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Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 12:43 pm
by Stephen Robinson
I don't know how you all feel about this, but there's far to many icons in the prefs draw, 3 for Printer settings, and I don't even have a printer!

Should things like popupmenu prefences to a sub-menu of GUI preferences's 'menu' option?

Any other suggestions?

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:10 pm
by xenic
If your Preferences window is messy select the WorkBench "Window/Clean up by" menu item. I think popupmenu is a seperate system that was adopted into the OS like DefIcons, SGrab etc. It's not part of Intuition or Reaction as far as I know. Here is a quote from the AutoDocs about popupmenu:

"This class creates standard popupmenus, it currently acts as a BOOPSI wrapper around popupmenu.library.
Future releases will use Intuition popupmenus once they are implemented."

When (if?) popup menu functionality is integrated into Intuition then the settings will belong in "GUI Preferences".
P.S. You can find still find original popupmenu library and class on Aminet.

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:15 pm
by xenic
Stephen Robinson wrote:Any other suggestions?
Yes. Instead of worrying about "messy", focus on STRESSING your system to find all the bugs before the next update so the users don't have to find them :-)

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:28 pm
by chris

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:19 pm
by xenic
chris wrote:My earlier thoughts on this: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz ... =138#p2003
Some reorganization might help but some things should remain the same. Popupmenu prefs should probably remain seperate until it is functionally incorporated into Intuition. It just seems to me that reorganization and improvement always seems to result in as many bug introductions as bug fixes in any particular release. My concept of messy is probably different than yours. If you want to see what I consider messy try adding Dopus4 with the BEHINDWB ToolType activated to WBStartup. With Update3 it causes WorkBench to open with an ugly grey background before loading the screen background image. I've been opening Dopus4 behind WorkBench since Dopus4 was released as a commercial program and never had a problem with WorkBench. With the latest WorkBench reorganization/improvement I have a really clumsy looking (ugly) system startup. I would prefer that the next OS4 update have massive bugfixes and not one single cleanup/improvement.

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:17 pm
by chris
xenic wrote:My concept of messy is probably different than yours. If you want to see what I consider messy try adding Dopus4 with the BEHINDWB ToolType activated to WBStartup. With Update3 it causes WorkBench to open with an ugly grey background before loading the screen background image. I've been opening Dopus4 behind WorkBench since Dopus4 was released as a commercial program and never had a problem with WorkBench. With the latest WorkBench reorganization/improvement I have a really clumsy looking (ugly) system startup. I would prefer that the next OS4 update have massive bugfixes and not one single cleanup/improvement.
That's part of the dos.library issues - it does the same with basic WB.

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:46 pm
by samo79
Agree, the prefs settings need to be reorganized at soon as possible, personally i like the MorphOS prefererences and i think that somethings similar can be done :)

http://jpv.wmhost.com/morphos2_review/pics/04-prefs.png

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:02 pm
by abalaban
samo79 wrote:Agree, the prefs settings need to be reorganized at soon as possible, personally i like the MorphOS prefererences and i think that somethings similar can be done :)

http://jpv.wmhost.com/morphos2_review/pics/04-prefs.png
For myself that's one of the thing I don't like in Morphos. I really prefer the independant way, not a all in one prefs program.

*But* I agree ther are too much preferences programs currently some might be grouped:
* Printer, PrinterPS, PrinterGfx should be one and only;
* AHI and Sound;
* Time and Timezone;
* Font, Workbench and WBPattern;
* Input and AmigaInput;

Already thats only 5 programs instead of 12 :o

I'm just speaking about GUI not rewritting what's behind, the grouping can be a simple tab with actual prefs program inside (just like Printer and PrinterGfx).

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 3:55 am
by Slayer
samo79 wrote:Agree, the prefs settings need to be reorganized at soon as possible, personally i like the MorphOS prefererences and i think that somethings similar can be done :)

http://jpv.wmhost.com/morphos2_review/pics/04-prefs.png
That's strike one *grin*

Re: Prefs Draw is a bit of a mess, how best to tidy?`

Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 5:31 pm
by xenic
@ abalaban
I agree except for combining Font with WorkBench and WBPattern. I don't think the system default font and system screen font belong in WorkBench so I would splint Fonts between GUI and WorkBench. However, we'll be losing some very attractive icons if we start combining things :-)