UI problems

[ojwb]

This is about @8bitkick's recent changes to make the UI work better on a mobile device. That seems a useful aim, but there's some fallout - at least for me, some of the changes make owlet less usable on a desktop - that's certainly what I care about, but I'd argue it's what actually matters more despite the analytics apparently indicate more owlet users are on a mobile device.

I suspect those analytics are misleading. Firstly because google analytics probably won't count people who have tracker protection enabled as that's likely to block google analytics (since it provides a pretty significant cross-site tracking opportunity for google). My main point here though is that someone clicking on a source link in a post on their phone is presumably counted the same as someone spending hours lovingly crafting their program on a desktop machine.

Some comments on the new look itself:

I'm generally finding the icons much less clear than the text labels and also miss the echoes of BBC BASIC commands (NEW/RUN/SAVE) we had before. Perhaps the icons should only be used on mobile with text buttons restored for desktop? There's plenty of space for them there.

The "Run" button above the editor and the "play/pause" button above the emulator now both use the same triangular play icon, which I've still not got used to - I've clicked the wrong one more than once, and now find myself having to stop and think which one I want to click when both are visible.

The "Save" button being above the editor suggests it's saving the source code that's visible below it, but it's really a way to save data from the emulator memory (that's why I put it under the emulator window). Perhaps it should go with the buttons above the emulator window instead?

The "Save" button also doesn't seem to work since the UI changes. My guess is the code got moved and this changed so this.emulator is no longer the jsbeeb instance.

The "3D" button seems misplaced too now. Logically it's very similar to the options to export as a tape or disc image (and like "post to mastodon" if we manage to reinstate that) so I'd put it above the editor window (all of these use the code that's currently in the editor window, not the code that's currently in the emulator - I just tested this for the 3D button by modifying the code in the emulator and clicking it). The rocket button however is to do with the emulator so that makes sense where it is.

The new rocket icon doesn't scream "rocket" to me - the old rocket icon was much clearer, and (at least for me) matched the rocket emoji which helps to emphasise it's essentially the same thing.

At least I can understand the rocket icon is meant to be a rocket. I don't know what the icon for "save" is even meant to be trying to represent...