Closed GoogleCodeExporter closed 9 years ago
Good point. I think the "RA/Dec" button is badly over-loaded. As a long-time
PHD user, I always fumble around with it. Just as one example, if I want to
see the dx/dy offsets, why would I click on a button labeled "RA/Dec"? <g> We
have serious real estate issues here, so why not convert it to an "Options..."
button and bring up a modal dialog that supports data selection (dx/dy vs.
ra/dec) or graph color selection or - whatever else we may need down the road.
Seems more straightforward to me...
Bruce
Original comment by bw_ms...@earthlink.net
on 31 Aug 2013 at 4:24
I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking about putting it on the view
menu, but I'm not stuck on that idea either.
Original comment by br...@boneheads.us
on 31 Aug 2013 at 4:38
I was thinking just click on the colored RA or Dec labels themselves.
Original comment by andy.gal...@gmail.com
on 31 Aug 2013 at 4:53
But this wouldn't clean up all the problems IMHO. Shift and control clicking
buttons is a little unusual. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a little
odd and not something many users are accustomed to doing. If we have a single
options dialog launched by an obvious button, we could also eliminate the
shift-click behavior on the scale button for switching between units of pixels
and arc-secs. My thinking is that users are often tired and squinting in the
dark and having things "hidden" in any way is frustrating. I guess another
option would be a right-click on the graph area to bring up a context menu...
Original comment by bw_ms...@earthlink.net
on 31 Aug 2013 at 9:30
I think I agree - the current attempt to set all the options "in band" is not
obvious, where as a settings button would be. If we moved most of the graph
options there it would probably make more sense. The question then becomes,
what to move there. It seems like things that you want to change fairly often
should be on the graph, and things you want to set and forget should be on the
settings dialog. It also occurs to me that a second row across the bottom (like
the mini brain) to change a few might be OK, but skipping that thought for
now, here are my quick thoughts...
- graph x scale (currently a buttons) - maybe yes - The buttons are not "bad",
but if it was a spin box, people could set the length to be integer multiples
of their worm period, for example...
- graph y scale (currently a button) - maybe no - This is the one that people
are likely to want to change on the fly, I think. If you drift off the top,
you might want to change the scale. Of course, and "Auto" would do that too but
it might be too subtle so people would miss it.
- clear - no -
- dy/dx vs ra/dec - definitely
- graph line colors - definitely
- graph line style - definitely [ we don't have this yet, but it is requested
in another issue ]
- show trend line - probably not - since you will want it on, then want to
toggle it off when done aligning.
- guiding statistics - right now they are always on, but maybe we should toggle
them? Or put them somewhere else? They seem "stuck onto" the graph window.
Original comment by br...@boneheads.us
on 1 Sep 2013 at 2:21
Comment from Andy:
I agree, I hate the Shift/Ctrl-click interface too.
I think I like your idea about the right-click giving a context menu, but I'm
concerned that may be too windows-centric because Macs don't have right mouse
buttons, and I haven't used a Mac in a long time so I'm not sure what the
mac-equivalent gesture is.
The nice thing about the buttons the way they are today is that they are not a
modal dialog :) I like the interactivity of being able to simply click the
buttons to change the view. I think it would be annoying if that got moved into
a modal dialog box. On the other hand, things that get set once and
never/seldom change, like the color selections, are ok to be in a dialog I
think.
If we did go with a right-click context menu, Maybe it would look like:
|--------------------|
| x | RA/Dec |
| | dx/dy |
|--------------------|
| | y-axis: pixels |
| x | y-axis: arcsec |
|--------------------|
| | RA Color ... |
| | Dec Color ... |
|--------------------|
Is that what you were thinking?
Would we also want to put x and y scale on the drop-down?
Ooh, here's an idea for the x and y scale: we could do drop-down menus like I
did for "Manage Profiles..." on the Connect Equipment dialog. so if you click
the "x:100" button, it would drop-down options (context menu):
|-----|
| 50 |
| 100 |
| 200 |
| 400 |
|-----|
then you click your choice. Likewise for the y-axis scale button.
I think that would be an improvement on the current method of clicking the
button repeatedly to cycle through the values.
Original comment by bw_ms...@earthlink.net
on 1 Sep 2013 at 9:30
I agree with the "Right Click is too Windows Centric" observation.
In my earlier comment, I mentioned the possibility of adding a second row at
the bottom like the mini-brain. The more I think about it, and reading the last
comment about dropdowns, the more I think that might be the way to go. It is
an unexpected user interface to have a button change the scale like we have
now. I think we should have dropdowns on the mini-brain II for those things.
It is not modal, it is interactive, and won't surprise people.
Original comment by br...@boneheads.us
on 1 Sep 2013 at 9:38
I think we're converging on a hybrid solution. If we use the same approach
Andy did with his new 'manage profiles' function, we get the benefit of a
pop-up menu without having it 'hidden' or accessible in a way that's foreign to
Mac users. So we would have an 'Options' button that would bring up a context
menu, and that menu would have both "quick" property changes (RA/Dec vs dx/dy,
pixels vs. arc-secs...) and a modal dialog launch for graph display properties
(RA/Dec colors, line styles...). I don't know what to do about the x/y scale
properties, still thinking about that...
Original comment by bw_ms...@earthlink.net
on 1 Sep 2013 at 9:39
Sounds good, Bruce.
I was thinking we would keep the x and y scale buttons that we have today, but
rather than the buttons cycling through the possible values, they would pop up
a context menu with the choices.
Andy
Original comment by andy.gal...@gmail.com
on 2 Sep 2013 at 12:34
I've got clouds again tonight, so I will take a crack at implementing what we
discussed. Let's see how it looks... if we want to tweak it more we always
can...
Original comment by andy.gal...@gmail.com
on 2 Sep 2013 at 7:18
This issue was closed by revision r479.
Original comment by andy.gal...@gmail.com
on 3 Sep 2013 at 7:19
Original issue reported on code.google.com by
andy.gal...@gmail.com
on 27 Aug 2013 at 8:08