UI Revamp Proposal: µAero

[RyanBiscuit]

I was taking a look at µTorrent's interface not so long ago, and noticed that it doesn't fit as well with Windows Vista or 7 as it does with XP. I thought something had to be done.

The following designs are simple mockups created in Adobe Fireworks to fit what I believe would be a good design to comply with the Windows Vista and 7 style, and I will post updates as the design progresses.

Stage one - Base UI (5th Sept 09 - 2:27am)

The base of the window should embrace the Aero theme's transparency instead of simply passing it off as another window component.

I believe that having a tabbed layout would save a bunch of space that could be used for other purposes (we'll get to that in one of the later designs). Users respond positively, in most cases, when tabs are presented, as they save space, time and are generally good looking if they fit in with the whole theme of the program.

The Feeds Tab Displays how many Feeds have been updated recently. The number decreases as these unread feeds are opened by the user.

The Torrents Tab Displays the current progress of all torrents.

The Search Tab Contains an input which the user types into. Upon hitting the Enter key, The Search Tab is opened to reveal a bog-standard web interface (or simply a container) with their search results in.

Stage two - "Torrents" tab (5th Sept 09 - 4:13am)

The buttons are pretty standard. We have the first three; "Add Torrent", "Add Torrent from URL", and "Create Torrent". We then have the "Delete" button, "Play/Pause" (combined button), and "Stop", and of course "Up" and "Down". I was toying with the idea of leaving the "Up" and "Down" buttons out, seeing as the same sort of thing can be done using drag-and-drop, but I thought they looked nice, so I left them in.

The torrents tab is pretty predictable. Contains all current torrents in a list. The selected Torrent has a background image as opposed to the unselected torrents, and its progressbar is shinier.

Percentage and size remaining, to me, just work when they're on top of a progressbar. Saves space, is visually appealing and delivers essential data without having to look away.

When a torrent has finished downloading, the progress resets to 0% and the torrent begins seeding. The progressbar turns blue, and a percentage is no longer shown. Also, the priority of the torrent is lowered below that of the downloading torrents.

If a virus is detected in a torrent download (possible µTorrent virus detection system?), it is immediately aborted and moved to a "Virus vault" if available, where a user can either choose to continue downloading or delete the files. If a vault is not available, the torrent is simply stopped in its tracks and the user is prompted to delete or continue downloading.

As for the "General", "Trackers", "Peers" tabs etc., I thought it best to leave those alone for now. I'll come back to them later.

More developments coming soon...