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Hi all,

I have a couple of suggestions for improving AmiDock, perhaps they have in fact been addressed already in Update 3 or will appear in 4.2, ok so here we go.

1. When opening a subdock all other open subdocks should close.
2. When adding an item to the AmiDock positioning information of any subdocks should be updated, some kind of auto-snapshot technique is required. The best way to explain this if you can't follow that, imagine you have AmiDock along the bottom of your screen and a couple of subdocks, lets call them Internet and Games. Now I add a new application to the AmiDock, foreinstance Jack, I then click the Internet subdock and the horizontal positioning is completely out of step. Its highly annoying and looks cheap.

Push4Dock

Now the biggest thing I like about Push4Dock is not the actual AmiDock upgrade itself (which is however handy), but the Home Directory layout. Common drawers for Applications, Downloads, Music, Videos, Images etc... This is something I urge Hyperion to embrace. A future AmigaOS upgrade could/should create these common drawer structures by default on WORK: and in addition add assignments into the startup-sequence.

ASL / Workbench Windows

Where to begin hmm... now lets be honest the file requesters suck, they suck hard. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/61283734@N ... 6869891332 ). Now I know this is written in Hollywood blah blah - its an example, I feel AmigaOS should integrate Mason's icons as soon as possible into a new replacement file requester and conversely into Workbench windows to give them more functionality.

I would really like to hear what the development team have in mind on the above and the current Workbench in general.

Also what about Prefs? Has anyone start consolidating these tools and removing some of the crap that no-one ever should need to toggle on/off?

Okay I better finish there I realise you have lots on your plate already.

Thanks.

djrikki wrote:1. When opening a subdock all other open subdocks should close.
2. When adding an item to the AmiDock positioning information of any subdocks should be updated, some kind of auto-snapshot technique is required. The best way to explain this if you can't follow that, imagine you have AmiDock along the bottom of your screen and a couple of subdocks, lets call them Internet and Games. Now I add a new application to the AmiDock, foreinstance Jack, I then click the Internet subdock and the horizontal positioning is completely out of step. Its highly annoying and looks cheap.

That & more has already been solved by Smart Sub Dockies, and I could not live without them. Unfortunately they are not built-in to AmiDock, and so require a little bit extra effort to use.

djrikki wrote:ASL / Workbench Windows

Where to begin hmm... now lets be honest the file requesters suck, they suck hard. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/61283734@N ... 6869891332 ). Now I know this is written in Hollywood blah blah - its an example

It's a nice first attempt, but I really feel it is far too much a clone of the way Windows does it, and also extremely messy from the huge number of buttons spread around 3 sides of the window (which also afflicts Windows).

Any changes to ASL should be optional, because many people will absolutely hate wasting of space for "user friendlyness" that they don't need.

I feel AmigaOS should integrate Mason's icons as soon as possible into a new replacement file requester and conversely into Workbench windows to give them more functionality.

That is an obvious one, but from what I have previously heard said, it seems that a major revamp of Workbench is not on the cards until after the graphics system itself gets a major revamp. That will allow them to do lots of fancy effects, and mean they won't be wasting effort by having to re-do it all again in the future after the graphics system gets revamped.

Until then I think we will have to use Filer, which is pretty nice IMHO, although maybe we will still see some minor further enhancements to Workbench before then.

Also what about Prefs? Has anyone start consolidating these tools and removing some of the crap that no-one ever should need to toggle on/off?

On the contrary, nearly EVERYONE has a different idea about how AmigaOS4 should look & operate. You are the perfect example of this! In that case there is no option BUT to have tons of options in some areas of Prefs. HOWEVER, they could perhaps be organised a bit better, so that less commonly needed stuff is hidden away a bit better.

