I have been using FGU for a few months now and would like to give my perspective on its interface, one of the most criticised aspects on it. To give some context, I started playing PF1, and using FGU alongside with it, a few months ago. I also briefly used Foundry while I was deciding between PF1 and PF2. I will focus on the negatives, and try to offer constructive observations and criticism.
I think interface complaints tend to come in two forms: looks old/bad and is unintuitive.
The looks old/bad part. While I partially agree and would prefer a more “gamy” look with more animations and the like (e.g. in Foundry it didn’t take much effort to set up various animations with the JB2A module), this is subjective and I also like the look and feel of the official Pathfinder theme. So let’s move on.
Unintuitive. Definitely. A good interface allows you to figure out how to do something without reading the fine manual. Despite having used a good number of softwares and being decently computer literate, I usually have to google even fairly simple stuff. Below are various concrete points.
It is often not clear that something is a button, e.g. most things (faction, targets...) in the combat tracker. While I like the PF theme, the initiative indicator is mimetic. The tooltips are useful.
The use of right click is very unconventional. Usually a right click is a way to access extra options which depend on what is selected. FG has a mix of actually contextual options, e.g. deleting something, and not contextual options, like closing or minimising the window (if you prefer, both are contextual but at different levels). I would remove all the close/minimise items from the right click menu and move them to the right corner of the window. Why would one think of right clicking on the desktop to return to launcher or exit??
In general I think that normal menus, that is text rather than icon + tooltip, are more convenient and easier to use. There is essentially no general FG menu, which causes some of the problems above. No menu at all would at least save space, but on a mac there actually is a completely useless FG menu, and no possibility to run the app full screen.
FG needs a lot of screen space. To some degree this is unavoidable, but the situation could be improved. For example, I started using the extension which allows to replace the icons on the right side with menus (better menus I think), and that helps a lot. Frankly that extension is gold and I think it should be incorporated in the main code.
Also why are some interface elements movable/resizable and others are not? Another good thing that better menu does is to allow you to reposition PC portraits and the dice tower - much more convenient to have the tower close to where the dices are. Yes I could move the dice but I like them where they are.
Supporting user defined keyboard shortcuts would also help a lot. I know you can have actionable things associated to the function keys, and that feature is pretty powerful, but user definable shortcuts would be nice. So would keyboard shortcuts for basic window management, like cycling or minimising.
The interface is not laptop friendly. I am OUTRAGED at the impossibility of conveniently panning with a trackpad. The joystick thing is slow and imprecise, and using arrows keys only works if you have nothing selected, while a lot of times you need to pan during combat. I can’t believe something like shift + drag (or whatever other key you like, I don’t mind) is hard to implement, and this is something people have asked and/or complained about multiple times.
In fact I would get rid of anything middle mouse click altogether. Revealing a hidden roll is a good place for a contextual menu item. I would also substitute, or at least give a quicker laptop friendly option, the left+right click to draw a pointer, although it must be said that this function can be accessed from the right click menu.
The options are confusing, I always have to google (or experiment) to remember e.g. the difference between show GM rolls and show results to players. I remember noticing this and checking why I found Foundry way of doing it much clearer. Simple answer: Foundry used two lines of text to explain what the option does. Doing the same or adding a tooltip would help a lot.
Dragging to duplicate. Who ever thought this was a good idea?????? This is incredibly unintuitive. I have seen no filesystem or software do this (yes dragging + holding a key does copy in some cases, or dragging to a different hard drive, but not moving a file/element within the same window). If you don’t move something, nothing happens to it. You would expect that a very small movement would produce a very small change, or no change at all. But in FG no matter how little you move something you end up with a duplicate. Duplicating would be a good place for a contextual menu item. To noone’s surprise, everyone I play with ends up with undesired duplicates all the time. At least deleting them is a contextual menu item.
The options for managing elements in record lists seem to come from computer interfaces of decades ago. No way to multiple select and the like. Assigning elements to groups is very inconvenient if you have to drag more than a couple or if the list is long. Also, I would give the option when you create a new category to select all the record groups where you want it to appear. Often you want NPC, items, encounters and others, and currently you have to create it in all of them. Not sure why this functionality would be hard to implement, but I seem to recall Foundry is just as bad.