[Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Everything else that doesn't fall into one of the other PB categories.
Mohsen

[Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Mohsen »

Hi
This may seem a little repetitive, but please participate in this survey.
please share your expectations of a good visual designer. for example, what shortcomings in the current PB visual designer bother you? or what are your wishs?

To avoid similar comments suppose the designer engine has the following features :
1-Copy- Paste- Duplicate- Delete
2-Selection : SelectAll- InvertSelect- SelectNon- Select by draw rectangle- Select by Ctrl+MouseClick
3-Pin/Unpin
4-Alignment : Left- Center- Right- Top- Middle- Bottom
5-Same : SameWidth- SameHeight- SameSize
6-Multiple move and resize of gadgets.
7-Group/Ungroup
8-Managing container gadgets, menubar, toolbar, and statusbar.
9-Show Grid, Snap, Grid Size, Grid Color
10- Show Block, Block size, Block color
11- Selected gadgets Color, Grouped Gadgets Color, Pinned Gadgets Color
12 -Full keyboard support

With respect.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Most requested features :

1-CustomGadgets
2-Load & Save Project
3-Events Management
Last edited by Mohsen on Mon May 11, 2020 9:48 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Bitblazer »

Personally i work on the GUI of projects for years while the software changes over time again and again. New Libraries and methods are found and i try to enhance my tools whenever it makes sense and i have time to do it.

So to me it is crucial to be able to load, edit, change and save GUI designs for years.
One feature for faster and more standard software development i found useful, is the usage of templates. For example - a standard template to base all applications on, a standard template to base all games on and one template to use for Tools. This concept actually works well for much more then just the GUI part, it is useful to base the whole development on it.

Standardized project templates would be very useful. Consider a master template for applications which creates the basic cross-app control/menu and an individual gui section which is application dependant.

Hierarchical project templates stored in XML/UML format would be my suggestion. I guess these templates would need to be platform specific (windows users dont want to have mac os standards and vice versa...).

Another increasingly common problem for purebasic is the flood of modules which replace or enhance the standard gadgets. There really needs to be a way to have new controls like Thorstens modules supported / integrated via API maybe.

Another element which needs a better solution is the coloring/skinning. A way to easily manipulate the "skin" of an application. For example it is only rarely required to change the inner area of one gadget alone. I would like to be able to change the color of all elements in my app at once and later go and change just one of them from standard blue to red, because it has a special meaning (the others might be settings but one of them is the "execute" button so it should be red instead of blue for example. Maybe create classes of gadgets like 'option', 'action / execution', 'network / remote / local' and be able to assign a class to an object and then apply one color to a whole class of gadgets. To speed up development / productivity and reduce repetitive work.

ps: if you implement platforms, please dont forget the mobile platforms. At some point i would like to design a gui for mobiles too ;) If the designer is good enough, at some point an export to spiderbasic or even BAX might be useful. Mobile platforms are often crucial nowadays and if your designer is really good, who knows which other community might love to pay for it ;)
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by VB6_to_PBx »

Mohsen wrote:Hi
This may seem a little repetitive, but please participate in this survey.
please share your expectations of a good visual designer. for example, what shortcomings in the current PB visual designer bother you? or what are your wishs?

To avoid similar comments suppose the designer engine has the following features :
1-Copy- Paste- Duplicate- Delete
2-Selection : SelectAll- InvertSelect- SelectNon- Select by draw rectangle- Select by Ctrl+MouseClick
3-Pin/Unpin
4-Alignment : Left- Center- Right- Top- Middle- Bottom
5-Same : SameWidth- SameHeight- SameSize
6-Multiple move and resize of gadgets.
7-Group/Ungroup
8-Managing container gadgets, menubar, toolbar, and statusbar.
9-Show Grid, Snap, Grid Size, Grid Color
10- Show Block, Block size, Block color
11- Selected gadgets Color, Grouped Gadgets Color, Pinned Gadgets Color
12 -Full keyboard support

With respect.
Double-Click on each Gadget ... Source Code popsup ... then have ability to enter or change Event Procedure Code like VB6
and have the changes remain + save those changes
 
PureBasic .... making tiny electrons do what you want !

