[Qgis-developer] Any UI/UX plans for QGIS3?

[Nyall Dawson]

On 25 November 2016 at 21:22, Alexandre Neto <senhor.neto at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> QGIS 3 is getting lots of love, and we are seeing new features being added,
> some legacy code being clean up, and so on. We are all aware that this will
> break the 2.x API, but now it's the time for it.
>
> So I wondered if this is not the perfect time to think about some UI/UX
> changes as well, as it will lead to more work in translation and
> Documentation. Could we do a list of UI/UX stuff that we could improve?
>
> I can think of a few things:
>
> Consistency
>  - "search", "select" and "browse" for browsing files;
> - "Add saved file to map", "Load into canvas when finished", "Open output
> file after running algorithm";
> - there is more of these for sure;

I love it!

Stuff like this is a great jumping in point where anyone can get
involved. It's just a matter of trawling through all the dialogs and
collating a list of strings which need changing. If that was done then
someone with commit rights could fix these in a couple of minutes. The
hard bit (and the bit where ANYONE can help) is making the list in the
first place.

Some more suggestions (which again, anyone could help with identifying):

- replacing "non standard" icons. We still have some inconsitently
used icons (such as the expression builder icon) used throughout qgis.
- dialogs which violate hig conventions:
    - use of ":" at the end of strings
    - bad tab order
    - group boxes with just one widget
- bad/inconsistent capitalisation in strings, dialog titles, and tooltips
- widgets without tooltips (or non helpful tooltips)


These are also issues for plugins, so collating lists and opening bugs
against plugins would also help.


>
> Help and Documentation
> - Most of our help buttons lead to nowhere, we already talked about pointing
> them to the User's Manual online (although we would need a solution for
> working with it offline and in different languages)
>
> Defaults
> - Should default selection color not be opaque?
> - Showing only selected features vertexes by default?
+1

> - Map template, we could provide a very simple template as default (I think
> there was already some discussion about this); Most people I see gets very
> confused when they see a completely empty page.

Depends how it's done. I don't think it should always open with a
template, but including some nice templates with qgis would be a good
start.


Another idea I'd love to see for 3.0 is switching the main ui to using
monochrome "symbolic" icons. I think this could really refresh the
interface and avoid the ui from taking attention away for the content
(ie, the pretty map you're making). I tried making a script to auto
convert the icons as a test.... and ended up with a horrendous result
which had to be burned in a furnace and scattered on the four winds.

Nyall

>
> Alexandre Neto
> --
> Alexandre Neto
> ---------------------
> @AlexNetoGeo
> http://sigsemgrilhetas.wordpress.com
> http://gisunchained.wordpress.com
>
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