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Re: Layer widget Windows usability report

 

Manveru wrote:
Hello,

I've just build latest code from SVN mainly to look at Dick's work.
Below I put comments about how it works under Windows (wxWidgets
2.9.0). I loaded my board done sometime ago, and I am trying what is
working and what is not.

1. Color change option is not availabe if I have two button mouse.

2. Vias I have on my board are displayed in light gray and I am unable
to hide them by layer widget - they remain visible.

3. Adhes_Front, Adhes_Back, SoldP_Front, SoldP_Back do not reveal
nothing; I suspect due to fact that part modules do not have such
elements designed.

4. Mask_Front and Mask_Back similarly to above.

5. Under "Rendering" tab, Pads Front and Pads Back do not hide parts'
pads, and second layer elements have pads in colors of "Micro Via".

6. Text Front and Text Backs hides and shows texts as expected, but
Front Text are still white, while on widget the blue color is shown.

7. Anchors and Grid works as expected in the color shown on widget.

8. Because arrow used to mark selected layer is BIG, the whole content
do not fit in default (seems to be smallest possible) size, and layers
check boxes are cut off. I have 19" 1280x1024 monitor here.

My personal feelings are that:
* Really nice job was done, in general this may really speedup the productivity.
* Missing availability of middle click makes color fields unusable (I
think for most windows users), adding an option to the popup menu
after separator may be enough.
* The blue arrow is an excessive waste of smaller screens space, I
suggest that it would be enough to darken background of selected layer
and maybe draw white thin frame around.
* Jean-Pierre mentioned about close button, which is a must I think;
but what about rolling off similarly to graphics programs, where the
vertical bar containing only name is available and clicked it rolls on
to normal float, I do not know how hard it is to achieve (this should
be implemented in wxAui itself...).
* The yet another idea is to have a three letter abbreviations of
layer names, and show the widget as narrow as possible, and switch to
full names if it is enough space to display them (individually would
be really great).

Thank you Dick for your hard work.



Your appreciation and thanks is gratifying.


I will temporarily set my screen resolution to 1280 x 1024 and take another look at your items in detail over the next several days when I have time. I asked about the middle mouse button last week. You should have said something then. As far as the mouse is concerned, send me your address, I will send you a 3 button mouse. This is cheaper than me writing code for a problem which is easily solved with less than $20.

I will try again and find a way to generically anticipate the required window size for the widget in a cross platform way using wxWidgets. This is code in LAYER_WIDGET::GetBestSize(), and the hard coded pixel counts in there are bad, there should be a more "cross platform way" to get the size. wxWidgets could not do it, and I only got close it seems.


Please send me a screenshot of your *full screen* showing the LAYER_WIDGET to my PM so I can see what you mean by overlap.


I have asked for some help doing some research on L1).
For any newbie developers, this is a good chance for you to get involved.


Manveru, in general these items show your skill as a good software tester. Your timing was also good, not too early. These items are a matter of just grinding through them and fixing them, a normal process for new code like this. If a generic way cannot be found to write LAYER_WIDGET::GetBestSize() then *later* folks on those platforms may have to do some platform specific tweaking for us. Let me look at it again first.

I think we may need to consider a reduced font size to narrow the width. It can be tightened up a bit I'm sure.

I do not support the idea of a single line for this widget. That would be no more than a combobox, which is what we have now. So I am opposed to that 100%. I assume you did tear off the widget and get it floating? How was its size after tearing it off by dragging its title bar. Please send me a screenshot of that size also.


Thanks,

Dick








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