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UI Initial Impressions

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Jonathan Mitchell
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Jonathan Mitchell asked on 14 Sep 2012, 04:25 PM
This is what you get when you have UI Designers as your userbase...
BTW, this feedback is for Icenium Mist.

1. When I first opened up a new Project, I was taken to a blank layout screen and no guidance. I wondered what to do next so I clicked "Dashboard", which took me back to the project creation/selection dialog. I then tried index.html and jumped was right in the code. A little more guidance would go a long way.

2. The "Add" menu in the top bar is poorly placed. Adding a file or folder is always done in the context of the file structure, so that menu belongs over in the Project Navigator portion. The fact that all the items in that "Add" menu are disabled unless something is selected in the Project Navigator portion further emphasizes this point. 

3. The button to collapse the Project Navigator/Output portion is reeeeally small, only 5px wide - not easy to use. But then again maybe it's not intended to be used often. Maybe a fullscreen toggle shortcut would make sense too.

4. If you put the keyboard shortcuts in the menus rather than hidden in the docs, developers will learn them faster and instantly feel more proficient with Icenium. 

5. In the "Run" menu, if there was a menu item for "Run again (Ctrl F6)", that ran the same-as-last-time simulator, now you've enabled me to really speed up my development cycles, plus made it obvious how. You might even consider making the "Run" menu into a split button, but even in that case I still think "Run Again" deserves its own menu item.

Overall, I was quite impressed. Very clean interface, works well. 

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Tyanko
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answered on 18 Sep 2012, 08:35 AM
Hi Jonathan,

thank you for your fresh eye, and structured comments about Mist UI.
Really appreciate your professional opinion and suggestions.

We definately will think about a quite simple guidance for a very first opening scenario, to avoid "empty layout" impressions at further.

Regarding button behaviours and position, currently we are in progress making some improvements for consistency look & feel, also and clear common behaviour.

Just about the "Add" buton on the top menu - our wish was to provide capabilities for quck actions of base commands like: Add , Run and Save. Moreover in tablet usage, where context menu is hard to access.
I think if we gray out "Add" button at top menu when there is no selected item in project navigator, will solve this confusion.
 
Thanks again and please,  stay tuned for sharing us more.

Tyanko
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Jonathan Mitchell
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answered on 18 Sep 2012, 04:06 PM
Great, I look forward to seeing what else Icenium has in store.

#1. Just to follow up about the "Add" menu - I wasn't so much concerned about the behavior of the menu as I was about it's placement. It only applies to the Project Navigator/File Structure, so it belongs in the Project Navigator portion of the screen.
 
To emphasize further - you can collapse the Project Navigator to give you more screen real estate, and now the "Add" menu really feels out of place.

Putting elements where they belong (meaning closest to the resources they operate on) will reduce confusion. That's all I'm sayin'.

#2. Oh and here's one more UI thing I noticed - when attempting to create a new file, if a file already exists with the same name, the OK button is disabled. Now in the user's mind there could be any number of reasons why a button would be disabled - and you're making them guess which one. Here was my scenario:
  1. Last week when I was playing around with Icenium Mist, I created a new html document with the default HtmlPage.html file name.
  2. Today when I was playing around with Mist, (specifically seeing how the "Add" menu would react when the Project Navigator part was closed), I clicked "Add" -> "New File" and I was prompted with the file creation dialog.
  3. The OK button was already disabled, for reasons unclear to me. I clicked "Javascript" and "Style Sheet" and it appeared to me that I could create Javascript and CSS files but not html ones. It took me a second to realize that a file may have already existed with that filename, and that Icenium was preventing me from using the same filename twice.
Now granted, someone who was actually developing an app would probably know their file names and not use the default ones, but you should still consider adding a message detailing what is wrong/what the user needs to fix.
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