My version of how the UI should look

[jenny ferr]

If I get to choose, this looks way better but with similar/same functionality. Only really cared for the look, not the content, more then what I written here (might add some if it pops up tho)

• 5 Custom Channels
• same styling as we are used to that works
• click on Biography and a little popup comes up, no need to clutter FL with full Bio
• still old auction/skill/info/etc messages for those who want (like me) and new
• no more "[local][player player player]*heart*: Message" taking up half the first line

I guess that was it, like it or hate it but here is a picture:
(Yes it's all fake, not trying to be tricky here. Just make sure you look at 100%(1776x999))


Ps. yes I posted in another thread, just because I said so earlier in it. Posted here so more people would get to see and specifically the Dev's that I don't think find the other

Edit:
Spent less then 2min thinking of this chat, and as I posted below ignore the fonts used.

if you have a dark screen you might not see there is a gap between the chat channel tabs on top so there is a tab for each

 

[bard119]

I think my chat window should light up with an ATH for me too

 

[Xen]

I think this is much, much better. The fancy/complicated design should be in the environment, not the hud/gui, that should be unobtrusive (variable with options) and clean, easy to read and intuitive.

 

[Andreso]

much nicer, and GZ for your ATH

 

[Sub-Zero]

Your friendlist and message center, agreed.
Your chat, I don't agree. Once they add more options like to change background color/text color and bold/italic and opacity etc, and fix the few annoying bugs that still remain (hof ticker should be disabled and moveable). Then it will be far superior to the old one.

 

[tamlin]

My opinion (of the suggestion):
I think the fonts look... let me be polite and say "like crap".

The serif font in the "Message Center" looks like it's trying to look like an upper-class newspaper from the 1890's (yes, I did mean 1890's).

The font in the "Main Chat" is the same crappy font we've had there since 2009, with effectively worthless and even damaging attempts at anti-aliasing. I much prefer the "new" font introduced by MA. It's much clearer and crispier to read. The fuzzy crap-aliased mess you brought back is, frankly, not only insulting but even damaging - both to the font itself, but more importantly to the readability of it.

The amount of "channel" buttons added to that "Chat Window", with the only way to discover what each button does is to hover over it, is the anti-thesis of good UI design. It's so bad there should be a law against it (actually, in the USA I think there is, for some applications).

The "Contacts" window, same complaint as for the "Message Center".

Perhaps this difference in opinions display the fonts really have to be user-settable.

I prefer a clear, exactly one pixel wide, crisp, sans serif font for actual text (e.g. chat messages).

Others prefer badly kerned, half-bold, badly aliasing fonts like some PostScript 1 fonts from an X terminal anno the 90's.

Some (are claimed) to even prefer Microsoft's... what that crap called they use to make fonts look like shit on LCD displays, while claiming its purpose is to make it look good? ClearType!

Yet others prefer large, bold, well kerned and anti-aliased fonts.

Some might even *need* larger fonts (thinking about the ones with bad eye sight, which I know exist in EU).

Then we have the ~10% of the male population with the red-green color-"blindness" that really need the ability to change fg/bg color to even make some things possible for them to see.

With all these different wants and needs, I'm pretty sure MA will have to turn this this into user-settings, as there is simply no chance they can please all - your post and this reply is proof enough of this.

To round off, and with all due respect, I'm happy you are not in charge of UI design, or at least the font selection part, at MA.

Again, this is only my very personal opinion.

Cheers!

 

[jenny ferr]

Your friendlist and message center, agreed.
Your chat, I don't agree. Once they add more options like to change background color/text color and bold/italic and opacity etc, and fix the few annoying bugs that still remain (hof ticker should be disabled and moveable). Then it will be far superior to the old one.

Yes I understand the chat could be reworked a bit as more options gets added but the overall design shouldn't be altered.
Sure I could spent some thinking time on the chat but didn't for now, as what I most wanted was to show how easy it would have been to used the existing design for all these new features too

 

[jenny ferr]

My opinion (of the suggestion):
I think the fonts look... let me be polite and say "like crap".

The serif font in the "Message Center" looks like it's trying to look like an upper-class newspaper from the 1890's (yes, I did mean 1890's).

The font in the "Main Chat" is the same crappy font we've had there since 2009, with effectively worthless and even damaging attempts at anti-aliasing. I much prefer the "new" font introduced by MA. It's much clearer and crispier to read. The fuzzy crap-aliased mess you brought back is, frankly, not only insulting but even damaging - both to the font itself, but more importantly to the readability of it.

Ignore the fonts haven't bothered to use the MA (lookalike) font I have, just put some font in to show text and not black background boxes.

The amount of "channel" buttons added to that "Chat Window", with the only way to discover what each button does is to hover over it, is the anti-thesis of good UI design. It's so bad there should be a law against it (actually, in the USA I think there is, for some applications).

Answered above.

The "Contacts" window, same complaint as for the "Message Center".

Perhaps this difference in opinions display the fonts really have to be user-settable.

I prefer a clear, exactly one pixel wide, crisp, sans serif font for actual text (e.g. chat messages).

Others prefer badly kerned, half-bold, badly aliasing fonts like some PostScript 1 fonts from an X terminal anno the 90's.

Some (are claimed) to even prefer Microsoft's... what that crap called they use to make fonts look like shit on LCD displays, while claiming its purpose is to make it look good? ClearType!

