Some UI observations

[anaemik]

Hi guys

First off, thanks so much for finally bringing this out to us - I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Having lived with the beta for a couple of days now I have noticed a couple of interface quirks that I'd like to point out:

- adding a new column resets the "name" column to its default width (which is too wide imo) and undoes any work you have done to resize the columns to their optimum widths (edit: I've just tried this in 0.9.1 and it appears to be fixed)

- the ratio column appears to be broken currently

- a coupe of the columns seem to have a minimum width that is too wide (seeds and peers spring to mind)

- it would be nice to set up different "column sets" for each screen - ie one set for downloading, another for completed etc

- it would also be very nice if you were able to adjust a column to its optimum width by double clicking in the seperator between two adjoining columns (like the Finder's column view)

- the default size of the info pane is probably too small, and it might be more intuitive to replace the resize icon to a double headed verticle arrow from the current hand icon.

- some work could be done to make the "general" info pane more legible

These are just my preliminary observations. On the whole, I think the interface has a very clean look and feel, and for the most part adheres to Apple's HIG - which I approve of coming from Azureus. A couple of legibility and usability issues are all that have to be addressed in order for me to feel very happy with the UI. There are of course other features I'd like to see implemented, but I will leave those for a more appropriate post.

Thanks again.

[thelittlefire]

Adding columns doesn't keep existing column widths, known bug.

Ratio broken, known bug.

Check again with 0.90.1 it appears all columns now have min_width of 1 character.

Previously requested for Windows. What was accomplished until now was separate torrent and RSS "views" . . . but this has not been ported since columns/listviews are in the PLIST and not settings.dat anymore.

Auto-size would be nice, but don't expect it anytime soon

Too small for what? On-load uT/Mac shows some info, granted it's not "alot" but it does show everything OK. The gripbar, is well a gripbar apparently. And with .90.1 it doesn't show errors when resizing.

Blame the eye-candy conscious HIG etc, gradients are silly. Also check the rest of the (new) UI forum.

[anaemik]

Thanks for the reply.

"Check again with 0.90.1 it appears all columns now have min_width of 1 character."

I'm using 0.9.0.1 (13608) and this is not my experience. While it is possible to resize certain columns to much smaller than I'd ever want them (though certainly not down to 1 pixel, but this doesn't bother me), some columns that don't conform to this behaviour for me are Remaining, Done, Seeds and Peers.

"Blame the eye-candy conscious HIG etc, gradients are silly. Also check the rest of the (new) UI forum."

Actually, for the most part I think the HIG when properly followed is much more concerned with usability than eyecandy. Also, having skimmed the HIG in a cursory fashion, I don't see any stipulation that demands the use of a gradient in this case. While I'm no programmer, I would argue that the info pane effectively acts as an internal drawer (such as those you may have found in iTunes 7 and earlier or applications such as Pathfinder), and in such cases it seems well within the guidelines of the HIG to style the contents of this drawer in the same fashion as the rest of the app. However, I can see why the devs would wish to distinguish this section visually from the area above it. I just feel that the gradient isn't the most effective way of doing it. Something like this however, might be a more legible way of going about it while still honouring the HIG.