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CHDK UI version 2.0 ?

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Offline philmoz

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #20 on: 29 / May / 2012, 17:12:26 »
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In my opinion an icon based interface is a bad idea.

- even using them at the top level only, outsliders 12 100x100 icons will cost 60KB of memory. Memory constraints mean you can't iconise the entire UI so where do you draw the line between icons and menus (and users now have to learn two interfaces instead of one).
- it will be a lot slower than drawing a rectangle, 3 - 5 times slower in my estimation
- icon based interfaces work if you have a touch screen or mouse, they suck using a button/keyboard interface
- you still need the text for each icon under the icon itself (look at your iPhone / iPad screen)
- at 100x100 you get 3x2 icons on the standard 4:3 camera display so you need paging or a scroll bar, and you're getting less than half the available options than the current menu. The navigation is now two dimensional instead of just up and down so you lose the current function of using the right button to enter a menu.
- how do you mix icons and menus in the 'user' menu, is the user menu even still possible?

The current menus and user initerface can certainly be improved; but I think this icon approach is the wrong direction.

CHDK by it's nature is for 'advanced' users - let's now not get caught up in dumbing it down for the masses.

Phil.
« Last Edit: 29 / May / 2012, 22:52:44 by philmoz »
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #21 on: 29 / May / 2012, 19:05:51 »
Quote from: philmoz on 29 / May / 2012, 17:12:26
The current menus and user initerface can certainly be improved; but I think this icon approach is the wrong direction. CHDK by it's nature is for 'advanced' users - let's now get caught up in dumbing it down for the masses.
Well,  there are certainly no shortage of things that can be done to change / improve the CHDK UI.  Different amounts of work,  different side effects and everyone's preferences are a little different too.

Right now,  I'm thinking that the most valuable suggestion to come out of this  (based on utility versus effort) might be making it possible to add selection of specific scripts by name to the user menu.  That way the user menu can be used to configure your camera with preferred presets,  feature enable/disables and favorite script loading all available as soon as you press the <ALT> key.  No need for additional menu changes, icons etc if the goal is just to making actually using CHDK to take pictures a little easier.

Configurable short cut keys and a better method of selecting script parameters also come to mind as good stand alone projects.

But then that's just my opinion.
« Last Edit: 29 / May / 2012, 19:12:16 by waterwingz »
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Offline oronocova

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #22 on: 29 / May / 2012, 20:32:48 »
I'm just a casual user/hobbyist I guess...

One of the things I always forget and have to look up is "what does disable/yes/no" mean on the overrides.  For instance: it seems every time I want to experiment with longer exposures I have to fiddle with the settings for a few minutes before I can successfully take a picture.  If they could be clearer (just yes/no) that would be great.  Also as just a casual user it would be nice to be able to customize/remove feature I don't ever want but others might.
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #23 on: 29 / May / 2012, 21:27:26 »
Quote from: oronocova on 29 / May / 2012, 20:32:48
One of the things I always forget and have to look up is "what does disable/yes/no" mean on the overrides.  For instance: it seems every time I want to experiment with longer exposures I have to fiddle with the settings for a few minutes before I can successfully take a picture.  If they could be clearer (just yes/no) that would be great.
That one seems to bother most people.   I have to look it up each time too.   Unfortunately, there needs to be three states as it currently is setup. From the manual :

   Off - Turns off the "Disable Overrides" shortcut option.
   On - Starts out with any override settings DISABLED. In display you will see "NO OVERRIDES"
   Disable - Starts out with any override settings ENABLED.

Even when I read this I find it confusing though.

Quote
Also as just a casual user it would be nice to be able to customize/remove feature I don't ever want but others might.
I think this is part of what dvip was thinking about too when he asked about a "leaner" CHDK. 

Being able to "hide" menu items might not be too hard to implement (press the erase key on a menu item and it dissappears ? ... getting it back might be fun though...).   

Being able to rearrange menu items in a simplistic way is what the User Menu does.


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Offline reyalp

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #24 on: 29 / May / 2012, 22:45:35 »
Quote from: waterwingz on 29 / May / 2012, 08:09:39
Still curious about whether you would embed the Lua part of the code into the CHDK diskboot.bin file or load it from SD card as a text file ?
Probably load it on demand. Some essential things could be embedded in the binary as text or pre-compiled bytecode.

