Thanks for testing. I assume you would find that file again in /usr/lib64 as it is in /usr/lib on my machine. It is a dependency of GTK+ so I tried to compile against wxX11 instead of wxGTK. Here is the result:
Settings++_x11.bin
I don't really like the look of it and you'll probably have similar issues with it. Aside from also linking GTK+ statically (which would bloat the app and I have no idea how to do) a "real" x64 build seems to be the best option.
I would ask you to post the build you did so we can see if Agon can use it or if there are still more issues.
Unified Setting Tool (based on Settings++)
Moderator: Moderators
Well the numbers are missing from above the sliders, which is bad. My build is located at http://www.ma-tea.com/~Matt/Settings++.exe
That makes three of us and exactly for the same reason. It seems wxX11 doesn't have that functionality. So I'll keep building against wxGTK and maybe you or LordMatt will do a 64bit build once I'm further ahead implementing stuff.Agon wrote:But currently I don't like it.
@AF: Is that from aesthetic or usability point of view? I'll soon add a menubar and think tabs on the bottom look nicer.
Sidenote: Trying to build with scons version > 96.64 (97.00 is included in gutsy) will give errors
tabs on the bottom is horrific user design, just look at the early aflobby alphas
First off, the user expects the tabs on the top because thats where they are 99.99999% of all tab panes. They will immediately look at the top left corner for them, and when they don't find them itll give a bad impression and make the Ui seem more clunky. They then have to scan the entire window for the tabs rather than taking the intuitive step of just going to the top left corner, which is a slight annoyance, its impeding the user.
Of course there is always a minority who like the tabs somewhere else and if they really want that they should have a special version or an option, but otherwise stick to the top as the default option or always have it at the top, that way you conform with user convention.
Also the tabs at the top acts as titles.
Also in case you havent got windows, the program looks horrible under windows, try taking off the rose tinted glasses that are the Gnome UI themes.
This program is a much needed improvement however it has a lot of room to fill in the easy quick improvements department.
Aside from moving the tabs to the top, you have layout issues. Make the two sections stretch so the division between them is in the middle of the window. Otherwise it looks clunky and unfinished, and has an iffy feeling about it.
Also things like simult. should be expanded into then full word. rendering options A and B give no indication of what they actually contain or why they're separated, they should be more descriptive, otherwise there's no justification for the two boxes. There's also little spacing between the slider components and the sides of the boxes.
You have plenty of unused space there's no reason to cram components up against each other, and it conflicts with the usual OS UI layouts making the program stand out.
Now looking at this there's somewhat of a problem in titles and such. These are a mix between UI options and video options, and the use of the 'rendering' title is confusing because isn't that what the previous tab was for? Wouldn't it logically be Rendering C at least even if it matched the tb title? Somewhat illogical ordering and arrangement going on here.
Once again scr. versus screen, there's plenty of wasted space on this tab why do you need to abbreviate?
Anti aliasing seems out of place as does depth buffer. There's no explanation fo what a Z-Buffer actually is, at elast the old program had the words 'depth buffer'. The Screen resolution label and the 2 boxes it labels are all equidistant from eachother and the surrounding controls which suggests they're their own controls in their own right but logically they aren't which shows up bad.
Run full screen should be grouped with the screen resolution, and screen resolution moved to the top above the check boxes.
The check boxes are also crammed right up against each other. There's no spacing in between for logical groups, nm in between controls, and it looks bad, ugly.
Imagien the mona lisa, but instead of exploiting the whole canvas the artist painted it in a small box in a corner and wasted the rest of the canvas, despite the potential cost of such a canvas or the advantages of the extra space.
filibustering, plain and simple. No logical spacing and grouping, seemingly arbitrarily ordered, lots of wasted space, components crammed up against each other like sardines in a can.
What's more, what're these fragment program or vertex programs? The end user is unlikely to know anything about Open GL, or what this means so you need to explain it. This tab is an assault on the sense, and users would usually skip over it than deal with the attack.
