DonationCoder.com Software > T-Clock
T-Clock 2010 (download)
WhiteTigX:
[...] I think a menu item would be good, too. And a fold out menu listing all defined alarms--similar to the Timers menu--would be amazing.-trlkly (June 18, 2014, 08:35 PM)
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... oh boy... I thought you just wanted a mouse click option for that one :P I don't actually like to bloat the menu too much... it would require a rewrite to be able to activate and disable all of them if someone wants to.. (with the Exit menu item at least available by holding down SHIFT or CTRL)
What do you want that "fold out menu" to have or behave like? Right now it would still be the same as the properties page...
All that "Alarms" and "Timers" stuff isn't that user friendly... nor easy to understand...
Alarms should for example also work on a specific date... chosen by a date picker control or something like that.
Something I didn't mention before: It's not obvious how to create a new menu item in the "Menu Item Details" tab. It might be a good idea to add a "New Menu Item" button. I just now figure out that I have to start from the "Quicky Menu Items" tab.
[...]-trlkly (June 18, 2014, 08:35 PM)
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... while I like to improve usability like I did with the mouse tab... I hate to rewrite those dialogs xD Besides I can't see how it could be better... Unless you want to draw me and example :P
P.S. I know bugs related to the Calendar already :P Didn't work out on XP as I thought^^ Nor is the focus thing fully working.. (that one worked in all my tests before...)
trlkly:
The fold out menu would be modeled on the one for T-Clock Timers. There would be an "Add/Edit Alarms" menu item at the top, and a list of alarms at the bottom.
The difference would be that all defined alarms would show, not just active ones, but active ones would have a checkmark on them. Clicking on any alarm menu item would toggle alarm activation.
As for the dialog that would open when you clicked "Add/Edit Alarms," it could very well be the Alarms tab. But if you wanted to change it, I would probably take everything in the top section and make it a new dialog. Setting chimes could be another separate dialog.
Putting all this together, the menu would look like this:
--- ---T-Clock Alarms >
Add/Edit Alarms
Hourly Chimes
-----------------
Alarm 1 ✓
Alarm 2
Alarm 3 ✓
As for how the Menu Items tab would be better, I can see what you mean that it would be hard to just to add a button to the existing dialog. So I'll just mockup a complete remake that would, in my opinion, be much more user friendly. It looks a lot like what I've seen in most programs that give you options like this.
Menu Items tab in Preferences:
Menu Items edit dialog (opens on top of properties dialog when you click Add or Edit):
Stoic Joker:
@ WhiteTigX - Make frequent backups, and do not do any testing on the development machine (use a VM) if you tackle that code. The arrays are touchy as hell, resources have to be defined within certain ranges, and anything it doesn't like will result in a missing menu/shell crash.
^That^ is half the reason that T-Clock has an exit command line option ... which didn't always save me (hence the VM recommendation).
I'm available if you get stuck.
WhiteTigX:
@Stoic Joker
I've partially rewrote all that menu items stuff already :P Simplified lots of it and got rid of some resources as well... I've also reordered resources.. and nothing happened, it's still working ;)
But I've added notes about defines that have to be in order...
Take a look at this source to see which notes I mean ;)
Otherwise I've once killed the exit T-Clock function completely^^ Had to kill explorer xD So no need for VM... everything is good ;)
P.S. here you can also see that the menu items position isn't relevant anymore nor hardcoded, they can be reordered within the resource file as wanted without breaking a thing:
https://github.com/White-Tiger/T-Clock/commit/a4c75663f8c7c5df7801e5e1158714510615cbfd#diff-df6ba8f879548fc288c74d59fb868e42L33
edit:
@trlkly
well... I don't really think those buttons are needed... you didn't change other stuff besides that.. "non-existing" menu items could include a dummy text.. such as "double-click to add new" or something... Or a context menu on right click... (while also allowing keyboard such as DEL, UP/DOWN and RETURN^^)
The popup for editing could be included into the properties window as well... not another tab, but it could overwrite the "Menu Items" tab ;)
Non the less... I would rather like a fully customizable menu... thus the possibility to remove every single item, reorder them etc... Similar to the "Mouse" tab..
trlkly:
Those buttons are very necessary as it is otherwise completely opaque to the user that double clicking on some list will do anything. That is just not the way UIs normally work. I only discovered that double clicking worked by accident yesterday when I was writing the complaint. I was actually going to report that the custom menu option was broken, because I couldn't figure out how to work it. That's how unintuitive the current arrangement is.
The buttons not only make it very clear to the user what they do, but also are standard on pretty much any list I've ever seen where you can add, edit, and delete entries. Right-click menus would just once again hide features from the users.
And I've never seen a tab becoming overwritten. If you have to because of resource restrictions, fine, but it would be a really strange experience. A popout modal dialog box is how this usually works.
But, ultimately, my main point is that, if you want to make something more user friendly, you can't hide the basic features from the user. If you want to let them edit menu items, you have to make that feature front and center.
I don't need any of these changes, as I've figured it out. But I am trying help you with the goal you stated--to make the menu dialog more user friendly.
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