What about the fonts? It looks out of phase with the rest of the UI. I think using the same fonts as the DE and UI would make for more unified appearance.
The rest of the UI will also use the new font. Already in the works.
What about the fonts? It looks out of phase with the rest of the UI. I think using the same fonts as the DE and UI would make for more unified appearance.
I'm trying to imagine what it will look like. That will take some getting used to. What prompted the need for new fonts?The rest of the UI will also use the new font.
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?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.
+1There is also a Compact mode for folks who want dialogs to consume as little space as possible. An example:
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The size of the pictures doesn't correlate in any way to what it will look like in the product. Some examples of sizing are here, as actually implemented. Some dialogs like Helix and Hole will be long and likely have scroll bars. Most will not. Also depends on your resolution and monitor DPI - I run mine a little "bigger" than what is probably average for the display I'm using, so my dialogs (and every other UI element) will take up more space compared to what yours might. Some *cough* totally normal people run 4k at 100% and all this will be tiny. So really just depends.
These are some of the longer ones we currently have implemented, Most will be shorter. And even these will be shorter most of the time, unless you use all the options all the time.
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There is also a Compact mode for folks who want dialogs to consume as little space as possible. An example:
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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.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?
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.@Max
Will the height of the dialog boxes be resizable? If so, will Alibre remember the size between sessions? I am also concerned that the new dialog boxes look much larger than the V27 dialog boxes and will consume a lot of screen real estate - particularly on laptops.
WinForms via the DevExpress toolkit.@Max, what's the UI tech? WinForms or WPF?
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.
@Max
I certainly appreciate the compact mode option. Do the new menus occupy more screen real estate than the V27 menus? The V27 menus apear to be wider so it is hard to tell. Also, what are the design goals with the new menus menus other than cosmetics?
@Max, I take it then that the translators working concurrent with the programmers in development?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.
@Max, I take it then that the translators working concurrent with the programmers in development?
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.