Its even more obvious here. The box isn't even half the window its 2/3's and it looks wierd. Why do these sliders have to be the same size and dimensions as the existing sliders that are themselves deformed? Make the box fill the whole page and resize the sliders to suit.
There's also an issue with capital letters, or rather the lack of them. You should add a % sign to the sliders too.
Also of note, see how the title of the box is misaligned with the user controls. Another symptom of havign no component spacing of any kind.
The mismatching boxes aside from clunky looking have bad titles.
First off the mouse speed title is misleading, if only because you cant change the mouse speed via the options, but ebcause these are scrolling speeds, and affect arrow key scrolling aswell as mouse screen edge scrolling.
This tab would be better called the 'camera' tab, with all mentions of mouse xyz being camera xyz. There's also missing checkboxes for disablign and enabling camera modes. A label or two underneath the camera radio boxes would help a lot describing what the camera actually does.
This page seems a little odd, its like that painting thats just a tiny red square on a green canvas.
A user is unlikely to know what stdout means, so add "/console" to the end.
There's also no clue as to wether 0 means all messages or 10 means all messages or the other way around in the verbosity slider.
All in all about 60% of the interfaces surface area is wasted while all the user controls are crammed up against each other into badly aligned inconsistent groupings. lots of paradoxical labels. Its a user design nightmare, but it's fixable.
First off, the user expects the tabs on the top because thats where they are 99.99999% of all tab panes. They will immediately look at the top left corner for them, and when they don't find them itll give a bad impression and make the Ui seem more clunky. They then have to scan the entire window for the tabs rather than taking the intuitive step of just going to the top left corner, which is a slight annoyance, its impeding the user.
Of course there is always a minority who like the tabs somewhere else and if they really want that they should have a special version or an option, but otherwise stick to the top as the default option or always have it at the top, that way you conform with user convention.
Also the tabs at the top acts as titles.
Also in case you havent got windows, the program looks horrible under windows, try taking off the rose tinted glasses that are the Gnome UI themes.
This program is a much needed improvement however it has a lot of room to fill in the easy quick improvements department.
Aside from moving the tabs to the top, you have layout issues. Make the two sections stretch so the division between them is in the middle of the window. Otherwise it looks clunky and unfinished, and has an iffy feeling about it.
Also things like simult. should be expanded into then full word. rendering options A and B give no indication of what they actually contain or why they're separated, they should be more descriptive, otherwise there's no justification for the two boxes. There's also little spacing between the slider components and the sides of the boxes.
You have plenty of unused space there's no reason to cram components up against each other, and it conflicts with the usual OS UI layouts making the program stand out.
Now looking at this there's somewhat of a problem in titles and such. These are a mix between UI options and video options, and the use of the 'rendering' title is confusing because isn't that what the previous tab was for? Wouldn't it logically be Rendering C at least even if it matched the tb title? Somewhat illogical ordering and arrangement going on here.
Once again scr. versus screen, there's plenty of wasted space on this tab why do you need to abbreviate?
Anti aliasing seems out of place as does depth buffer. There's no explanation fo what a Z-Buffer actually is, at elast the old program had the words 'depth buffer'. The Screen resolution label and the 2 boxes it labels are all equidistant from eachother and the surrounding controls which suggests they're their own controls in their own right but logically they aren't which shows up bad.
Run full screen should be grouped with the screen resolution, and screen resolution moved to the top above the check boxes.
The check boxes are also crammed right up against each other. There's no spacing in between for logical groups, nm in between controls, and it looks bad, ugly.
Imagien the mona lisa, but instead of exploiting the whole canvas the artist painted it in a small box in a corner and wasted the rest of the canvas, despite the potential cost of such a canvas or the advantages of the extra space.
filibustering, plain and simple. No logical spacing and grouping, seemingly arbitrarily ordered, lots of wasted space, components crammed up against each other like sardines in a can.