"With every mistake we must surely be learning" - George Harrison
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Bisonte »

Must have:
  • Managing images and fonts with check if there already exist in the created project...
  • Linking the images and not copy them (this could be an option)
  • Managing events and their bindings (for BindEvent and BindGadgetEvent)...
  • CustomGadget support... (CanvasBased or similar)
  • Using of variables or constants (#PB_Any and var or constant)...
Nice to have:
  • If it load and save previous source, have an "untouched area" in source (maybe marked with comments like "; BeginOwnSection" and "; EndOwnSection") or otherwise, only change source between those comments... (optional save it with two sources like the other ones)
I forgot something... I know it ;)
PureBasic 6.04 LTS (Windows x86/x64) | Windows10 Pro x64 | Asus TUF X570 Gaming Plus | R9 5900X | 64GB RAM | GeForce RTX 3080 TI iChill X4 | HAF XF Evo | build by vannicom​​
English is not my native language... (I often use DeepL to translate my texts.)
Mohsen

Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Mohsen »

@Bitblazer :
Thank you for your comment
If I understand correctly, in short, you need the following features.

1- load & save ability based on the Templates like (xml)
2- support customGadgets
3-A solution to change your application skin (For pb standard controls. Multi-platform?)
4- support mobile platforms.

I think the 1 &2 fully available.

for 3 : I can easily add advanced and new controls to pb, like (RibbonBar, DockingPane, PropertyGrid, Toolbox and ...), but I can only guarantee it for the Windows platform. to have all these controls, you just need to add my .dll file to your project.

I have no idea how to support the mobile platform at the moment. it needs a lot of research.
Mohsen

Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Mohsen »

@VB6_to_PBx:
Event management in visual design is a good idea. It is not difficult to implement.
Thanks.
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Kuron »

VB6 was the ideal Visual Designer/IDE, IMHO.
Best wishes to the PB community. Thank you for the memories. ♥️
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Caronte3D »

Kuron wrote:VB6 was the ideal Visual Designer/IDE, IMHO.
Delphi too! :wink:
Mohsen

Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Mohsen »

@Bisonte : Thanks for your comments.
  • Good idea
  • Good idea, I think adding the project files management section can meet that need
  • Already requested
  • Already requested
  • Available
  • Already requested
Last edited by Mohsen on Mon May 11, 2020 9:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mohsen

Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Mohsen »

Caronte3D wrote:
Kuron wrote:VB6 was the ideal Visual Designer/IDE, IMHO.
Delphi too! :wink:
generalize.
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Cyllceaux »

  • Maybe different Layouts like Java.
    Or my all-time favorite FormLayout. The Dialog-Engine from PB is great, but not perfect.
  • Load and Save in a structual form. (like XML)
  • Save Code in that same XML.
    I know you need a pb file at the end, but this is not a problem.
Mohsen

Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Mohsen »

Cyllceaux wrote:
  • Maybe different Layouts like Java.
    Or my all-time favorite FormLayout. The Dialog-Engine from PB is great, but not perfect.
  • Load and Save in a structual form. (like XML)
  • Save Code in that same XML.
    I know you need a pb file at the end, but this is not a problem.
Thanks.
  • I don't know much about this. So I can't comment right now.
  • Already requested
  • Already requested
Implementing load and save based on xml templates is easy.I have already implemented it.the most important functions to help with this
  • ExtractXMLStructure
  • InsertXMLStructure
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by captain_skank »

1. As VB6_to_PBx said place a gadget then double click to add events code - if we had this i'd probably only ever use a visual designer.

2. Ability to use custom gadgets ( although i would guess there would need to be a constistent template for the way they have been created especially as regarding point 1 )

3. A way to skin the window, even if it's just changing the titlebar colours.

4. A simple versioning system - I go to edit my code and it creates a new file with the old code automatically ( maybe with date/time appended to the file name )

As has been said VB6 has probably never been improved upon for ease of use.
Mohsen

Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by Mohsen »

@ captain_skank:
Thanks
You do not need to wait for the visual designer to make the skin change.
Only for Windows I have 2 solution to change the skin.
1- Changing the skin by (winXP .msstyles)
2- Changing the modern skin like Office 2016 with Ribbonbar, statusbar and ...

I will be posting samples + library of them on the forum soon.

The rest of your cases have already been requested.
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Re: [Survey] Features of a good Visual designer.

Post by blueb »

Since most programming uses databases of some sort... don't forget about the 'excellent' VB data-aware gadgets provided for databases.

It was nice to be able to link gadgets to a database when building forms, etc.
- It was too lonely at the top.

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