Optimized screen management - discussion

[Henrique Oliveira Machado]

Ok, so i created this thread so we all can talk about how to make a better screen management in a more appropriate thread, so everyone can throw ideas about how they think screen management should look like, and what functionalities would speed up play.

later, we can upload that result to the wishlist. That would be cool and very productive for FG, i think.

A few points i would like to point out about what i think it is the most important things you should consider before throwing ideas:

1) It should contain only options that would speed up prep time and speed up playtime. No point on organizing better, but ending up with a confusing layout as a result.
2) It should not force functionality on anyone. People should still be able to use the screen management like they do today and being able to manually adjust everything.
3) There are no stupid ideas, just go ahead and say it. Just think a little about 1 and 2 before so we do not lose the focus on the actual subject of this thread.

[Henrique Oliveira Machado]

Our ideas:

- Being able to classify/group images as archetypes (Maps, portraits, landscapes, etc.)
- Being able set a standard location to this groups so every time you open one of them, it will open at the exact same location. If more than one of the same group is opened at the same time, they can not be in the top of the another. (OPTIONAL choice of making the oldest image of that group close automatically after another image of that group is open). Example: if you already have a map opened, when you open a new map, the one you already have it opened will close.
- Being able to lock position of a image once you scaled it to the desired position. That way, people with touchpad could navigate through the map without needing the navigation button. (unlocked as default).
-Shortcut for quickly cycling through open windows. (Ctrl+o) or something similar
- Being able to set a standard position to Story screens opened.
- Having the OPTION of making the maps size hit the limits of your screen. (Standard as off so maps can open at the original size by standard)
- With the screen limit option on, we could drag images to the sides of the screen to make them auto-adjust to the side corresponding to where you dragged them. Similar as windows does. That option could appear as a right click menu too.
- Make the right sidebar buttons naturally smaller so we do not have to scaleui so far below.
-A clickable bar to quickly hide/show the sidebar when not used. Or a sensible area that auto shows the sidebar when the mouse touches the right border of the screen.

EDIT: I will keep adding itens to the list as you guys suggest it. I will also scratch out (in red) any that can not be done

What you guys think?

[shadzar]

Probably function less like a self-contained video game, and more like an actual software package.

This means say not having things proprietary like in SSI Gold Box Series games where a window is set by the software, and then the software having special unique ways of managing windows, but use more of the OS native features for whatever platform it is used on.

for example, you have a close button on the program at all times, but there is no minimize on the launcher once it is maximized, and convoluted way to maximize and minimize inside the radial menu once in a game. Put those buttons up there with the close button that people are told "DO NOT USE" because it doesnt close the campaign properly since it closes the whole program instead of "return to launcher", and make them ALWAYS appear on the screen. aka STOP HIDING THE TITLE BAR WHEN SOMEONE GOES FULL SCREEN!

Probably fix that button as well, if the launcher is going to have to be the place to return to, then make that button a "return to launcher" button instead of one to close the entire program.

Also apply those Minimize/Maximize buttons to all the other little window objects inside the campaign UI. Move the "Lock/Unlock" form the radial menu on those windows up there with those buttons a well for easy access so you KNOW you are clicking on the right thing to be able to lock a windows position or unlock it to move where you want it. Can you even lock half the "windows"? Images/Maps doesnt hae a Lock on it, only the individual image or map do. Where is the "lock window position" for the menu windows?

Zoom controls obviously need to be fixed to something less 1980s~1990s in design.

Map/images should automatically resize to fit the window they open in, not try to fill the screen and guess the map size to make the window big enough for it to fit.

On second thought, why is there a desktop or decals? Just put the map there there are 3 portions of the screen that always exist:
Chat
Sidebar
"Desktop"

you can't move the sidebar, but things can go on top of it and block it.
you can move the chat, but not REMOVE it.
The desktop surface should just be the current map. Now with TOTM/Theatrical Maps, there is a way/reason to always have it open. then images should be its own setting/menu that open like other windows do on top of the sidebar, and the map in use.

i did not count the "dicebox" since that can be completely removed as die can be rolled via chat command or directly from character sheet and other locations. the exist mostly as legacy visuals because people want 3d animated dice to look at, and to say "Yes DDi we own the dice you can't use them even in promotional materials as a mock up example of your vaporware product". Also the dice/modifier can be moved anywhere.