What's more, what're these fragment program or vertex programs? The end user is unlikely to know anything about Open GL, or what this means so you need to explain it. This tab is an assault on the sense, and users would usually skip over it than deal with the attack.
Its even more obvious here. The box isn't even half the window its 2/3's and it looks wierd. Why do these sliders have to be the same size and dimensions as the existing sliders that are themselves deformed? Make the box fill the whole page and resize the sliders to suit.
There's also an issue with capital letters, or rather the lack of them. You should add a % sign to the sliders too.
Also of note, see how the title of the box is misaligned with the user controls. Another symptom of havign no component spacing of any kind.
The mismatching boxes aside from clunky looking have bad titles.
First off the mouse speed title is misleading, if only because you cant change the mouse speed via the options, but ebcause these are scrolling speeds, and affect arrow key scrolling aswell as mouse screen edge scrolling.
This tab would be better called the 'camera' tab, with all mentions of mouse xyz being camera xyz. There's also missing checkboxes for disablign and enabling camera modes. A label or two underneath the camera radio boxes would help a lot describing what the camera actually does.
This page seems a little odd, its like that painting thats just a tiny red square on a green canvas.
A user is unlikely to know what stdout means, so add "/console" to the end.
There's also no clue as to wether 0 means all messages or 10 means all messages or the other way around in the verbosity slider.
All in all about 60% of the interfaces surface area is wasted while all the user controls are crammed up against each other into badly aligned inconsistent groupings. lots of paradoxical labels. Its a user design nightmare, but it's fixable.
Ok first of all, new build:
Windows binary
Linux binary (x86)
Source + both binaries
changes:
- added menubar
- will only save on demand, asks before exiting without saving
- included wxGTK header/libs for static linking on linux
- included wxDev-c++ project file for windows compilation
- properly gpl'ed source
- tabs on top
------------
Response to criticism:
The layout obviously needs work. Up till now I've (mostly) just put whatever was in the old Settings++ on different tabs. That goes for labels and such as well. I'll work through your suggestions and see what I can do to clear it all up.
Be that as it may if there is an relatively easy solution to it I'll take it. I won't go great lengths to implement theming or something like that. After all this a settings tool, not an all day every day app. I'll be happy if and when it is easy to use and understand.
----------
todo:
- LAYOUT
- "simple" tab discussed earlier
- implement resetting of settings
Windows binary
Linux binary (x86)
Source + both binaries
changes:
- added menubar
- will only save on demand, asks before exiting without saving
- included wxGTK header/libs for static linking on linux
- included wxDev-c++ project file for windows compilation
- properly gpl'ed source
- tabs on top
------------
Response to criticism:
The layout obviously needs work. Up till now I've (mostly) just put whatever was in the old Settings++ on different tabs. That goes for labels and such as well. I'll work through your suggestions and see what I can do to clear it all up.
Horrible? That's standard windows look and feel, is it not? Also I have little control over it (except changing colors etc., which I abhorr), that's all wxMSW's work. It is possible though that it hasn't caught up with vista yet. Or is it the same with XP's luna?AF wrote:Also in case you havent got windows, the program looks horrible under windows.
Be that as it may if there is an relatively easy solution to it I'll take it. I won't go great lengths to implement theming or something like that. After all this a settings tool, not an all day every day app. I'll be happy if and when it is easy to use and understand.
----------
todo:
- LAYOUT
- "simple" tab discussed earlier
- implement resetting of settings
This version does not compile for me:
Also please don't distribute in rar as that format isn't supported by the Linux archive manager.
Code: Select all
matt@matt-desktop:~/Desktop/Settings++_source+binaries/settings$ scons
scons: Reading SConscript files ...
