CHUI Beta Viewer released

[Perrie Juran]

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Hitomi Tiponi wrote:

It's always best to keep comments on the JIRA factual i.e. I have pointed out a bug when entering lots of characters in single line chat (it's a good one), and on here I can say that I am not surprised as the way they have implemented single line chat using the xml is a bit messy. :-)

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Actually the reason I think I was slapped is that I may have struck a nerve.  But that is just my opinion.  I stated my point in a very nice manner.  Thinking through how your users will use your product is germaine to product development. 

I could be wrong though.  It is possible that most of the Devs have Second Lives.  But we are left wondering a lot about this.

[NiranV Dean]

Last week i implemented CHUI for testing purposes and to see if i can do something about it, apart from it breaking half of my Viewer (People floater, IM , Local Chat, Chat/IM Toasts and even Name Tags) its absolutely unusable, it takes away chiclets which leaves me without any information who IMed me, to see that i always have to open that conversation window which automatically opens my local chat aswell (ugh)...just to see that it was only a group im not interested anyway...its local chat is a docked IM floater which makes it nearly impossible to mod it (it shares everything with all other IM windows, so if i change it i also change the IM Windows), it takes up huge amounts of screen space and seperating floaters or local chat doesnt even feel like i seperated them, it feels more like im creating a pointless new window that occludes my screen for no reason.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-SmuxcRPberg/UVNQZqdNIOI/AAAAAAAAIDA/lc8WCwTnlss/s1920/Snapshot_1198.png

heres how it looked for me the whole week... and this is how its looks again after throwing CHUI overboard (finally)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-qOvJh6atAFc/UVOd66Q5ysI/AAAAAAAAID4/nHTrBwtQDt0/s1920/Snapshot_1202.png

so much less space wasted, i never need to open any huge window to see who IMed me, all IMs autohide and most important, chat is ALWAYS seperate and small, apart from the fact that it is never visible because it automatically hides whenever it loses focus or send a message

in my opinion, CHUI is a devastating change that is sadly a mostly MUST HAVE because it includes alot of UI refactoring which will cause all V3 TPVs alot of issues and unnecessary work, its space wasting, unusable, unintuitive, a huge backstep before even V1 and gets rid of literally everything that made the V2 chat good, alltogether this makes it the biggest UI **bleep**up in history of Linden Labs. Thanks Linden Labs, i hope people will grow some real balls and kick in your door and to tell you that you **bleep**ed up one of the most important parts of Second Life.

personally i will be giving up on CHUI,everyone in my group agrees with me since i've shown tabbed IM users how seperate IM really works and proven that all arguments about seperate IM beeing screen space occluding are absolutely wrong.

[Qie Niangao]

That comparison seems a bit apples and kumquats. I mean, for starters, I don't know anybody who uses the Linden viewer without collapsing those silly avatar icons using "compact view." (Well, I suppose there must be somebody who leaves them on the screen--it's the default, after all--but those must be very unhappy users.)

That said, it's certainly true that, using the CHUI, one can really clutter up one's screen, as that first image illustrates. (It could even be worse, if the left pane of the Conversations window is kept open.)

It doesn't help that the default settings all conspire to maximize CHUI's appetite for screen real estate.

It is, however, a matter of individual preference how much control one wants over the dynamic placement of messaging UI components. The Linden viewer seems to be moving very far in the direction of maximum user control--generally a good thing, IMHO--but the trick is, how to grant that control without lots of corresponding UI controls that consume screen space all the time.

[Perrie Juran]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

That comparison seems a bit apples and kumquats. I mean, for starters, I don't know anybody who uses the Linden viewer without collapsing those silly avatar icons using "compact view." (Well, I suppose there must be somebody who leaves them on the screen--it's the default, after all--but those must be very unhappy users.)

That said, it's certainly true that, using the CHUI, one can really clutter up one's screen, as that first image illustrates. (It could even be worse, if the left pane of the Conversations window is kept open.)

It doesn't help that the default settings all conspire to maximize CHUI's appetite for screen real estate.

It is, however, a matter of individual preference how much control one wants over the dynamic placement of messaging UI components. The Linden viewer seems to be moving very far in the direction of maximum user control--generally a good thing, IMHO--but the trick is, how to grant that

control

without lots of corresponding UI

controls

that consume screen space all the time.

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It is the amount of real estate that CHUI uses that is still the big issue.

Granted I don't understand a lot about coding and what it would take at this point to fix it but I simply don't understand the Dev's missing what a huge advantage tabs are and why it is not possible in the UI design to give us the option to either view information in the one CHUI window or break them out into a new window.  It goes back to what I said in the general observations JIRA, if the World is the reason for being here, why would I want to cover it up?

Tabbed browsing was one of the single biggest reasons for Firefox catching on as a browser when it was introduced.  It simply makes managing information on your screen easier. 

For a similar discussion regarding another UI element, see my comments to Torley in this thread and his reply.  http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Your-Avatar/INTERESTS-In-MY-Web-Profiles-Tab-Early-questions-amp-answers/m-p/769411/highlight/true#M2899

[Gooden Uggla]

Where did my world go?

 

Oh yeah, it's covered with an IM console.

 

/Fail

[Coby Foden]

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Gooden Uggla wrote:

Where did my world go?

Oh yeah, it's covered with an IM console.

/Fail

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Uff... what a pity.  As a quick first aid you could make IM console (Conversations window) semi transparent.  Then you could see at least something about the world through the Conversations window.

 

Never mind the above, I'm just joking. :smileytongue:

But seriously speaking, I'm interested to know what is your screen resolution?  And the display size?  As the CHUI has lots of unnecessary empty paddings all over, it can be pain to use on small displays; covering too much of the world view.

 

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Yeah the UI is definitely too big. I don't think the SL GUI toolkit supports it, but to be honest I've always wondered what those title bars are for? The min/max/close buttons can easily be in the toolbar, the title is in most cases not needed unless minimizing the window.

As for the toolbar buttons... many programs have a selection what to show: Icons, Text, Icons+Text and a checkbox for toggling small/big icons.

With SL I agree with other's sentiments: The UI should be toggle-able insofar that ti maximizes real estate. As an _option_, collapse the entire main menu ("Me Communicate World Build...") into one button similar to a start menu, put it on the same row as navbar/favbar.

Make all icons (including the customizable ones for inventory and the ones in the navbar) toggleable between small/big.

In the chat, allow _optionally_ hiding the "toolbar" and display a gear icon to the right of the input bar (or in the title bar).

I'm reasonably sure the CHUI will evolve over time, just like the v2/v3 interface did. There's a lot about CHUI I do like: Easy ad-hoc conferences, easy toggles for displays, easy transfer of voice between chats/IMs, nice list of people within chat range and so on. It's rough around the edges, but every new code/UI is.

I still vote for LL to just hire Hitomi to design the entire UI ~g~

[crysstal Popstar]

The viewer definately takes away from those who use SL to visit, play, go to other places for visual effects. To have the large square (yes large and i'm using a 24" screen) it takes away from the visual experience. If I remember, this is somewhat similar to what we used about 5 years ago. However with that chat system, you could make it part of the top or bottom  so it ran across the the whole screen, (top or bottom) not taking a chunk out of the middle or side of your screen.

I know there are nice advances on this for doing things with chat but.....if your going to do this to visual space, its the start of turning SL back into a chat network instead of what I thought it was intended to be.....an experience. My suggestion, if at all possible is to maybe give people the choice of using it like it is now or going back to what we had prior to the new release. FYI there is also some freezing of the screen going on now when you go into preferences, or tp to other places.