So there is really only 2 static objects on the "desktop" that cannot be move:

desktop
sidebar

just replace the desktop with the map as all other object can be moved when needed to see that one corner of the map, or just design the maps to allow for people to be able to scroll beyond the boundries for smaller screens to be able to see the map and the other windows they might need opened.

alternately go with a 3 pane approach.

chat <-> map <-> sidebar

and then all the other windows can float on top and be moved around, though this approach removes the ability for players to move their chat to the right side, it will allow full view of all corners of a map with a singular map pane that can chance when a new map is called on.

[Talyn]

We can already use the grouping ability to filter which images are what "category." However, this is a local view only. Forcing images to fit into some archetype or category will mean all 900+ DLC would have to be fixed, and I can tell you from experience that isn't going to happen. FG has no way to tell an image is "just" an image or if it's a map. We can draw on, put a grid on, use pointers on, anything in the main Images & Maps window.

Forcing all images to open to a default size also would not work, for the reason above. For example, look at your items. If they have a picture to go along with the item description, that picture is pretty small. Do you really want it to open to a huge size like a map would?

For my two cents, having a Client Option for the imagewindow class to first consider the user's screen resolution then either scale itself to fit within that resolution, or to use a percentage of it like most image editors do (I think GIMP, for example, defaults to 66% for images larger than the current resolution). Then let the user scale it to their individual needs.

Placement-wise, I kinda wouldn't mind having a "window tiling" mechanism to prevent multiple windows opening exactly on top of each other so that you can't even tell there are multiple windows open...

[shadzar]

FG has no way to tell an image is "just" an image or if it's a map. We can draw on, put a grid on, use pointers on, anything in the main Images & Maps window.

That should be easy enough to do with a redesign of how it reads images and maps. when in a folder called "/maps/" inside the campaign, .mod, etc then it is a map and you can add a grid to it and it opens that certain way, and ones inside a folder called "/images/" it opens to make the window show the full image, like a handout or such. Heck you could still put grids and drawings and such on images.


to simplify it even more, just have maps and images open 50% height and width of the program real estate, and make the "image" scale to those dimensions upon opening. then if it is a map or jsut an image for a handout, the whole thing can be seen by whoever needs to see it. then individual players can resize the window, however they want.

nothing would change with older content because FG itself is just told to take up 50% of the viewing area with this new image and make the mage fit in height and width to this size, even if it is a map-image 30000*20000 pixels in size.

[Talyn]

The folder thing would only work if FG itself was re-coded to put things in those specific folders. If left up to the user the way it is now, who knows how that user spelled things? A lot of the DLC out there that was built in the UI has all the images in the root folder because the dev just dragged the images into the Image window and /export. Some of the older ones are in /refimages/ because that's the name those developers chose. Which brings me full-circle to there's no way anyone is going to go through 900+ older DLC and adjust that.

Seems like the auto-scaling mechanism would be the simplest way to go and wouldn't require anything special from the end user.

[Henrique Oliveira Machado]

Probably function less like a self-contained video game, and more like an actual software package.

This means say not having things proprietary like in SSI Gold Box Series games where a window is set by the software, and then the software having special unique ways of managing windows, but use more of the OS native features for whatever platform it is used on.

for example, you have a close button on the program at all times, but there is no minimize on the launcher once it is maximized, and convoluted way to maximize and minimize inside the radial menu once in a game. Put those buttons up there with the close button that people are told "DO NOT USE" because it doesnt close the campaign properly since it closes the whole program instead of "return to launcher", and make them ALWAYS appear on the screen. aka STOP HIDING THE TITLE BAR WHEN SOMEONE GOES FULL SCREEN!

Probably fix that button as well, if the launcher is going to have to be the place to return to, then make that button a "return to launcher" button instead of one to close the entire program.

Also apply those Minimize/Maximize buttons to all the other little window objects inside the campaign UI. Move the "Lock/Unlock" form the radial menu on those windows up there with those buttons a well for easy access so you KNOW you are clicking on the right thing to be able to lock a windows position or unlock it to move where you want it. Can you even lock half the "windows"? Images/Maps doesnt hae a Lock on it, only the individual image or map do. Where is the "lock window position" for the menu windows?

Zoom controls obviously need to be fixed to something less 1980s~1990s in design.

Map/images should automatically resize to fit the window they open in, not try to fill the screen and guess the map size to make the window big enough for it to fit.

