I have some ideas, I will develop these further when I have some more time.
1) I feel the GUI needs tidying a bit and simplifying. TBH, I think the way that all information is displayed to the user in overwhelming. Some settings I keep the same for many runs at a time, like symbols and formatting options. Some of these would be better hidden in a menu.
To improve the GUI, I think the app should have one main window. This window will have a "Run Now" button, an Originating Post box and an option for "New Dumps Only". These buttons should be big, bold and probably have some kind of icon next to them. This window will also have a menu bar. This menu will be used to hide some of the options. Under an options menu, it should be possible to toggle an advanced view and quick options. For the first ever click on the advanced button, it should pop up a message to alert people there are many potentially confusing settings here, do they want to continue? If they say yes, an options windows will appear with option tabs for all the options. However, the quick options will bring a small box with things like symbols (online/local), kd.exe path and username.
The GUI should also have some icons and some colour. I think the grey, whilst perfectly functional, is a little utilitarian for me and a splash of minimalistic colour would help. I do find the white boxes behind the text to be a little messy looking in the current apps.
What I don't want is 6 months down the line to look like this. Any idea what these options do???
Some principles of a good GUI:
If I sat in front of it, knowing absolutely nothing about the program that you are having me use, could I figure out how to work it?
If yes, good GUI
If no, bad GUI
A good GUI is one that minimizes whatever learning curve happens to be there for the program's function.
A good GUI needs to be absolutely simple in its initial form. But it also needs to have a much deeper interface hidden within, that a basic user won't see much of or need, while the advanced user can find and know what to do with.
For me, a good GUI is one I shouldn't notice unless I want to. One factor for a good GUI includes good space management because (for me, at least) if something takes up too much space on a screen with no workaround, it becomes annoying
2) For new users, I think we should rename some of these files. What user will know what 99.txt, 98.txt, 88.txt will contain. The app also contains files that do the identical job - 99.txt and dumps.txt are effectively the same file. The numbered txt files are confusing, even I forget sometimes what they are, even now!
3) From the DRT side of things, I think that we NEED to get a mass driver import set-up (2013 re-write with AppGini MAY get this working). Otherwise it is useless for now. Maybe we could (in the far future) set up something to auto-submit unknown driver names to something. But that's for the far future.
4) Less pop-ups. I know I suggested pop-up options boxes before, and I know. What I mean by this is the fact some many things pop-up around the screen by themselves. For example, this is what happens at the moment:
Double clicking the exe first pops up a cmd window
First GUI loads
(Assuming user just clicks go and full GUI is on)Progress bar appears
View HTML/TXT's appears
Time appears
Cmd screen flashes on exit
None can be skipped. Would it be possible to incorporate the progress bar into the main window? So the options are above then the progress bar takes up the bottom 1/6 of the window but is always visible? Not sure how good that would work. Would also like to see all cmd flashes gone please!
All of this may sound harsh and mean but it's not. I really like the app and the work you've put in is fantastic. But these are just my thoughts on things that could be improved. Nothing personal or mean here. :)
Stephen
