osarusan
March 24th, 2010, 11:19
I couldn't find the wishlist thread, but I've been using FG for many years now, and while I'm so happy with it, there's a couple of interface issues that have always been bugging me.
- Text input: the text input in FG is far too basic. If you're typing up modules from scratch it's not so bad, but if you want to copy/paste things from, say, PDF's or websites, it would be great if there was better support for formatting. As it is, I never use any of the text-based options, like Story, items, and rarely NPC's, just because it's simply so cumbersome. I want to, but the effort involved in copying NPC's, items, monsters, etc. from PDF's is not worth the payoff, in my opinion.
- Importing pictures: It's really easy to copy a picture into the FG II/campaigns/images folder to add it to the game, but it would be so much smoother to be able to just drag-and-drop something onto the FG window and have it automatically copy into there. I love using images and props in my game, but I feel like I have to go through a middle man every time I want to show something. When we enter new terrain I like to show nature photos, etc, and I'd love to just drag the jpeg from a webpage into the FG window rather than having to drag the picture from the webpage to the desktop, open the FG II folder, click through, drop the photo into the folder, and then open the images panel and open the image in FG II. Too many clicks.
- Importing other items: This is related to the previous entry, but it would be great to incorporate more regular files into FG. For example, to drag and drop tokens into the main window rather than having to navigate through the various folders. It would also be great to link to text files, pdf files, etc. and either open them *in* Fantasy Grounds, or at least open them *with* Fantasy Grounds. If I could, say, drag and drop a text file into FG and have it copied to the campaign folder and accessible through a list of campaign files, that would be so convenient! Or to drag and drop some text from a website onto the FG desktop and have it automatically turned into a Story item...
FG is so useful, but I feel like the interface, which has hardly been updated since the first version, is holding it back. If you consider how much text editors -- even online ones like Google Docs -- have improved over the past few years, FG's interface seems even clunkier. I can drag an image from a website into a text editor and have it show up, or even an image from a PDF can easily be copied and pasted into any other program... Granted, the logistics of incorporating that kind of functionality into FG are probably staggering, but it would do volumes to increase the user-friendliness of the program.
- Text input: the text input in FG is far too basic. If you're typing up modules from scratch it's not so bad, but if you want to copy/paste things from, say, PDF's or websites, it would be great if there was better support for formatting. As it is, I never use any of the text-based options, like Story, items, and rarely NPC's, just because it's simply so cumbersome. I want to, but the effort involved in copying NPC's, items, monsters, etc. from PDF's is not worth the payoff, in my opinion.
- Importing pictures: It's really easy to copy a picture into the FG II/campaigns/images folder to add it to the game, but it would be so much smoother to be able to just drag-and-drop something onto the FG window and have it automatically copy into there. I love using images and props in my game, but I feel like I have to go through a middle man every time I want to show something. When we enter new terrain I like to show nature photos, etc, and I'd love to just drag the jpeg from a webpage into the FG window rather than having to drag the picture from the webpage to the desktop, open the FG II folder, click through, drop the photo into the folder, and then open the images panel and open the image in FG II. Too many clicks.
- Importing other items: This is related to the previous entry, but it would be great to incorporate more regular files into FG. For example, to drag and drop tokens into the main window rather than having to navigate through the various folders. It would also be great to link to text files, pdf files, etc. and either open them *in* Fantasy Grounds, or at least open them *with* Fantasy Grounds. If I could, say, drag and drop a text file into FG and have it copied to the campaign folder and accessible through a list of campaign files, that would be so convenient! Or to drag and drop some text from a website onto the FG desktop and have it automatically turned into a Story item...
FG is so useful, but I feel like the interface, which has hardly been updated since the first version, is holding it back. If you consider how much text editors -- even online ones like Google Docs -- have improved over the past few years, FG's interface seems even clunkier. I can drag an image from a website into a text editor and have it show up, or even an image from a PDF can easily be copied and pasted into any other program... Granted, the logistics of incorporating that kind of functionality into FG are probably staggering, but it would do volumes to increase the user-friendliness of the program.