I tend to agree with phil regarding icon based UIs. In my experience, new users have trouble knowing what the Canon firmware icons means.

I do think a different UI for settings that you want to frequently access during shooting would be good. I'm envisioning something like the canon func menu coming up in alt mode, giving access to raw enable/disable, exposure overrides, bracketing settings etc. Ideally, the user could select which items appear.

This doesn't have to be icon based, I'm thinking of the logic of the UI where you have a list of item on up/down and can make your selections with left/right. Perhaps you could have some very basic icons (like the "symbols" in the menu) and display the full name for the item that's highlighted.

One bonus of aping the canon menu would be that it would already be familiar to Canon users.

Actually reverse engineering the canon UI so we could use it might be an interesting approach, but I suspect it's memory heavy since they can just access their graphics from ROM.

Also
Quote from: philmoz on 29 / May / 2012, 17:12:26
CHDK by it's nature is for 'advanced' users - let's now get caught up in dumbing it down for the masses.
Agreed. If we can make the advanced features easily accessible, that's good. But adding eye-candy because people are intimidated by the ugly menus doesn't seem terribly worthwhile.
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #25 on: 29 / May / 2012, 22:58:00 »
Quote from: reyalp on 29 / May / 2012, 22:45:35
I do think a different UI for settings that you want to frequently access during shooting would be good. I'm envisioning something like the canon func menu coming up in alt mode, giving access to raw enable/disable, exposure overrides, bracketing settings etc. Ideally, the user could select which items appear.

This doesn't have to be icon based, I'm thinking of the logic of the UI where you have a list of item on up/down and can make your selections with left/right.
Isn't this pretty much what the existing user menu does for you ?
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Offline philmoz

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #26 on: 29 / May / 2012, 23:03:32 »
Quote from: reyalp on 29 / May / 2012, 22:45:35
I do think a different UI for settings that you want to frequently access during shooting would be good. I'm envisioning something like the canon func menu coming up in alt mode, giving access to raw enable/disable, exposure overrides, bracketing settings etc. Ideally, the user could select which items appear.

I did something like this for the IXUS 310 (see http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=6634.msg70610#msg70610).

It works for a touch screen; but if you displayed something like this when you press <ALT> then you have to remap the shortuct buttons to control the UI instead of directly changing the settings.

Displaying the current shortcut button options and their corresponding values might make sense.

Phil.
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Offline fe50

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #27 on: 30 / May / 2012, 01:52:41 »
Quote from: philmoz on 29 / May / 2012, 17:12:26
In my opinion an icon based interface is a bad idea.
...
The current menus and user initerface can certainly be improved; but I think this icon approach is the wrong direction.
my full ack
Quote
CHDK by it's nature is for 'advanced' users - let's now not get caught up in dumbing it down for the masses.
also my full ack
Don't forget what the H stands for.
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Offline philmoz

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #28 on: 30 / May / 2012, 05:06:49 »
Quote from: waterwingz on 29 / May / 2012, 21:27:26
That one seems to bother most people.   I have to look it up each time too.   Unfortunately, there needs to be three states as it currently is setup. From the manual :

   Off - Turns off the "Disable Overrides" shortcut option.
   On - Starts out with any override settings DISABLED. In display you will see "NO OVERRIDES"
   Disable - Starts out with any override settings ENABLED.

Even when I read this I find it confusing though.


I haven't really looked closely at this before; but that makes very little sense ???

Looking at the current trunk code there does not appear to be any functional difference between the 'Off' and 'Disabled' states that I can fathom.

I suggest we remove the 'Disabled' option state (will also require a fixup in the config file loader) and rename the other states from 'Off' to 'No' and 'On' to 'Yes'.

Phil.
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  sx130is (1.01d & 1.01f)
  ixus310hs (1.00a & 1.01a)
  sx40hs (1.00d, 1.00g & 1.00i)
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Offline msl

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Re: CHDK UI version 2.0 ?
« Reply #29 on: 30 / May / 2012, 07:13:45 »
Quote from: philmoz on 30 / May / 2012, 05:06:49
I suggest we remove the 'Disabled' option state (will also require a fixup in the config file loader) and rename the other states from 'Off' to 'No' and 'On' to 'Yes'.

100% agreed.
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