Being able to keep style dialog open, and not have it be caret-relative, lets it do more stuff like page BG, default node editing, etc.
Cons:
Leaning too heavily on flex for responsive design
layout is not intuitive
wrong things are emphasized at different places
edit is a different mode, but looks like a button
yellow on black is ugly and unnecessary
"Back to homepage" button is easy to misinterpret
"Cancel" really does the same as clicking "Edit" would do, and does not really revert any change
Text editor is at top of screen, which is far from keyboard
Preferred Axis is not easily understood
Interactions between preferred axis, fit, scale, and pull are also not intuitive. Does the regular user need this much power?
I can't move or minimize the toolbar; it's always taking up a bunch of space
No button to hide world labels
No button to hide all UI and only show graph
Outward on root node is no-op
Current toolbar (not node-relative) actions
Go to homepage
Toggle style dialog
Open
Save
Re-center
Go outward/parent
Toggle node actions
Remove node
Undo/redo
Current node-relative actions
Toggle Alignment
Toggle Preferred Axis
"Pull" to parent
Toggle node fit
Toggle node scale (shrink/grow)
Edit node value (only as text)
Analysis
In order to build requirements for the new layout, I ranked these actions by how commonly I use these:
Open
Save
Undo/redo
Toggle node actions
Edit node value
Go outward/parent
Re-center
Go to homepage
Toggle style dialog
Remove node (I feel like I don't do this with the mouse, but I'm comfortable with the keyboard)
Toggle node scale (shrink/grow)
Some combo of Toggle Alignment, Toggle Preferred Axis, "Pull" to parent, and Toggle node fit to get the node where I want it
Just from this, I think having this main toolbar just be toggleable menus works. I think it fails when it switches views, or worse, tries to be a text editor.
Burger Menu Dialog (proposed)
Vertical list of buttons to:
Open New Parsegraph dialog
Open "Open from File" dialog
Exit
Clicking the "Open" actions will close the existing parsegraph, prompting to save if necessary. Then we can show full page dialogs for both of these.
Clicking Exit will return to the homepage. (Or close the app on desktop). This will replace the "<<" button to go to homepage.
Node value editor (proposed)
Simple draggable, resizable dialog to edit the node value. Save and Cancel.
Also may include editing the node style, and even showing the node ID if in debug mode.
Analysis
With the above two, we are left with the following:
Re-center
Go outward/parent
Toggle node actions
Remove node
Current node-relative actions
Toggle Alignment
Toggle Preferred Axis
"Pull" to parent
Toggle node fit
Toggle node scale (shrink/grow)
I think the following work as-is:
undo/redo
Toggle style dialog
So then we have:
Main menu (burger menu to new/open/save/exit)
Undo/redo
Style
Toggle node value editor "Edit"
And the above list.
Re-center
This could open a camera panel with this as an option
Go outward/parent
This could be converted to a nav panel that would show a navpad for navigation.
Remove node, undo/redo
This should really be re-thought, but for now, this button works along with undo/redo.
Toggle node actions
Without the value editor, this mode only shows 5 buttons and hides almost all other buttons (only showing Style and the "<<" button to take you back to the homepage)
I don't know how to simplify this, but my thought is use "Align" as the toggle name, and just throw these 4 buttons in there and go from there. "Scale" does not fit, so it may need to be with the style or even the node value editor.
Conclusion
To some degree, complexity is inevitable, but right now, things are uneven, so providing new dialogs that are specific to concepts the user understands will help.
Current solution's benefits:
Cons:
Current toolbar (not node-relative) actions
Current node-relative actions
Analysis
In order to build requirements for the new layout, I ranked these actions by how commonly I use these:
Just from this, I think having this main toolbar just be toggleable menus works. I think it fails when it switches views, or worse, tries to be a text editor.
Burger Menu Dialog (proposed)
Vertical list of buttons to:
Clicking the "Open" actions will close the existing parsegraph, prompting to save if necessary. Then we can show full page dialogs for both of these.
Clicking Exit will return to the homepage. (Or close the app on desktop). This will replace the "<<" button to go to homepage.
Node value editor (proposed)
Simple draggable, resizable dialog to edit the node value. Save and Cancel.
Also may include editing the node style, and even showing the node ID if in debug mode.
Analysis
With the above two, we are left with the following:
Current node-relative actions
I think the following work as-is:
So then we have:
And the above list.
Re-center
This could open a camera panel with this as an option
Go outward/parent
This could be converted to a nav panel that would show a navpad for navigation.
Remove node, undo/redo
This should really be re-thought, but for now, this button works along with undo/redo.
Toggle node actions
Without the value editor, this mode only shows 5 buttons and hides almost all other buttons (only showing Style and the "<<" button to take you back to the homepage)
I don't know how to simplify this, but my thought is use "Align" as the toggle name, and just throw these 4 buttons in there and go from there. "Scale" does not fit, so it may need to be with the style or even the node value editor.
Conclusion
To some degree, complexity is inevitable, but right now, things are uneven, so providing new dialogs that are specific to concepts the user understands will help.