Advents calender
On Sun, 2023-12-17 at 20:00 +0100, Torsten Paul via Discuss wrote:
On 17.12.23 18:57, jon via Discuss wrote:
A better UI would be
- click on a door opens the door,
Good.
- click on an open door opens the object,
That would surprise me. In order to open the object, I would expect
that clicking on the object in the open door would be the natural thing
to do.
- click anywhere other than an open door closes all doors.
Simple and clear and obvious.
I disagree with 3, that seems strange and surprising and
very annoying if you wanted to click through many of the
doors and one mis-click just closes everything and you
have to start over from the beginning.
I think that the obvious way to close the open door would be to click
on the door itself.
I will not write again about this unless asked to.
Well, it's probably too late for this year, but with some
luck and hopefully enough people ready to share a total
of 24 designs we will have another calendar next year.
If nobody can help with getting improvements in, the UI
will likely be the same again.
For completeness, the web part can be found on github at
https://github.com/openscad/openscad.github.com/tree/master/advent-calendar-2023
where it's pretty much just the index.html having all
the relevant stuff. So if anyone has a quick win, we can
push that out any time.
ciao,
Torsten.
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
On 12/17/2023 7:54 AM, Torsten Paul via Discuss wrote:
If there is a CSS expert around who has a suggestion on how to
have it stand out a bit more, I'm happy to hear about possible
ways to improve that.
First, I should say that the advent calendar has always impressed me,
both in its presentation and in the models shown. I feel privileged to
have a few of my designs included.
ISTM that it's adequately visible if the image background is dark.
Maybe part of the problem here is that this year has a lot of white
backgrounds.
Looking back at what's worked and what hasn't... (and noting that I mean
no disrespect to the individual designs and am only commenting on how
they interact with the calendar infrastructure)...
2019 - Mostly light backgrounds, but with a straightforward link to the
.scad file. No problems, but in later years the larger view and the
ability to add commentary and more than one link are a big win.
2020 - Same.
2021 - All dark backgrounds. Switches to zoom icon overlaid on the
image, which pops a larger view and links. I'd say the zoom icon is
fine except on 21 and maybe 18, where much of the zoom icon ends up over
the model and hidden.
2022 - Mostly dark backgrounds. However, a few have light backgrounds
and/or full-frame models that obscure the zoom icon. 2, 5, 8, and 12
are particularly troubling.
2023 - About half (as visible today) are light backgrounds. On most of
those, the zoom icon is visible, but somewhat faint. A couple (11, 16)
have dark backgrounds but are full-frame enough to obscure the zoom icon.
Requirements:
- Open doors.
- Close individual doors.
- Be able to leave multiple doors open.
- Zoom to larger view and details.
- Do all of that aesthetically and discoverably. Remember that this
is primarily a decorative display, not a source-distribution UI.
Non-tech people should enjoy looking at it and interacting with it.
Some thoughts and ideas:
Larry's idea of clicking on the door itself to close and the object
behind the door to zoom is interesting. It's reasonably intuitive,
though I'm not sure how discoverable the door-close action is. (That
is, once it's pointed out it's reasonable, but would you think to try?)
It has the advantage of completely removing infrastructure from the
image - avoiding both the zoom icon obscuring the image and the image
obscuring the zoom icon. Maybe changing the mouse cursor to something
that indicates "close" when over the door (box with arrow to the
right?), and to a magnifying glass when over the image.
All other things being the same, preferring dark backgrounds is a win
for the zoom icon. But that doesn't work when (as for the lamp
components) the outside of the model wants to be dark. And it doesn't
help for some full-frame images (e.g. 11, where even knowing that it's
there it's hard for me to see).
Maybe have a way to override the zoom icon's color for a particular model?
If the zoom icon was smaller (so that it covers less of the model), it
could be more prominent. Perhaps a bolder color, or perhaps totally
opaque with a contrasting-color outline, the same technique used for
mouse cursors. On a computer screen it could certainly be half its
current size, and maybe smaller, but smaller might be a problem for
phone screens.
One subtle answer might be to ensure that the first few days have dark
backgrounds and are not full-frame, so that the zoom icon is highly
visible. People will tend to open the days in order, and if they see
the zoom icon on the first few, they'll know to look for it on the later
ones where it may not be as visible.
