freeciv21
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longturn
City screen iteration 2
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The city screen in 3.0 is the first iteration since it is on map. While generally functional and working relatively well, some issues have appeared:
- #611
- #653
- #728
- #944
- #1407
- #1490
- #1511
- #1518
- #1584
- #1588
- #1589
- #1803
This abundance of issues hints that changes to the general layout of the screen are needed.
Describe the solution you'd like
We should design and implement a second iteration of the city screen to address the issues listed in the introduction. The first iteration of the city screen was done by changing the layout of the existing widgets until they all fit (and IMHO achieved this quite well). For the second iteration, I think the widgets themselves should be modified to increase information density.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Gradually improving the current layout. In view of the issues, I think more radical changes are needed.
This was one mockup we had. The idea was we have everything in the same place somewhere on the side (for both unit and cities) like civ6 does it.
Had a discussion on Discord about this, going around an experiment currently found in wip/city-dialog-phase-2 in my remote. The city dialog in this branch looks like this:
It scales reasonably well down to 768px high, but doesn't look especially good and has more tabs.
The main lessons I draw from this are:
- No big refactor for 3.0
- There is indeed a need for more compact widgets, especially the governor settings and general info
- Pushing things to the sides works, but only two sides: left/below (maybe 2 for small screens? but that's Plan B)
- Consider tabbing present/supported/buildings
- Widgets should expand to use more space when available (and not just leave gaps between them)
- The map should be zoomed in/out to adjust for the city visible area
- Widgets with variable width (happiness) are annoying
These aren't new but it's good to have them written down somewhere.
I just wanna say that splitting the info into physical distinct places like it is now with 3 panels or like it is in the preceding picture (far left and far right) is, in my utmost humble opinion, the worst case scenario from an ergonomical viewpoint. Because you have to move the eyes all the time. Better have it in one place and switch if necessary between info with mouse or keyboard. Sorry for sounding like a record with crack, but regarding ergonomics the gtk client designer did an excellenct job. I recall wieder also complained about scattered info, though it might not have been in connection with the city dialog, but the top bar ( #1526 ). After all, louis design doesn't abolish the need to switch with mouse/keyboard. Instead of having 1 place with 4 tabs you have 2 places with 2 tabs. The larger the distance between those places the worse.
