Stepcraft Screenset with UI in mind

[2046]

Hello there,
I have been working lately on a UCCNC redesign, as the actual Stepcraft UCCNC is super clumsy.
The Actual design follows no UI rules, the text like
H
O
M
E

..in UI design is unthinkable, text does not have high enough contrast, it is hard to tell what is active as the colors used emphasize the buttons themselves screaming one over the another for our attention without actual purpose – and it gets worse exponentially the further you are from screen. The buttons have no seaming logical grouping and many of the buttons are hard to press on touch screen. Stepcraft two logos OMG! occupies needed space for the UI, and so on and so on.

The new version I'm working on address all those issues and more. All the function stays the same, there are no extra buttons. I also tried to keep the buttons more or less on their actual position if it was feasible.
Now, I would like to hear your comments before I start to do final adjustments.
Let me know if you see any problem and basically anything I overlooked.
As I said it is alpha a not polished.. that will come at the end, now it is about the layout, overall clean up and quick intelligibility foremost.

thank you for your comments in advance.

[fixebr]

Wow, it looks good at the beginning!
But I would increase the size of the text, and possibly its thickness. For example, "Worker Time" inscriptions have become less than what will be worse. Many empty buttons, where on a large square only miniature text (buttons of offsets, for example).
Many icons are not intuitive (buttons near the current coordinate indicators).
Many fields are much higher than their contents. On the one hand, it is convenient for the sensory monitor, on the other hand - why so much empty space? If the monitor is not very large (15-17 inches), I will have to suit it close to it to understand what it is, and there is a chance to confuse.
The connection of some buttons and their environments lost, for example, Zero now does not explicitly refers to zeroing time next to it.

[2046]

Thanks for the feedback.

1. the text - I'll think about it. Sure the text is not as big as it can be.. in a way.. but there are consistent across the whole UI, and also placed on the same location same way, left to right bottom corner, no exceptions. That should lead to faster navigation. Bolder text does not mean more readability ..and eats more space..
Sure I agree that with age the text might be hard to read... I agree. I'll take this into account.

2. The spacing is important for easier navigation thru so many buttons. If we put them close and try to use all the space it'll be worse. If you look at it closer the spacing surrounds groups of buttons, like G54-59 are in one group, Macros too, and so on. Plus it helps us not to press other closely located buttons as we can now press the button naturally bit more on its side and the space assures us that we won't press something else. I think the grouping is the most important feature on UI. The grouping is also troublesome, as I do not feel competent enough to give it all concrete names, to all UI. Macro si obvious, Programs too, Hardware like spindle too, files too. but I'm, not able to name them all right, therefore I use spacing, which is universal.

I'll keep all your feedback in mind and try to do adjustments according to it if possible.
(the screenset will be published on Github at the end so that anybody can do his/her own adjustments .. hopefully there will be no adjustments needed )

[2046]

Here is a new version, with feedback in mind.
The MPG/JOG is bit clumsy still.. this part of the interface absurdly makes the less sense of all. The functions are hard to understand as they inherit one another (continuous, MPG Continuos, Multi,... this to me is unnecessary overkill..).

[2046]

I've been trying not to.. but I kinda gave up.. at least Dark mode for comparison.

[2046]

yet another dark mode version..
a result of a free style run.. the ui icons and the elements positions is getting cleaned up more and more. Will see where this will all goes.

[2046]

Oki.. I went back to machine and saw the mess the actual UI has in reality again.
And so I decided to do it right without trying to match what has been there.

This is the layout I'll turn to reality.

All buttons have decent size so that they can be pressed by finger, and if they are small they have space around that helps us not to press anything else around. Although dark version looks fancy the screen is light as that gives it the best readability.
The layout is done with logic in mind, meaning.. there is clear division between probing group, main controls, view/read screens, macros, and so on and many more. That will let us stay on a same spot without need to crawl and look for buttons here and there while doing specific tasks.

[ger21]

You are really fast. Very nice work.

[2046]

Here is the progress, looking good so far, but few details.
..
heaving the whole UI done in OpenGl is quite weird thing, it will never looks good, plus it is a bit CPU hungry I found lately.
What I mean by that is that all the texts are rendered as images over a 3D polygon and blurred obviously by anti-aliasing. Input fields are basically transparent and need their image representation behind.. all of them, which is insane! The plain text is never plain text, so that you have no chance to copy paste anything from Gcode reader and so on.. super weird.
I kinda understand that it is a CNC standard as Mach 3 has something like that too, but it is super weird nowadays to see such interface.

Anyways.. here is the picture from progress. The probing is a mess (it is all in progress still) but the whole ui is already much better and than it was.
Couple more hours/days and it should be good to go.

[2046]

2 screens are 90% done: Run, Toolpath
All the rest stays the same as I do not do probing and other part of the UI is OK as as is, I don't care about that part that much, for now

Next step will be the Jog tab.. that I do not use anyway, as keys are much better, but I will do this part too.
I'll use it for a while test it, and once I feel it is OK, I'll push it to github.