/bin/sh: wx2.8.6/bin/wx-config: Permission denied
<type 'exceptions.OSError'>: 'wx2.8.6/bin/wx-config --prefix=wx2.8.6 --exec-prefix=wx2.8.6 --cxxflags --libs core,base' exited 126:
File "/home/matt/Desktop/Settings++_source+binaries/settings/SConstruct", line 10:
s_env.ParseConfig('wx2.8.6/bin/wx-config --prefix=wx2.8.6 --exec-prefix=wx2.8.6 --cxxflags --libs core,base')
File "/usr/lib/scons/SCons/Environment.py", line 1103:
return function(self, self.backtick(command))
File "/usr/lib/scons/SCons/Environment.py", line 468:
raise OSError("'%s' exited %s" % (command, status))
No, what you're seeing in my screen shots is a Vista window title and border, inside which is a windows 95 style UI. There are even minor features in the windows 98 theme that are missing.
Here is an image of the aflobby settings and battle window controls overlapping under Vista
And that's on Vista basic with no aero sfx. Almost all the UI controls have a rollover effect and the effects all fade in and out
A direct comparison:
Most of the issues in my previous post still stand.
Additional issues:
Your menu bar is somewhat pointless at the moment as it only has one menu. There's no reason why it shouldn't be on an initial tab page or a toolbar.
Aside from that you can keep the menu bar as long as you add more menus to it, the most obvious ones being links to a wiki page with more help and an about dialog.
You're also missing a resource file, there's no info aside from the file name to be seen, what's more the settings icon hasn't been added yet.
Here is an image of the aflobby settings and battle window controls overlapping under Vista
And that's on Vista basic with no aero sfx. Almost all the UI controls have a rollover effect and the effects all fade in and out
A direct comparison:
Most of the issues in my previous post still stand.
Additional issues:
Your menu bar is somewhat pointless at the moment as it only has one menu. There's no reason why it shouldn't be on an initial tab page or a toolbar.
Aside from that you can keep the menu bar as long as you add more menus to it, the most obvious ones being links to a wiki page with more help and an about dialog.
You're also missing a resource file, there's no info aside from the file name to be seen, what's more the settings icon hasn't been added yet.
@LordMatt: sorry thats an scons version issue. I forgot to test on scons 0.96.93 . It compiles fine with 0.97. Will correct it with next build.
Isn't there a free unrar that fileroller (?) would/could use? But I agree .zip would be a better choice, it being freely available un both plattforms, right?
@rattle: will add 8192 as an option. Edit fields would be introduced with "advanced" mode somewhen down the line, as discussed earlier
@AF: Isn't your comparison somewhat flawed? As I recall Java GUI frameworks draw the controls etc. themselves? wxWidgets uses native functions (for which wxMSW is a wrapper). Yet I will look into the issue, it is possible that it is just a matter of passing a wrong style argument to the various control constructors.
Isn't there a free unrar that fileroller (?) would/could use? But I agree .zip would be a better choice, it being freely available un both plattforms, right?
@rattle: will add 8192 as an option. Edit fields would be introduced with "advanced" mode somewhen down the line, as discussed earlier
@AF: Isn't your comparison somewhat flawed? As I recall Java GUI frameworks draw the controls etc. themselves? wxWidgets uses native functions (for which wxMSW is a wrapper). Yet I will look into the issue, it is possible that it is just a matter of passing a wrong style argument to the various control constructors.
No idea what you mean, clarify please?AF wrote:You're also missing a resource file
Zip is freely available, so is tar.gz, tar.bz2 (I think), even 7zp is free, though a lot of people probably don't have it. I'm afraid I'm stuck with scons 0.96.93 until I upgrade to gutsy, which I don't have time to do atm.koshi wrote:@LordMatt: sorry thats an scons version issue. I forgot to test on scons 0.96.93 . It compiles fine with 0.97. Will correct it with next build.
