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Author Topic: The new UI is woefully inefficient. We need better keyboard-centric controls.  (Read 583 times)

Alastar

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A lot of the input is fairly repetitive and can be commited to muscle memory, if the interface supports it. Digging out rectangular rooms, a stairwell of a size we know in advance, a new hauling route following a common pattern, navigating individual screens and lists.
We need to do a lot of mouse waving now for things where that makes absolutely no sense. It feels like a throwback to times when mouse-driven GUIs were new and exciting, but nobody had a clue how to make them efficient. A good modern interface is laid out for convenient mouse use but entirely controllable by keyboard. Neither is currently the case.

Take the stocks screen for example. One would expect to be able to select individual entries with keyboard or mouse, then hit a hotkey for the usual dump/forbid/etc options. We can't do the former, and the mouse controls are on the far side of the entry.

I appreciate a lot of the interface cleanup and consolidation, and the additional mouse functionality in places where it's helpful. But fundamentally, having almost everything controllable by a series of hotkeys in an interface that laid that out clearly was a better fit.
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ayy1337

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Agree, having the option to do everything with the mouse shouldn't mean there's no way to do it via keyboard, or that the keyboard way is overly cumbersome. And I mean cumbersome from the perspective of someone who's used to the tedium of the old interface lol.
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Hero

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Very, very true.
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zchris13

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I have returned to declare my support for this sort of idea.
The lack of keyboard controls is particularly egregious on: the work orders screen, cancelling building construction, adding tasks and work orders to buildings and selecting materials for buildings. I'm sure there are others but I've forgotten them for now.
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Uthimienure

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I've given .50.03 a few honest tries, but the interface really is not good.  I agree with the above. 
It's so inefficient in general that it makes me sick, just like I was afraid it would.
Come on Toady, why did you abandon efficiency for this mouse shit?
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FPS in Gravearmor (925+ dwarves) is 2-5 (v0.47.05 lives on).
"I've never really had issues with the old DF interface (I mean, I loved even 'umkh'!)" ... brewer bob
As we say in France: "ah, l'amour toujours l'amour"... François D.