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Last post Author Topic: Requests / Suggestions thread  (Read 67269 times)

Markham

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #100 on: June 25, 2010, 08:40 AM »
1. I have lots of bugs here and there to report about, but it seems that there's no right place to do so, so I really suggest to open up "bugs report" section here, and if a way already existed to do so, please direct me! (I think you'll find me helpful with bugs(
You can subscribe to our Redmine site (accessible via Circle Dock's Help Browser) and report any serious bugs there. Or simply open a new topic on this board.

2.I can see that there is a problem with "hide when mouse leaves" option in the visibility section, I have chosen a semi-transparent background (or circle), there are a lots of spaces in the image, so when I activate this option, it seems to confuse the software to determine when the mouse really leaves the circle, what I'm suggesting is that you consider changing the code to a more stable one, you can add a virtual radius in the options and when the mouse leaves this specific radius, the dock start counting and hides when the time comes. However a radius won't do the trick if there is no centre point, so you need to add that too to the code (calculated automatically). For eclipse shape the must be 2 centre points.
This is down to the design of the background image and to avoid this pitfall, your backgrounds should conform to one simple rule: there should be no areas of 100% transparency within the circumference whatsoever but the area between the circumference and the bounding rectangle's borders should have 100% transparency. This is simple to achieve using any half-decent graphics program such as The Gimp or Photoshop. The internal opacity should be at least 1%.

As for your suggested method of overcoming this, there are a couple of good reasons why that is a Bad Idea:
  • Only the size of an image's bounding rectangle is known and there can be a difference between a circle's, or ellipsoid's, circumference and the bounding rectangle.
  • Circle Dock installs global mouse hooks and, to keep resources down to a minimum, the program reacts passively. To do as you suggest would entail tracking the cursor's position as well as the Dock's coordinates, in other words, active tracking - since Windows does this anyway, why duplicate the effort?

3.I'm really interested that the circle appears in the centre of the screen, I know that I can do that manually by choosing that I appears wherever the mouse is and after that lock it in the centre, but it's really annoying and anti-user-friendly, so I suggest that you add a new option saying that the circle will appear at the centre (by the way it's also a stability problem)
You are the first person to request this. Since you can place the Dock anywhere on the screen - and lock it there - I don't see the problem! And how is this a "stability problem"?

4.as a software engineer, I must say that the program has a really though complexed interface, the good news is that the program has almost all the possible options on earth, but with great power comes great responsibility (sorry for that, I always wanted to say it) which means that you should choose the perfect interface for the program, when I first opened the settings window, I believe everyone agrees with me, it gave me the feeling that I should really work hard to find what I'm looking for, and by the way I opened up the settings almost 10 time until I finally found what I'm looking for!
The problem, as I already said the quantity and the variety of the options, now I'm not saying that you should remove any of the options, but what I'm saying is that, the order of the options is not right, there are lots of misplaced options!!!
The perfect interface is the interface where a new user, normal new user, can locate the thing that he's searching for in just a few clicks without even using the help! The place and the order of the options is very important, it should be Intuition who helps the user find the options.
If any of you interested in a new interface, I'll be glad to start thinking about one and submit it as a donation (since I'm not working I cannot donate any money).
However ugly and unwieldy you may find the main settings dialog it is, I can assure you, considerably better than when I took over the development some nine months ago. It would not, for example, fit on to a Netbook's screen - and there were considerably fewer settings back then!

The settings dialog is by no means perfect and some options may appear to be out of place. That's simply because there are overlaps - labels being a good example. However, the dialog is designed to be extensible and, where appropriate, to work from left to right (as far as the tabs are concerned).

That said, I am always open for suggestions as to make it better and welcome any you care to make.

5. i really didn't see any good use of the rotation option, if a user wants to change the order of their shortcuts he should do that manually after opening the setting windows, since it's not that popular, you see; the order of the items should be permanent, when it's like that I can access whatever shortcut I want from the circle with my eyes shut! Isn't that’s the whole program is about??? Making useful fast shortcuts???
Rotation does not affect item ordering, merely their relative position. It's all about personal preference - some people want the ability to rotate the dock to bring an item to the mouse pointer rather than take the mouse pointer to the item. If you don't want dock rotation, simply disable it!

6. I didn't find search button in the help window! It's really necessary.
The help system was designed to be usable as local help as well as online. If and when I have time, I may add some form of keyword indexing to the local version. The help browser is quite simply a customised web browser.