Isn't there a free unrar that fileroller (?) would/could use? But I agree .zip would be a better choice, it being freely available un both plattforms, right?
nonsense. The java looknfeels have full control over how their components are drawn. Starting with Java 5 the native looknfeels started itnegrating heavyweights native UI controls.koshi wrote:@AF: Isn't your comparison somewhat flawed? As I recall Java GUI frameworks draw the controls etc. themselves? wxWidgets uses native functions (for which wxMSW is a wrapper). Yet I will look into the issue, it is possible that it is just a matter of passing a wrong style argument to the various control constructors.No idea what you mean, clarify please?AF wrote:You're also missing a resource file
However just to stress the point that this style is not exclusive to aflobby and other native looknfeel java apps:
In the mean time, please remember I am a Vista user, and I've spent time working with almost every windows release (except ME and 2000), aswell as (X)ubuntu 6/7/7.1 and Damn Small Linux.
Here are more examples of post windows 95 styled themes:
http://www.metatheme.org/themes.php
XP theme:
http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures ... p_lite.jpg
Still no idea what you mean, clarify please.AF wrote:You're also missing a resource file
You've posted a picture with three apps of which none is based on wxWidgets. If you like to do something meaningful post a screencap of filezilla 3 running on vista. Preferably one that shows controls I am also using. Then I could look up how they do it.
Significance?AF wrote:In the mean time, please remember I am a Vista user, and I've spent time working with almost every windows release (except ME and 2000), aswell as (X)ubuntu 6/7/7.1 and Damn Small Linux.
Again, significance? That hasn't been in active development for two years and is for Qt/GTK2/Swing.AF wrote:Here are more examples of post windows 95 styled themes:
http://www.metatheme.org/themes.php
Direct linking to that location is disabled...AF wrote: XP theme:
http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/pictures ... p_lite.jpg
Direct linkng works in Firefox for me.
And filezilla uses the default Vista themes. It hasn't got the issues settings++ issues and for all intensive purposes posting a screen shot here would be absolutely pointless, because examples of proper windows theme compliance are in this thread posted numerous times from programs written in numerous programming languages and windowing toolkits. Do I really need to do more to hammer it in? Your program has no compliance of any kind with the windows theme at all. It stands out like an ugly duckling. It doesn't even conform to the colour scheme.
As for resource files, icons, company names, descriptions, compile dates, version numbers, authors, website links etc, google it, this is very basic stuff.
And filezilla uses the default Vista themes. It hasn't got the issues settings++ issues and for all intensive purposes posting a screen shot here would be absolutely pointless, because examples of proper windows theme compliance are in this thread posted numerous times from programs written in numerous programming languages and windowing toolkits. Do I really need to do more to hammer it in? Your program has no compliance of any kind with the windows theme at all. It stands out like an ugly duckling. It doesn't even conform to the colour scheme.
As for resource files, icons, company names, descriptions, compile dates, version numbers, authors, website links etc, google it, this is very basic stuff.
-
BrainDamage
- Lobby Developer
- Posts: 1164
- Joined: 25 Sep 2006, 13:56
to get correctly windows native look 'n feel, you'll have to create a resource file for your project wich will give directives to include a manifest file
just create a settingspp.rc file with the line:
you'll have to edit your make script so that file will be compiled using a resource compiler (in mingw it's called windres) , and then link it in your bin
i hope i was clear
just create a settingspp.rc file with the line:
Code: Select all
#include "wx/msw/wx.rc"i hope i was clear
That was what I wanted to know.AF wrote: It hasn't got the issues settings++ issues
less pointless than screenshots of native appsAF wrote:for all intensive purposes posting a screen shot here would be absolutely pointless
Why do you assume I didn't get it the first time? All I said was that it is standard (as in nothing fancy) windows lnf, while admitting it could be different with xp/vista.AF wrote: Do I really need to do more to hammer it in?
Nice one. I'll google everything you think I might not know asap. Nevermind my actual question.AF wrote:As for resource files, icons, company names, descriptions, compile dates, version numbers, authors, website links etc, google it, this is very basic stuff.
---------------------
edit:
Thank you Brain Damage