IMHO, the only Prefs which need hiding entirely are these (almost!) completely obsolete ones:

Sys:Internet (it is for dial-up only, but many new users try it for broadband internet & get very frustrated when it does not work).
Sys:Prefs/Picasso96Mode (virtually obsoleted by the Monitor's tab of Sys:Prefs/ScreenMode).
Sys:Prefs/PrinterGfx (since this is now accessible from Sys:Prefs/Printer).

djrikki wrote: Now the biggest thing I like about Push4Dock is not the actual AmiDock upgrade itself (which is however handy), but the Home Directory layout. Common drawers for Applications, Downloads, Music, Videos, Images etc... This is something I urge Hyperion to embrace. A future AmigaOS upgrade could/should create these common drawer structures by default on WORK: and in addition add assignments into the startup-sequence.

I'd have to disagree with this. I don't like having all that stuff in Work: However, I'd be completely supportive of AmigaOS having standardized ASSIGNS for all of the above (Apps:, DL:, Music:, Video:, Images:, Docs:, etc) Then the user can put those things wherever they want but developers can write their programs assuming those assigns exist.

ChrisH wrote: IMHO, the only Prefs which need hiding entirely are these (almost!) completely obsolete ones:

Sys:Internet (it is for dial-up only, but many new users try it for broadband internet & get very frustrated when it does not work).
Sys:Prefs/Picasso96Mode (virtually obsoleted by the Monitor's tab of Sys:Prefs/ScreenMode).
Sys:Prefs/PrinterGfx (since this is now accessible from Sys:Prefs/Printer).

Totally agree with Sys:Internet. That caused me no end of grief when I first starting using OS4.
Sys:Prefs/Picasso96Mode is a pain to use and I still don't understand the difference between screenmodes defined in Picasso96Mode vs the ones defined in "ScreenMode". However, some of Picasso96Mode's finetuning settings should be available under an "advanced" option in "ScreenMode" to completely do away with Picasso96Mode.

I'd like to nominate Sys:Prefs/Timezone to your list. There's really no reason why its few options can't be put under the "Timezone" Tab in Sys:Prefs/Locale. Heck, one of the settings in Sys:Prefs/Timezone is even "Use Local Preferences"

And just to add about prefs reorganisation: Imho prefs:gui should be integrated together with prefs:workbench, as well, as some of the other prefs too, to have just one "prefs:workbench" preference, in whcih everything workbench-settings related will be placed via tabs.

kas1e wrote:And just to add about prefs reorganisation: Imho prefs:gui should be integrated together with prefs:workbench, as well, as some of the other prefs too, to have just one "prefs:workbench" preference, in whcih everything workbench-settings related will be placed via tabs.

Fonts prefs ought to be within GUI prefs (which already has loads of fonts settings) and/or WB prefs (as most of the fonts relate to WB). The font caching tab should move to ASL prefs as that's pretty much the only thing which uses the font caching ability AFAIK (certainly from a user perspective it is anyway). I'd actually keep GUI and WB prefs separate; WB prefs relates specifically to WB, whereas GUI prefs is global. WBpattern prefs should become part of WB prefs, however.

AHI prefs needs to be rewritten to use Reaction (I can't believe this hasn't been done - one of the ages-old Reaction examples is a mock-up of AHI prefs for Christ's sake!)

Definitely agree on merging Timezone with Locale - maybe add Time to that too?

Internet prefs should be named Network prefs.

Popupmenu prefs should be within GUI prefs.

AmigaInput should be renamed or become a tab within Input prefs.

PrinterGfx can go, it is only a shortcut to the graphics part of Printer prefs. It made sense when the two were merged, but that was back in the 2.0 days. If it is still a problem then by all means keep the shortcut program - but remove the icon.

Picasso96Mode ought to be moved to System (or removed entirely); it's not a prefs program, it only defines screenmodes and most people should be using the Screenmode prefs Monitors tab - which is the official way of doing it. (to add to that - why does save/use/test/cancel get ghosted out on the monitors tab, I suppose it is because I haven't made any changes but it is very confusing)