Yet others prefer large, bold, well kerned and anti-aliased fonts.

Some might even *need* larger fonts (thinking about the ones with bad eye sight, which I know exist in EU).

Again, ignore the fonts used, and I agree with you about the bold part

To round off, and with all due respect, I'm happy you are not in charge of UI design, or at least the font selection part, at MA.

Again, this is only my very personal opinion.

Cheers!

lol if i was in charge of the font selection I'm sure you would be happy at least

 

[OZtwo]

If I get to choose, this looks way better but with similar/same functionality. Only really cared for the look, not the content, more then what I written here (might add some if it pops up tho)

• 5 Custom Channels
• same styling as we are used to that works
• click on Biography and a little popup comes up, no need to clutter FL with full Bio
• still old auction/skill/info/etc messages for those who want (like me) and new
• no more "[local][player player player]*heart*: Message" taking up half the first line

I guess that was it, like it or hate it but here is a picture:
(Yes it's all fake, not trying to be tricky here. Just make sure you look at 100%(1776x999))


Ps. yes I posted in another thread, just because I said so earlier in it. Posted here so more people would get to see and specifically the Dev's that I don't think find the other

Please MA! Change it to this interface!!!!!!

 

[tamlin]

Ignore the fonts haven't bothered to use the MA (lookalike) font I have, just put some font in to show text and not black background boxes.

Oh crap, and here I focused so much attention on the fonts!
ROFL!

 

[tamlin]

With the font issue out of the way, let me come with some real ideas:

The long bar of channel-toggles I mentioned... MA have already implemented a halfway solution to this. There is a button to expand/minimize some settings stuff (think owner-draw drop-list), and they have displayed they know how to display text (not only differently colored buttons) next to said differently colored buttons.

Simple and clean (?) solution: Display a/the same button for "Channels Drop List" next to the horizontal shortcut list (or, simply get rid of the horizontal button list and just have the drop-list button). It already works for selecting channels as the UI looks right now, so it'd work as well for selecting channels in a modified version of what you suggested. No?

But... isn't this pretty much how it already works? You can (finally) tear off tabs and put them in other windows (much like e.g. Star Trek Online), move tabs from one free-floating tab-collecting-window to another, or simply rip it off and place it in a whole new window of its own.

Where this UI however needs work, IMO, is the "message list". That's currently half a disaster in default settings, incoming stuff getting added on top and scrolling off stuff you were looking at.

A single line of text in your first proposal however gave me good vibes. What if, indeed, you could have a history (say, 2-3 days?) of what peeps you have been teamed with (actually, team name(s) that when expanded displays the peeps)? It's indeed a nice social idea that could bring people together (not to mention more often).

Against that, it will be voiced (stating this as a certainty) "PvP gets fucked up". Well, PvP gets fucked up always anyway the way it's implemented. Is that a reason to halt progress? If looking at the potential benefit for "normal" MA-customers and the amount of them, vs. the amount of PvP-ers, I suspect the PvP-ers are a vanishingly small sub-culture in context.

 

[jenny ferr]

But... isn't this pretty much how it already works?

I tried to not complain about the features as such, just the graphics that's used to display them that's horrible, with some tweaks I'm sure it will be fine but the graphics is as I said horrible

A single line of text in your first proposal however gave me good vibes. What if, indeed, you could have a history (say, 2-3 days?) of what peeps you have been teamed with (actually, team name(s) that when expanded displays the peeps)? It's indeed a nice social idea that could bring people together (not to mention more often).

Could be in the message center something like that sure (forcing myself to not go off topic here...)

 

[tamlin]

I tried to not complain about the features as such, just the graphics that's used to display them that's horrible, with some tweaks I'm sure it will be fine but the graphics is as I said horrible

Ah, it's the ... borders ("chrome") and the window-managment buttons you refer to? Yeah, that's displays... a few strange design choices.

Funny how resistant I have become to even noticing or complaining about such obvious bad stuff simply by them finally fixing the most important (clear font) - does that suggest it's been so wrong for such a long time I'm clutching at straws?

Could be in the message center something like that sure (forcing myself to not go off topic here...)

That needs some work. Both display and behavior - mostly behavior though (including behavior of displaying what it indeed is displaying).

There are two conflicting ideas at work here:
1. Displaying stuff in a list.
2. Adding new stuff at the top of that list.

A third point is the strange design of having a list split into pages. All entries are logically a single list, but they are, seemingly arbitrarily, split at N entries into M pages with up to N entries each.

2 makes it not a "list" but a "stack", and while it seemingly serves "smart phones" with limited interaction, limited screen space, and limited users, it's a complete disaster if you try to scan such a list while it's constantly scrolling away things you scan.

It could, theoretically, be fixed, by having a "virtual" "-1" (-2, -3, -n..) page(s) where new stuff got added, while keeping the page of the list of things you are viewing static, That way nothing gets scrolled away from you.

Comments?

 

[Sub-Zero]

2nd pic is nicer.

Argh, I hope they fuc*ing decide on a template soon.. and stop making new ones... everything looks different. Nothing matches.

All should be unified FFS..

 

[Mega]

I want the black background back on text, hope we can at least get that back as an option.







Could have been worse, we could be playing with light grey on white background I suppose ;-)

 

[jenny ferr]

Done a lot more/better pics now posted here:
new(old) UI suggestion


just posting the link as the pics is in PNG so can't be used here