[sword-devel] Windows GUI

[Don A. Elbourne Jr.]

Since comments and suggestions were asked for, I will give mine. With the
little I know about programming, I think they could all be done relatively
easily, but I am not sure. I offer these suggestions and thoughts, to
whoever is interested.

I will just comment on the menu and tool bar for now.

- Under preferences it would seem that all the items that have a on/off
toggle would be better grouped in a form with check boxes.

- Perhaps the Preferences and Options could be moved under "Tools"

-  The Diaspora export tool should be added under "Tools"

- "Bookmarks" should be added to the menu bar, with the same menu that
currently pops out of the bookmarks button.

- Currently there is a back button, perhaps a forward button should be
added. (I have never figured out what the back button is supposed to do
anyway. It would seem that it would go back to the previous location I was
looking at, but it does not seem to work that way. Maybe I am just too used
to the way a web browser works.)

- The bookmarks button should be of the same nature as the
back|forward|search buttons and since all of its functions would be moved to
the menu bar, the toolbar bookmark button could be used to simply set a new
bookmark.

- The text labels for the buttons should not be in the bitmap. Instead they
could be pulled from the localization file.

- It would be cool in the preferences to toggle the text labels for the
toolbar buttons on/off

- Its unclear what the checkmark next to the spinboxes does.

- The combo box where you can type a reference in and the reference boxes
with the spin controls should be on the same line or separated so the user
can place them where he/she would like. This would save screen real estate.

- The reference combo box should have a "go" button out beside it, similar
to the way a web browser does the address bar.

I think these few small changes would make a very big difference in the
usability of the program.

If someone was real ambitious, they could make the thing skinable (like
Mozilla themes). I'm not suggesting that, I just know it would raise the
coolness factor several degrees and probably generate a lot of interest.

by grace alone,

Don A. Elbourne Jr.
http://elbourne.org