New interface preview

[LennStar]

hmm… what is the max. max? means all actions that are not done with the mouse
wiggle, shake, freeze, unfreeze, freeze all
unfreeze all, mutate, mutate all, undo, redo

restore very best, save current best, restore current best, remove bands, disable bands
align guide, restore structures, restore puzzle, clear

4 extras, 4 modes

That is the max max that is no option.

savely be ignored (because in menus and/or seldom used) can be
the extras, restore structures/puzzles, align guide, clear
leaves
first 10, 4 modes, 5 more

Makes 19 - that should be possible in one horizontal line.
Don't forget: We have at least 2 lines. We can cut off a bit with the second
move save current best, restore current best down
leaves 17.

freeze/freeze all and unfreeze/unfreeze usage
4 ways: a) either a do/undo thing like it works today: "freeze" freezes and if you selected a frozen part it unfreezes (mark: There is no "freeze 1" button now!); "freeze all" first freezes all, even if there is only one, then unfreezes.
Needs 2 Icons

b) 4 icons for everything - unmeccessary in my eye.

c) no icon at all (or only freeze/unfreeze all), like today
Needs 0/1 icon

d) 2-in-1: make a button with both freeze and unfreeze and one with freeze all unfreeze all: [freeze|unfreeze], player can click on left side to freeze, right side to unfreeze
Takes more shortkeys than today, but allows to both freeze and unfreeze every possible selection with one key pressing and not two.
Needs 2 (sligtly bigger) icons.

Like today would shrink the icons to 14. That should do it even in 800x600px in one line.

---

options bar:
I like it. We can use it after an update.
What can be thrown out with the ne interface:

• modes
• (extras) can possibly be moved to menu

action: half is in the icon line, another half can be moved to what is now "undo".
You can rename it to something like "protein management" since there are all the buttons that effect the whole protein or the going forth and back.

But with the undo graph that part gets too big. But that is not really a problem, since the undo graph needs improvement. The scroll bar there doesn't work, be we all want a longer history.
That means, the graph gets seperated, longer and gets a point window like I suggested it.

That means:
We have in line 1 the icons
line 2 is the increaseable scoreboard (if increased it is over shake and wiggle icon, but everyone uses hotkeys for this) and the undo graph
line 3, on the bottom, is the small menu bar, now only 3 or 4 entries: menu, view, protein management (extras)
If you click on one of them, it opens, and in the case of protein management it is a bar over the icon bar. You don't do that global things too often. You open, clik, close, work on. You can even work with mouse and hotkeys (think of the numbers!) while it is open and don't miss anything.

And now comes the funny, most important part in usability:
You can move around all these bars to whereever you want them, glue them to the let side of the screen and open/close them with a click on the small bottom bar or like the cookbook (also moveable).
People with small screens have it like I said above, and people like me with 1600x can have all the bars, cookbook and the view screen open at the same time ^^ (Have a button "restore bars" with hotkey in the options in case you want to restore the alignment or there is a bug with the bars)

You can also include a bar where the user can choose which icons are on. With that, it is possible to add a option "remove icons" - the veterans will just put a few icons on that bar and remove the ling line.

In short: Have an initial good design that works even on small screens and then let the user decide which buttons he sees.
Don't have the player adopt to the software, lets the software adopt to the player.
[I couldn't believe it the first (and second and third) time I saw this windows "assistent" 'you have unused icons on your desktop, this assistant helps you to remove them' - I can remove things I don't want there on my own O.o That is definitely the most ridiculous "help" I have ever seen. It's like you have a broken leg and cannot drive and after two weeks someone comes and says "I want your car, you haven't used it for 2 weeks, so surely you don't need it.]

[aloofmonkey]

I'm with the FoldIt development team and this feedback is really helpful with the process. We're really grateful for it. My colleagues and I are working on replying/fixing all that you've mentioned.

Once again, Thanks

[Deleted user]

• Make the black boxes un-dockable or removable so we can place them where we want or not see them at all
  For example, I would turn off group scoreboard, group chat, and puzzle chat permanently, and only open regular chat if needed, and place it somewhere unobtrusive. I would also like to place the score in a more comfortable place on the screen

• Let us assign our own hot-keys to functions

• I dislike having to go to another menu area to change modes, so having it all available on the top would help

• Don't change anything else

[axcho]

Thanks for the reply LennStar.

"hmm… what is the max. max? means all actions that are not done with the mouse"

That's a good analysis but actually the max is unbounded. We may add more tools, as there are many tool suggestions in the feedback tracker. But more specifically, all the Recipes would show up on the bottom bar as well.

Of course, we could have an option to only show applicable actions, or show all actions and highlight the ones that are applicable.

"You can move around all these bars to whereever you want them, glue them to the let side of the screen and open/close them with a click on the small bottom bar or like the cookbook (also moveable)."

"Make the black boxes un-dockable or removable so we can place them where we want or not see them at all"

I like this idea, and I know a lot of other players do as well.

"Let us assign our own hot-keys to functions"

This is definitely a feature we will be implementing.

[Jwb52z]

and I just figured out what bothered me about this preview. It looks almost too informal and structureless. I admit that I don't like alot of complicated commands, but this almost seems like it goes too far the other direction. I get the feeling I might not keep straight what I'm doing if everything is controlled by the mouse and nothin else.