Forums » Suggestions
Default Skin improvements
There are a couple elements of the default skin which I feel could be improved upon. Nothing extremely huge or arduous. I'd like to see a change made that makes the control-with-focus more noticeable and disabled controls more recognizable as such. As it currently stands, it's kinda hard to identify either.
I assume you mean in the main station/PDA interface? Light brighten up cases where you're hovering over a button?
Any examples on the disabled controls that need to be clearer? Some controls may use different mechanics from others, if there are specific cases that are bad, that'd be helpful to know.
Any examples on the disabled controls that need to be clearer? Some controls may use different mechanics from others, if there are specific cases that are bad, that'd be helpful to know.
I think he means a bigger contrast difference between the light blue used for "active" things and the less-light blue used for "inactive" things.
Sorry for the delay in responding to this.
While most people utilize the mouse primarily for UI navigation, and thus are unlikely to have much issue identifying which control has the focus, sometimes it's just more convenient to be able to tab through the interface. I tried to create a mockup interface which accurately displays the behaviours of the most common controls (screenshot below), and aside from lack of transparency, I think it's a close approximation to what is seen in the default UI.
In this screenshot the "Active 1" textbox has the focus, and the "Active 2" button is being hovered over to show the how a button would look if it had focus.
Now the first thing I realized as I was putting this together is that the text controls appear to be completely unmodified from a default IUP implementation, so I can understand if it's not feasible or desirable to modify the difference in contrast between a textbox with focus and one without. Similarly, when a textbox is made inactive there is no visual change, and so the onus would be on the interface writer to manually change the BGCOLOR if they want to make it clear a textbox is inactive. To further illustrate the contrast between text boxes with and without focus, here are a couple screenshots from Options > Interface.
Buttons are probably the single item where I feel the highlighting effect of the default skin is too understated for the how common they are, especially considering that most tabs are created using buttons with a similar look.
How quickly can you spot the button with focus in the following screenshots (answers below)?
1) Station PDA
2) Character Select Screen
The radio buttons and toggle controls I feel are handled well enough, as show below.
The listbox-dropdown controls are less of an issue, I guess, since they don't appear to be modifiable from the keyboard anyway.
The answers to which buttons have the focus are
1) Set Preset 1
2) The 4th character slot button
While most people utilize the mouse primarily for UI navigation, and thus are unlikely to have much issue identifying which control has the focus, sometimes it's just more convenient to be able to tab through the interface. I tried to create a mockup interface which accurately displays the behaviours of the most common controls (screenshot below), and aside from lack of transparency, I think it's a close approximation to what is seen in the default UI.
In this screenshot the "Active 1" textbox has the focus, and the "Active 2" button is being hovered over to show the how a button would look if it had focus.
Now the first thing I realized as I was putting this together is that the text controls appear to be completely unmodified from a default IUP implementation, so I can understand if it's not feasible or desirable to modify the difference in contrast between a textbox with focus and one without. Similarly, when a textbox is made inactive there is no visual change, and so the onus would be on the interface writer to manually change the BGCOLOR if they want to make it clear a textbox is inactive. To further illustrate the contrast between text boxes with and without focus, here are a couple screenshots from Options > Interface.
Buttons are probably the single item where I feel the highlighting effect of the default skin is too understated for the how common they are, especially considering that most tabs are created using buttons with a similar look.
How quickly can you spot the button with focus in the following screenshots (answers below)?
1) Station PDA
2) Character Select Screen
The radio buttons and toggle controls I feel are handled well enough, as show below.
The listbox-dropdown controls are less of an issue, I guess, since they don't appear to be modifiable from the keyboard anyway.
The answers to which buttons have the focus are
1) Set Preset 1
2) The 4th character slot button