#94 qgo2 does not work on small screens
I've recently started using qgo 1.5.4 and find it rather nice.
However, it behaves strangely occasionally, so in order to be able to send a proper bugreport I decided to get the latest cvs version of qgo2.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, I can't really use qgo2.
The problem is in using it with the screen resolution of my tiny asus eeepc 701 netbook, which is 800x480.
As with qgo 1.5.4, part of the interface window ends up outside of my screen, and part of the board window as well.
In qgo 1.5.4 I can customise the interface quite extensively, by fiddling with the options under "view" and the font size.
I can't make the windows fit completely, but I can make sure that everything important is visible, but not in qgo2, where I don't seem to have all those nice options and slides.
As a consequence, in qgo2 important parts the main window and a board window fall off the screen (the lower part of the actual board, for instance).
The main and board windows can't be made smaller than a certain minimum size which is still much bigger than my screen.
I like qgo a lot and would like very much to keep using it, so please fix qgo2 for tiny screens like mine.
Discussion
Anonymous
640x480 is a reasonable size but I haven't been able to get it down to that yet. I messed with it a little but I'm bad with UI layout stuff. Hopefully this will be fixed up eventually.
I just made this account so I could reply. :)
If you would like, I could try to come up with a few suggestions for making the interface of qgo2 more compact. I've been using this small screen for a while now, and have had to customise graphical user interfaces for several applications. I might have some ideas on how to use screen space efficiently that you might not have considered. I have no real experience with UI programming, though.
Well if you want to use the Qt Designer program to improve it that would be fine. As is, its more like I'm clumsy with the thing and can't get certain objects to resize.
I'll mess with it again when I have some free time.
I tried to play with the qt designer program, but I am also clumsy with it. In the end I edited the .ui files manually and achieved two things. Firstly, by removing lines like 9<pointsize> I managed to get qgo2 to inherit the font size configured with qtconfig. This is useful as it makes it possible to make the font smaller and fit more information within 480 vertical pixels. (Or make it bigger for people with bad eyes.) Secondly, by changing the minimumSize (width and height) of the board and frame around the board to sufficiently small numbers, I got the board window to allow me to resize it to 600x480. At least that makes the entire board fit on my screen. The big bar next to it with tooltips etc isn't completely visible, though.</pointsize>
I think there are two basic ways to make more efficient use of screen space:
By making information more dense, i.e. small buttons and icons, with little space inbetween.
This could mean for instance a "small icons" option somewhere which would reduce the size of icons and remove some of the text around them. Text takes up a lot of space and could be kept as brief as possible. Since a little thingy pops up when you leave your mouse pointer over an icon anyway, maybe no text is needed in the "small icons" option at all. The stones tools and game tree tools in the board window could be smaller and placed more densely.
Making sure that information is only displayed when needed. There is a lot of stuff you only need for certain purposes, and as long as you are doing something else with the program, it might as well not be clogging up the interface. For this reason I like the tabs a lot. The bar on the left, with "Go Server" etcetera in it looks nice, but takes up a lot of space and is not needed most of the time. Maybe it could be made to disappear or become smaller? The same for the server status bit, while I'm online I really only need to know wether I'm open for games and such. These buttons take up a lot of space. Shouts and messages could have their own tab along with lists and console. Having the games and players lists in the same tab above eachother makes the list very short. They could just be in seperate tabs.
There's someone else who's also very interested in making the board size, etc., smaller to use on a mobile phone. If you're interested, you could email me and I could possibly get you in touch with him.
As for the font size and editing the ui file directly, that's a good idea, I'll see what I can do with that. The other guy may also come up with something.
As for some of the other stuff, like a small icon option and the shouts and messages, etc., right now, I just want to get things working. They're some good ideas but, the messages barely work right now anyway so that's something that will be addressed in a later version.
But getting it usable at 640x480 is a good goal for right now.
Made some minor adjustments, let me know if its a bit better.
Yes, much better. It's definitely usable on my small screen now. The board is completely visible, and so are the pass and resign buttons. Thanks! Some bits of the board window still disappear below the edge of the screen, though, for instance the slider. The minimum height of the green frame around the board is larger than the height of the minimum height of the board, leaving a green area above and below the board which is wasting pixels. But that's small potatoes. It's workable now!
Another update. I still can't get rid of all of the frame, but might be a bit better.
Better. But there seems to be something weird going on when editing a game. The stone tools, game tree tools, and clipboard tools behave strangely. The frames overlap, and the tools themselves are surrounded by large amounts of space. The bottom part of the tools (the clipboard tools, the pass and score buttons) still fall below the bottom edge of the screen. Perhaps you could make the icons of the stones, game tree and clipboard tools the same size as the ones of the navigation tools, and arrange them more densely, perhaps in rows of 5 like the navigation tools. That might save enough space to make everything visible. I tried to do this myself with the qt4 designer program, but couldn't figure out how to do it. So I used vi instead, again. I'd like to send you the result, as it shows some improvement, I think, but I can't attach files to this comment. How do I get you my new boardwindow.ui?
Well, its funny because someone else was complaining that the navigation buttons were too small... I've got some other ideas to fix this up but it will probably be a little while before I have some free time to.
You don't need to fix this up any more, because I've already done it, and I didn't reduce the size of the navigation icons.
I just need to find a way to hand you the modified files. Please send me a private message through the sourceforge message system with your email address or something. Alternatively, just send an email to me at my name in the net tld.
I haven't changed the size of the navigation buttons, only the games tree icons.
The changes I've made to boardwindow.ui:
-- moved the spacer above the pass button to below the score button.
-- rearragended the games tree tools icons and the stones tools icons.
-- reduced the size of the games tree tools icons from 22x22 to 18x18 pixels, so 5 of them will fit on one line without overlapping.
-- reduced some empty space around the icons
At the 8pt font I'm using everything is visible now.
I've also made changes to mainwindow.ui. I've given the games list a separate tab, so that more lines are visible.
There is no need to see both the players and games list at the same time anyway.
Maybe the best long-term solution for the iconsize problem is a variable icon size option somewhere? If that's possible.