On second thought, why is there a desktop or decals? Just put the map there there are 3 portions of the screen that always exist:
Chat
Sidebar
"Desktop"

you can't move the sidebar, but things can go on top of it and block it.
you can move the chat, but not REMOVE it.
The desktop surface should just be the current map. Now with TOTM/Theatrical Maps, there is a way/reason to always have it open. then images should be its own setting/menu that open like other windows do on top of the sidebar, and the map in use.

i did not count the "dicebox" since that can be completely removed as die can be rolled via chat command or directly from character sheet and other locations. the exist mostly as legacy visuals because people want 3d animated dice to look at, and to say "Yes DDi we own the dice you can't use them even in promotional materials as a mock up example of your vaporware product". Also the dice/modifier can be moved anywhere.

So there is really only 2 static objects on the "desktop" that cannot be move:

desktop
sidebar

just replace the desktop with the map as all other object can be moved when needed to see that one corner of the map, or just design the maps to allow for people to be able to scroll beyond the boundries for smaller screens to be able to see the map and the other windows they might need opened.

alternately go with a 3 pane approach.

chat <-> map <-> sidebar

and then all the other windows can float on top and be moved around, though this approach removes the ability for players to move their chat to the right side, it will allow full view of all corners of a map with a singular map pane that can chance when a new map is called on.

That was very confusing. Try to go with a single objective in mind about what you think it would help nowadays. It appears you are asking to completely redesign it from the 0. It is more about getting a different VTT than about improving FGs. The idea of this thread is maintaining FGs functionalities and improving them-having more options, and not completely redesign it.

But there are some interesting ideas you threw here.

- Better zoom design (less 90s style). I also think the zoom feature should be more sensitive. I cant zoom in just a little. It seems to zoom in a lot even if i want it just a little bigger/smaller. Currently it seem like a browser zoom that goes from 5-5%. But what if i want just a 1% zoom in?

- Option to Minimize FGs and its windows. You can just alt+tab on windows, use windows button on keyboard, Alt+enter to get out of the fullscreen mode or use 3 fingers pushing down on touchpad/touchscreen to bring desktop on, but yeah, i can see how that can be a problem for some users, i guess. I think adding that option beside to the CLOSE FGs (X) button would help.
For minimizing UI windows i think being able to click on them twice could auto-minimize them. Clicking twice again should reopen to last size.

[Henrique Oliveira Machado]

We can already use the grouping ability to filter which images are what "category." However, this is a local view only. Forcing images to fit into some archetype or category will mean all 900+ DLC would have to be fixed, and I can tell you from experience that isn't going to happen. FG has no way to tell an image is "just" an image or if it's a map. We can draw on, put a grid on, use pointers on, anything in the main Images & Maps window.

Noted, taking that off the list.

Forcing all images to open to a default size also would not work, for the reason above. For example, look at your items. If they have a picture to go along with the item description, that picture is pretty small. Do you really want it to open to a huge size like a map would?

The images should automatically resize to fit the screen only if they are bigger that the screen borders/size, no point on resizing small images. Since there is no way it can be grouped, there is no point in setting defaut position on the screen. I will scratch that out.

For my two cents, having a Client Option for the imagewindow class to first consider the user's screen resolution then either scale itself to fit within that resolution, or to use a percentage of it like most image editors do (I think GIMP, for example, defaults to 66% for images larger than the current resolution). Then let the user scale it to their individual needs.

Everything should be customizable just like /scaleui is.

Placement-wise, I kinda wouldn't mind having a "window tiling" mechanism to prevent multiple windows opening exactly on top of each other so that you can't even tell there are multiple windows open...

yeah, i think as groups can not be created, the option of closing them automatically images of the same group would not work. But preventing images from opening exactly on on top of the other would help.

[Zacchaeus]

The Minimize/maximize issue is caused by the architecture that is currently used. This is the kind of thing which will be resolved in Unity https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...G2-Main-Window

Can someone explain what 'less 90's style zoom' means? Pretty much everything I have seems to use the middle mouse button to zoom in and out (except freaking Photoshop which insists on some keyboard command which I continually forget)

[Henrique Oliveira Machado]

The Minimize/maximize issue is caused by the architecture that is currently used. This is the kind of thing which will be resolved in Unity https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...G2-Main-Window

Can someone explain what 'less 90's style zoom' means? Pretty much everything I have seems to use the middle mouse button to zoom in and out (except freaking Photoshop which insists on some keyboard command which I continually forget)

Do not know what shadzar meant by that.
i think the zoom is too mechanical. I scroll in just a little and it zooms too much. Most modem zoom shows beside how much you are zooming in and it goes from pixel to pixel.

I am not sure how to say it technically.

it is not something i would die ho have, or that needs to be critically adjusted, but it is something that annoyed me a little.