Thoughts on 0.9.3 (16930)'s UI changes

[NoOneButMe]

Firon said to just post them, so…

Image 1: http://img.skitch.com/20091017-n573n8txhk4bguccr1ep3dhx2e.jpg

1-5, 12, 18-21: Ugly icon. Doesn't fit in with any system icon.

6. Gradient doesn't fit in with standard system UI bars. Rounded corners shouldn't be rounded either.

7. Corner gradient doesn't quite match the rounded corner.

8, 9, 13. Offcenter. Also for Files. But, didn't feel like making an arrow for that.

10. Actually not objectionable, but it looks too small. But its the same as previous version. Smallest nitpick here.

11. The percent and availability ratio looks weird floating. And the download progress bar there is redundant. You can already see how much you have downloaded in the tableview. It takes up too much space. Get rid of it.

13. Selected tab is higher than the rest. This doesn't work at all.

14, 22, 23. Gradient is too much.

15. What the hell is this UI element? Its just *there*. It doesn't fit in anywhere in OS X. Not with a Cocoa UI element or a non-native SWING or QT or GTK element. Get rid of it. Replace it with something much better.

16. No way of scrolling to the information thats cut off.

17. There's no line. There should be a line separating the bottom bar and the panel with the information

Image 2: http://img.skitch.com/20091017-pd8eknetj9c49sphfpafb47pty.jpg

24. Scale overlaps with what its showing unless resized.

25. Graph colors don't fit in with the grey. Also, the grey sucks. The blue in 0.9.2 and prior was much nicer.

26, 27. Font sizes are too big. There's too many font sizes going on in the image. Torrents/Labels have one size, Column headers another, General/Files/Peers/Speed has a third, then Show/Resolution have a fourth. Not to mention Show/Resolution isn't aligned with the Upload & Download / 1 second time period. And why are there 3-4 different colors for fonts? Its not coherent.

28. Seems wrong with the scrollbar right above it

29. Repetitive. Don't say the interval when it says it right above it.

30. Don't bother mentioning this at all. People can figure it out on their own. Its useless information.

31. The bar itself stands pops out too much. And feels like its overlapping the sidebar.

Image 3: http://img.skitch.com/20091020-dm7wa129nftfhctjydpgi14546.jpg

32. Nonstandard table column headers. Why?

33. Doesn't line up properly.

Image 4: http://img.skitch.com/20091017-b48x7s3fyq29husu5d9kp2mnay.jpg

35. Too much space between the dot and the button.

Image 5: http://img.skitch.com/20091017-guac2s31b74itbic1k66e82xt4.jpg

40. Why is there so much gloss/shine? Its distracting. The shade of blue doesn't work. Make it match the shine that Safari's download window has.

Other UI:

37. The colors for the pieces column in the Files tab aren't dark enough. Use the same colors as µT for Windows if you have to.

38. AppIcon.icns should be 512x512 pixels. BittorrentDocument.icns already is.

Other:

39. DefaultPrefs.plist should really be com.bittorrent.utorrent.plist. It makes things in Xcode much simpler (ie: you register for the prefs, then it automatically reads it from your bundle, instead of you having to tell it to read the defaults from DefaultPrefs.plist)

Bugs:

34. Clicking on this doesn't do anything. Not UI, but a bug.

36. None of the sidebar sorting labels work. They all show all the torrents.

tl;dr: Its absolutely horrible. Vuze is prettier.

[moogly]

Image 3 is the same as image 2.

[NoOneButMe]

Fixed, thanks.

[Mark Free]

Got your Windows-client designer promoted (or demoted?) to the Mac-client designer?

Anyhow. Appreciate all the work, but can't understand why you guys even started to rework the UI design. It was already perfect and only needed some technical fixes.

[OrBiTaL]

I prefer this new design, but I think it needs some little tweaks.

Some suggestions:

- Info bar (the bottom one) Change the background to white and the text color to black. It's more readable this way.

- Add a Move Up/Down button to the toolbar

- Animate the sidebar when opening/closing

I'll try to make some sketches in Photoshop later to show my suggestions.

And thanks for the great app, It's good to know that it's development is progressing.

[testingmac]

where are the infos about tracker status??? like i cant see when is connected or not if the tracker did an epic failed ? pls add a log tab also if its possible

im asking this because today i put a test torrent with a fake tracker which suppose to give an error the program is saying downloading.......which ofc is not true since that tracker doesn't exist and im not connected to him. (pls dont tell me that i have a column with tracker status i know about it im refering at the info (general tab))

[Zandros]

With the new alpha, some things got better, some got worse, and some stayed the same.

What got worse:

1. The selection bar in the torrent list got a gradient. This is obviously not how other applications do it (iTunes, Finder). Selection bars have gradients only when you can select one thing in the list (things in the sidebar, ie. playlists in iTunes and mounted devices in Finder), and are flat when you can select multiple objects (ie. songs in iTunes, files in Finder in list, column or Cover Flow mode).

2. Details for Transfer/General under the General tab. Having a scrollbar is an improvement. Using a full size scrollbar looks strange in comparison to the smaller version used in the torrent list. The space left for Comments is large, and often unused. This would benefit from being dynamic in size. Also, scroll wheels and trackpad scrolling does not work when the cursor is in this area.

3. Aside from the excessively lickable completion bars for the full torrents, the separate files in the File tab now use a different kind of completion bar, which is completely flat and use colours as indication of completion in a different way than the torrent list does.

What stayed the same:

1. Excessive use of drop shadows. The system light source in OS X is the center of the upper edge of the screen. (In early betas of 10.0, the Apple logo was placed in the middle of the menu bar) As you can see, window shadows reflect this. The background for the tabs have shadows on all four sides, which should not be possible.

2. Tabs. Tabs of this type is a rare sight in Mac OS X. The only other application I can think of on short notice is the iTunes iPod window. I have to admit I liked the previous version better, as this type of tabs feels like a throwback to Mac OS 9. Otherwise I would consider cascading the tabs backward from the active tab, like in Safari 4.

3. Text. White on light-grey text does not have very high readability. The previous white on dark-blue was marginally better, but neither are satisfactory.

4. The upper piece of the scrollbar differ in colour from the table column headers.

5. The buttons for showing/hiding panels don't look like buttons.

6. Active torrents. (Admittedly, I haven't confirmed this.) When torrents get added or removed from the list as they go active or passive, the focused torrent changes. Preferably, focus would stay on the chosen torrent as long as it is in the list.

7. Consider a space between the numbers and the percentage sign in accordance with the SI system. There might be other units where a space are missing too, at least "Time lapsed" in the General tab in the last alpha is missing a space. (Not confirmed in this version.)

New (maybe?) things:

1. Torrent properties. Tracker chart doesn't look like a writable box. Also empty scrollbars. (Shouldn't scrollbars appear as needed?)

2. Torrent properties. "Ratio is". Use ≤ and ≥ instead of >= and <=. Percentage sign is after the first box, when the "(min)" is before its box. Are the colons necessary?

3. Secondary-clicking a category selects all torrents. (Not sure if this is new or not.) Why should this happen when I want to Add torrent… for example?

4. I'm fairly sure you are using three consecutive dot glyphs instead of the ellipsis glyph in your context menus.