Re: Sudoku UI change

[Arnaud Bonatti <arnaud bonatti gmail com>]

Hi! We usually use the GNOME Bugzilla’s instance for discussing
changes –including UI ones– but this list should also be OK for now —
we’ll open a bug is something comes out.

The right-column-big-buttons behaviour is something I never really
discussed, and so I helped moving in this direction; I’m usually
interested in patterns, so “having a way to do things that fit
everywhere”, and this one is “good enough” for me, it works.

The thing is that games could have multiple complexity: puzzle games
could be really simple (see Taquin, only a “New game”
right-column-big-button, even if I could add a time-counter in it), or
really complex (Chess…). With the ActionBar way you used here, some
games will have an ActionBar, and some won’t; and this is (stupidly
^^) bugging me. And I don’t see a good way to present a “who’s turn is
it” widget (see Iagno; and we might have a per-player time counter
there for Chess…) in an horizontal bar, even if this probably exists.

Concerning Sudoku’s design only (trying to forget about having all
games using exactly the same): the time-counter should be in my mind a
ToggleButton, that activates the pause-mode when pressed (changing the
icon to the pause one and greying the text), so no Pause button; and
clearing the game is more-or-less like creating a new one, so this
might be an option in the list of new-games options. In your design,
the previous/next widget is in a quite unusual place, I’ll keep it in
the left of the HeaderBar; and so, as the “New game” button only shows
a list of choices (reset current game, difficulties, custom grid),
I’ll put all the choices in a popover that appear when you click on
the HeaderBar’s title, and yay \o/ no more ActionBar nor
right-column-big-buttons (it could also be a new-game screen like now,
but then you’re loosing the link between the “restart this grid” and
the current grid).

One *feeling* also, that I’d want to preserve, is that having the “New
game” button like now, out of the headerbar, helps seing the window as
“the game” (with some options here and there) instead of seing the
window as “a window that manages the game”. Note that using a Popover
instead of a new-game screen, like detailed below, may help preserving
this feeling. Same for not displaying a HeaderBar (yeah, I had weird
mockups here and there ^^).

By the way, in a game with actions at the bottom as you did, I won’t
draw the ActionBar (no separation with the grid) but would limit the
buttons to be just under the grid (corner left, corner right, center).

So… now, let’s think. ^^

2015-10-09 17:09 UTC+02:00, Ernestas Kulik <ernestas kulik gmail com>:
> Hello,
>
> I’m not entirely sure how to go about proposing UI changes, but here goes.
>
> I’ve made some in my fork[1] and would like for you to consider them.
>
> The motivation for this is my belief that having oversized buttons
> alongside the game view just feels clunky (applies to other games as
> well, but I just started hacking Sudoku to see how it could turn out).
>
> Thanks,
> Ernestas Kulik
>
> ---
> [1] https://github.com/cankerpie/gnome-sudoku
> _______________________________________________
> games-list mailing list
> games-list gnome org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/games-list


-- 
Arnaud Bonatti
________________________________
téléphone : +33(0)6 50 57 23 49
courriel : arnaud bonatti gmail com