Sorry Michael I missed it,

I would put the browser button on the left of 'options' or in that row. Now it sneaks in on the right column, so it is like it's part of that right column, like an icon that is supposed to be there with the tools.
Maybe it would be better to make a icon for the browser similar to the 'option' icon, so they would fit nicely in a row together.

thanks mate.

Hi olio,

> About that scalability factor that is very nice, but even if
> you scale the gui up or down you still have the exactly
> same problem of layout, elements need to line up.

Technically it is very difficult to make a system that allows text to scale arbitrarily and to maintain exact lining up of some separate objects.

By making things able to be scaled in size, it just naturally goes along with giving up a bit of "down to the pixel" type spacing.

That's a good example of one of the many kinds of trade-offs that I encounter when designing software - in this case I have judged that being able to scale the UI provides more overall value to more people than having pixel-level control over the kinds of alignments that you were mentioning.


Sometimes it is not possible to solve every single problem all at the same time, you have to prioritize. That can mean that some smaller problems persist because they are a side effect of something else with a greater value.


> I agree this is not something I would look at and disregard
> the software for, but I honestly don't see these errors from
> adobe, autodesk...now I know these are huge corporations
> with probably tens of GUI designers.

They actually don't have the kind of arbitrarily scalable UI that MoI has, and as a consequence they can be difficult to use in many situations, like on a laptop that has a small screen but with a high DPI their buttons are extremely tiny and hard to interact with.


> that is why I am voicing my concern over silly graphical errors

Well, some of the ones you mentioned I agree with, I just have not yet had time to tweak the undo/redo buttons and the min/restore buttons. At some point I'll get to those.

The overall priority of those things has been rather low compared to actually making modeling commands or fixing bugs.

- Michael

Hi olio,

> I would put the browser button on the left of 'options' or in that row.

On a 1024x768 screen there is not enough room to the left of 'options' to contain the browser button.

That's another GUI problem that pixel-oriented graphic artists often fail to deal with, that users are not all running on the exact same screen that the graphic designer happens to have in front of them.

It's another area where I tend to have to make sacrifices in the UI design.

The payoff is that MoI actually runs for example on a little netbook computer instead of only working on a high resolution desktop machine.


Doing what you suggest here would cause a scroll bar to appear and force the user to scroll the bottom toolbar left and right.


Believe me, it would be hugely easier for me to make a UI design that did not have to run on lower resolution screens, it would change a variety of different things.


This is a pretty good example of how it is easy for someone to not really have an understanding of the various kinds of constraints and tradeoffs that come into play with UI design, it is not the exact same thing as graphic design although they are frequently mistaken for one another by graphic designers.


- Michael

I'm going to lock this thread now since it is getting rather ridiculous.

- Michael

All good points Michael,

i hope I didn't contribute to the ridiculousness, I tried to be constructive!