to have the same appearance as the others and also have Help pop-ups as you hover over them.
Some are taller than their legacy counterparts, but most are narrower.
There are quite a few design goals - looking nice is just a bonus:
Consistency
Many dialogs today are wildly inconsistent across many metrics. For example, some have inputs with a flip button; others do not - for no good reason. Some are resizable, some are not. There are many different kinds of ways the dialogs today are inconsistent, and that makes the product hard to learn and makes people less efficient. A common thread has been, seemingly, to squeeze as many controls into the smallest space possible, with less regard for clarity - sometimes this results in dialogs having 2 columns for no reason, where you switch between columns for inputs - think Extrude - most initial inputs happen on the right side. Some inputs turn red if the value is out of bounds - some do not. If you don't realize how often this happens, you are just used to it - that's not a good thing to have to be used to.
Clarity
Many dialogs today are haphazardly laid out and contain various dialog states simultaneously, showing inputs that are not available to use but offering no suggestion as to why. A goal is to make inputs completely self-evident. A simple example on Extrude is the Offset input, which is grayed out unless you happen to have To Geometry selected. It can be frustrating and time-wasting to try to figure out why things can't be used. The new layouts make significant progress in this area, showing only controls that can be used at the time based on the previous selections.
User Efficiency
We want to implement things that make people more efficient. Things like consistent tab order, Favorites, etc. We could do that in the older style, but it would be a large waste of effort if we have to touch every dialog and the only thing we get from it is a few efficiency bonuses.
Ease of Learning
When things are inconsistent, and when controls are shown that can't be used, and things behave differently that should behave the same, it ultimately makes the product harder to learn. Like any company, we need to keep new users coming through the door for the long-term stability of the company. An investment to make the new-user experience as clean, efficient, and self-evident as possible is directly an investment in our future revenue, which ultimately is an investment in our future development for existing customers. Fortunately, many of the principles that make the new-user experience much better also directly translate to making the experienced user's experience more efficient.
Development Efficiency
Today many dialogs are silos - to make certain kinds of changes requires "touching every dialog", which invariably has meant we don't do it because it's hugely time consuming. Moving forward many of these kinds of changes will be much easier to do, resulting in more refinement over time than has occurred in the past. Further, there is a hugely complex back-end for managing translations since words in German may be much longer than English for example. There's a whole system to re-layout the dialogs by translators which is enormously time-consuming to manage. Top-down dialogs prevent the need for this step entirely since string length is much less of a concern.
User Experience
There are a lot of subtle things that go into this, but ultimately the above and other things like carefully considered input box sizes, less clutter, more feedback, and a nice appearance all contribute to a feeling of the product being pleasant to use, easy to understand, and efficient. The old dialogs feel old, and to be fair many were made 20 years ago. We're looking to modernize the experience of using our product in general. We don't want to keep seeing feedback along the lines of "Alibre is great, if you can get past the UI" or "Alibre is great, but there's a huge learning curve" or "It looks older but it is great once you get the hang of it" or "I tried it but a lot of the dialogs looked way too complicated" - it's time for us to invest significantly in the product's interface for many different reasons. We also hope people think it looks nice when it's over.
Well, the image you have is for the website which is a totally different and automated translation. The product itself is translated into more languages, typically by channel partners. So yes, generally they work with us prior to launch to make sure dialogs using their translated strings are legible and not cut off or overlapping etc. This reason is not a huge contributor to the dialog project, but is a nice freebie we get for doing it.
domcm
Senior Member
@Max
I really appreciate your very detailed response for the interface design goals! That makes a lot of sense and helps me understand the overall plan.
One thing I didn't appreciate when I looked at your original images is that it looks like the dialog boxes start shorter and then grow longer as you check feature options such as Draft, Thin Wall, and Along Direction. Am I seeing that correctly? If so, that will allay most of my concerns about the new menus taking up more screen real estate.