Mark

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #101 on: June 25, 2010, 09:30 AM »
1. i'll do my best!
2.didn't consider that, your right!
3.thats why i read older suggestion. i recall that i already written the steps to do so, and i know that, however i considered that as an interface problem (i'd guess more than 80% of the people using the lock options locks the position in the centre). it is also considered a stability problem from a simple reason, a sudden change of resloution and you lose focus! the program should be stable (the program is not, not just this, also the bugs that i talked about made my mind on the stability problems), the program should be programmed to interact intelligently to the enviroment surrounding it, i.e. the lock position thing should be programmed to calculate the ratio of where it's beeing place so that in every resloution the circle would appear exactly in the right place, this makes the program uncrushable! and of course lowers the posibilities of crashes.
4.i'll start thinking, the interface isn't that bad, the problem is; the program has lots of options, i think the most urgent matter here is the interface, you won't get a perfect interface no matter what, but the ambition toward perfection continues!
5.but people still has to move thier pointers to click on the shortcut (the cursor is in the center), it seems that you didn't read the whole reply, or if you did you just ignored the part where really suggests a better and more useful way to use rotation!
6.in my opnion, you should drop the whole local help thing, almost everyone has his own internet, you should use internet based help engine, like a wiki page for this program, everythings ready and good to go, easily updated!

mateek

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You know my love...but...
« Reply #102 on: July 01, 2010, 12:56 PM »
for Circle Dock, but I hate the system tray icon which doesn't change when you change the center button.  I used to have every system icon hidden except for my screen lock, but now I'm using my OS's built in lock, so I want CircleDock to take the reigns as having that sole honor. 

I have one big  problem.  I'm running W7U on an old laptop that is more like a netbook, so I'm using the classic appearance.  The light grey of CDo's native icon is almost completely washed out in the light gray of the clock corner.  I've used Resource Hacker to change icons in the past, but when I tried that on CDo the .exe was corrupted.  Is there another home remedy I could try?   

I've used a few programs that allowed a choice of two sets of tray icons.  3RVX, by Matthew Malensek, (I have no connections to him, but love his utility's utter simplicity.  His 'About' tab doesn't give a URL) comes to mind because it's in use on my PC due to misbehaving media sites in regards to volume evenness.   Its a small volume control that sits exclusively in the tray and has two sets of default icons, a blackish set, and a whitish set.  Is that a better fit for CDo as far as another option?

Is an option to change the system tray possible at all in the future?  I'm guessing the popular 'don't show' option on many programs might complicate the matter.

Thanks.
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ArchaicTimeFrog

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #103 on: July 28, 2010, 11:45 AM »
My suggestion, which I touched on in the Lifehacker article for Radian (and based on the same program) (Hi sgtevmckay!):

The ability to launch the program by holding the right mouse button for a second or so. In addition, it would also be nice if one could launch a link simply by releasing the button over the link.

Basically, the behavior is similar to the menu on Neverwinter Nights, which Radian has emulated fairly well, I think. I initially found CD while looking for something that emulated the NWN menu behavior. I've started using Radian, and I find it far easier to launch than CD. While CD is a more mature program, I find Radian far easier to use in spite of its lack of features, because of how I use my computer.

sgtevmckay

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #104 on: July 28, 2010, 12:22 PM »
Greetings ArchaicTimeFrog  ;D

I thank you for stopping by and documenting your thoughts.
Never Winter Nights is one of my all time favorite RPG games for the computer.

Since I am certain that Markham has no idea what we are talking about. I will have to grab some video capture of the NWN Navigator for him.
This may add for an excellent concept for Circle Dock.
I wish I had thought of the navigator in NWN some time ago, as this may be the answer to a concept I have been trying to put together for months  8)

Markham

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #105 on: July 30, 2010, 12:37 PM »
I am familiar with Radian's right mouse button "hold" to trigger its visibility and I will investigate the possibility of adding this as an option to Circle Dock. As for automatically launching a Dock Item if the right mouse button is released over it, this may not be possible since Radian and Circle Dock use different approaches: Each of Radian's pie-slices is a Window containing six buttons whereas each of Circle Dock's Dock Items is an individual window.


Mark

sgtevmckay

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #106 on: July 30, 2010, 12:51 PM »
this may not be possible since Radian and Circle Dock use different approaches: Each of Radian's pie-slices is a Window containing six buttons whereas each of Circle Dock's Dock Items is an individual window.

You are absolutely correct and I do keep forgetting these details  :-[

Markham

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #107 on: August 03, 2010, 02:26 AM »
I've added a further mouse toggle option - "RButton held". If selected, holding the right mouse button down for around 3/4ths of a second will toggle the dock's visibility. If  this causes the dock to be shown and you continue holding the right mouse button down, move it to a dock item and then release the button, that dock item will be executed just as if you click the left mouse button whilst over it.

A similar option can not be applied to the left mouse button since that would interfere with global drag and drop operations. Similarly it can not be applied to the middle mouse button since that is used for scrolling.



Mark

ArchaicTimeFrog

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Re: Requests / Suggestions thread
« Reply #108 on: August 03, 2010, 06:40 AM »
Great! Looking forward to trying it out.