Poor interface

Aioneru

I was very excited to hear that PA2K7 is out, but after testing it I’m very disappointed. There are few new interesting features but its all nothing when it comes to the interface. It’s the worst interface in PA ever, and I’m using PA since it version 3.5 so belive me that I know what I’m talking about.

I belive that you were working on that Vista-like bells and whistles, but no one tested this version under classical windows style (or simply pre-XP version of Windows). Look at attached screenshots.

What’s wrong with the shot 1 ? Everything. This fancy gadget on the left doesn’t look to good with the current color scheme, actually it will not look good under any other color scheme or even under normal XP (a.k.a. bonzo the clown) theme. Can’t you simply use normal listbox or treeview if you really can’t stand those standard tabs and need to have dot net-like options dialog ? Another thing. What’s wrong with all that checkboxes/groupboxes background ? Is it so hard to make them use system colors or make them transparent (this would be important for XP/clown theme lovers), only one property in Delphi (Transparent set to true) and that’s it.

Second shot. What the hell has happened to the toolbar ? It has that stupid line on the top that makes it looking like it has sunked edges, and that’s totally wrong (compare with shot 3 or any other normal application). Who ask you to increase size of main listview header ? It’s way to big, plus the list view is using XP-like sorted-column-highlighting system (not even talking that the color its using is wrong). And on the last shot you have a real tragedy. The selection colors is blending to background like in Office 2K/XP ?!? Even worse, selection rectangle for ich item overlaps other items which makes it look totally broken.

Now look at the 3rd shot. This is how a plain, nice applcation looks a like. No bels and whistles (if you turn them off) and a 100% system look.

TBGBe

Most of your “problems” seem to be a skin issue to me.
Except for the Options Screen / Menu List appearance which is a simple “I like it” vs “I don’t like it” discussion;
the other things you mention either don’t appear at all for me or at least don’t seem anywhere near as “wrong” with (Classic View / Frostbite Skin).

P.S. It’s not clear which picture you are referring to as the “3rd shot - This is how a plain, nice applcation looks a like.” Do you really mean shot5.png :eek:

spwolf

10.01 will have more standard options interface if you use Classic toolbar.

Now we will wait for someone to complain about that one :-).

Aioneru

@TBGBe:

Most of your “problems” seem to be a skin issue to me.

The problem with toolbar being draw incorrectly isn’t a skin problem, the same goes to XP-like view of ListView control (blended selection, different background for current column etc.). It’s rather a problem of using too many custom controls not tested in different configurations. Normal system controls always adapt to the color scheme and/or visual style just fine, but custom controls often has a problem with it forcing XP-like, Office2003-like etc. look. E.g. normal ListView control under 9x/2000 or XP with classical visual style doesn’t have thet blending stuff while it does with visual styles enabled. SO it fits classical style and XP-lovers. The most importing thing is the choice - I don’t like it so I should be able to disable it, forcing custom look of applications seems very MS-like, just look at each Office version - 2007 looks very, very ugly under Win 2000 with all that gradients and silly colors. Yuck. Well, maybe some people like it, so I wouldn’t mind that if there would add an option to turn it off.

Except for the Options Screen / Menu List appearance which is a simple “I like it” vs “I don’t like it” discussion;

It’s not a case of taste - it’s a common bug. Simply there was a collor called clWindow used as a background color for checboxes etc. which is simply white under most color schemes. Most doesn’t mean all. Just use clWhite instead and it will match the bitmaped background. It’s a very common bug, it’s hard to belive but even big companies (like e.g. Ahead) are still ignoring color scheme problems so that e.g. all button’s background isn’t transparent but in the common gray-like style which looks poor under everything else than default visual style of Win XP. And again, what is wrong with a TreeView/ListBox so that you have used a custom control (tabs would be fine too) ?

P.S. It’s not clear which picture you are referring to as the “3rd shot - This is how a plain, nice applcation looks a like.” Do you really mean shot5.png

Yes, that’s the one. I have upload them in strange order but mentioned them in the right order in text.

TBGBe

Welcome back, nice that you didn’t just complain and leave :D
@Aioneru:

The problem with toolbar being draw incorrectly isn’t a skin problem …

Sorry, but the toolbar is totally a property of the skin.
All I can tell/see from your screenshots is that you are not using a default skin.
If you try different skins, you wil see that the toolbar appearance does change (not just the icons).
Can you expand on what you consider to be the “drawn incorrectly” problem - I can’t see it from your screenshots.
@Aioneru:

… visual style … MS-like …

Sorry I don’t understand any of this. I am just a user -not a GUI expert. As I said, using Frostbite skin, the “background problems” in your “shot.png” don’t appear.
@Aioneru:

… And again, what is wrong with a TreeView/ListBox so that you have used a custom control (tabs would be fine too) ?

This is not a treeview - it is an alternate way of displaying the selection of “screens”. Either as standard tabs or a column of “buttons”.
@Aioneru:

Yes, that’s the one. I have upload them in strange order but mentioned them in the right order in text.

OK. I cannot see the appeal/improvement that you are referring to - but as I said, I am not a GUI expert.:(

I wonder if GUIDO will comment on all this :D

Aioneru

So, were there any corrections in the classical interface for non visual-styles users, as suggested before ? I don’t want to download version 10.01, so that it mess up again with my nice, old 9.6x version ;). I hope it looks like on the shot5 (see above) and not shot 4, or else I’ll start looking for other compression utility with the same possibilities as PA but with a normal UI (WZ finally started to evolve in that way)…

spwolf

some changes yes - looking exactly like PA 2006, no…

TBGBe

@Aioneru:

So, were there any corrections in the classical interface for non visual-styles users, as suggested before ? …

Here’s how mine looks
Windows XP Style Silver
PA 2007 skin Frostbite

Note File/Edit/View moved to bottom (just because I can).

Aioneru

@spwolf:

some changes yes - looking exactly like PA 2006, no…

I don’t mean it to look like PA 9, but rather as any other Windows application when skinning of PA and Vissual Styles are not active (so just like PA 9 did, but it’s only a coincidence).

I belive that you did not play enough with Easy Listview properties after switching to it too much. Look at Shot1, it’s still wrong. Things to fix IMO are:

height of header (Header.Height): change from default 21 to 17 (default value for header height under Win 9x and later) or get it from the system via the metrics API (I don’t really belive that anybody would change this, but you might want to get it and not simply set it to a constant value),
blended selection highlighting: if you really need this blending with background you could make this an option in configuration, or at least set this properly to - Selection.Color := clHighlight and Selection.BorderColor := clNone or something similiar so that selection rectangles for each items does not overlap,
there’s something wrong with the full row highlighting, it’s not highligthing full row but only part of it, I can’t figure out what property can be wrong but I’m sure it’s not as it should be,
current sorted column highlighting should be optional too, plus the color used for highlighting is wrong it should be calculated form the clWindow (I’m not sure, since I’m not using XP but AFAIR it’s not any system color but rather 20% lighter/darker version of clWindow),
tooltips (hints) are now gray (it’s clSilver or clWindow) and not clInfoBk, why ?

Shot2:

buttons are much better than this thing used last time but you could use SpeedButton with grouping because now you can not tell which page is active,
background color of each page is wrong, it’s clSilver or clWindow while it should be clBtnFace (plus Transparent set to True on all Checkboxes and Labels).

spwolf

full row highlighting is bug in this case, we will take an look.

We will also adjust colors a bit for some screens but we can not add any options until bigger update.

spwolf

check with b1 and see if it is any better for you.