The bottom-of-page text could give a one-sentence instruction, e.g.
"click on magnifying glass for larger view and details".
But again, these are only thoughts for how to make an already-amazing
project even better.
I don't see a requirement to close an advent calendar door. With a normal
cardboard version you can't normally do that and the date never goes
backwards. One minor annoyance for me is that if I leave the page open it
doesn't notice the date change and I have to refresh it to open the next
door. That closes all the others so I have to open them all again. Not
something I would complain about as it is all free.
Having to click on the door to close it would be fine by me because I never
want to close one, so if I didn't notice it, it wouldn't matter. Does
anybody want to close a door once opened?
On Mon, 18 Dec 2023 at 19:40, Jordan Brown via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
On 12/17/2023 7:54 AM, Torsten Paul via Discuss wrote:
If there is a CSS expert around who has a suggestion on how to
have it stand out a bit more, I'm happy to hear about possible
ways to improve that.
First, I should say that the advent calendar has always impressed me, both
in its presentation and in the models shown. I feel privileged to have a
few of my designs included.
ISTM that it's adequately visible if the image background is dark.
Maybe part of the problem here is that this year has a lot of white
backgrounds.
Looking back at what's worked and what hasn't... (and noting that I mean
no disrespect to the individual designs and am only commenting on how they
interact with the calendar infrastructure)...
2019 - Mostly light backgrounds, but with a straightforward link to the
.scad file. No problems, but in later years the larger view and the
ability to add commentary and more than one link are a big win.
2020 - Same.
2021 - All dark backgrounds. Switches to zoom icon overlaid on the image,
which pops a larger view and links. I'd say the zoom icon is fine except
on 21 and maybe 18, where much of the zoom icon ends up over the model and
hidden.
2022 - Mostly dark backgrounds. However, a few have light backgrounds
and/or full-frame models that obscure the zoom icon. 2, 5, 8, and 12 are
particularly troubling.
2023 - About half (as visible today) are light backgrounds. On most of
those, the zoom icon is visible, but somewhat faint. A couple (11, 16)
have dark backgrounds but are full-frame enough to obscure the zoom icon.
Requirements:
- Open doors.
- Close individual doors.
- Be able to leave multiple doors open.
- Zoom to larger view and details.
- Do all of that aesthetically and discoverably. Remember that this
is primarily a decorative display, not a source-distribution UI. Non-tech
people should enjoy looking at it and interacting with it.
Some thoughts and ideas:
Larry's idea of clicking on the door itself to close and the object behind
the door to zoom is interesting. It's reasonably intuitive, though I'm not
sure how discoverable the door-close action is. (That is, once it's
pointed out it's reasonable, but would you think to try?) It has the
advantage of completely removing infrastructure from the image - avoiding
both the zoom icon obscuring the image and the image obscuring the zoom
icon. Maybe changing the mouse cursor to something that indicates "close"
when over the door (box with arrow to the right?), and to a magnifying
glass when over the image.
All other things being the same, preferring dark backgrounds is a win for
the zoom icon. But that doesn't work when (as for the lamp components) the
outside of the model wants to be dark. And it doesn't help for some
full-frame images (e.g. 11, where even knowing that it's there it's hard
for me to see).
Maybe have a way to override the zoom icon's color for a particular model?
If the zoom icon was smaller (so that it covers less of the model), it
could be more prominent. Perhaps a bolder color, or perhaps totally opaque
with a contrasting-color outline, the same technique used for mouse
cursors. On a computer screen it could certainly be half its current size,
and maybe smaller, but smaller might be a problem for phone screens.
One subtle answer might be to ensure that the first few days have dark
backgrounds and are not full-frame, so that the zoom icon is highly
visible. People will tend to open the days in order, and if they see the
zoom icon on the first few, they'll know to look for it on the later ones
where it may not be as visible.
The bottom-of-page text could give a one-sentence instruction, e.g. "click
on magnifying glass for larger view and details".
But again, these are only thoughts for how to make an already-amazing
project even better.
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
On 18.12.23 21:01, nop head via Discuss wrote:
Does anybody want to close a door once opened?
Yes, mainly because we have not found a safe layout that
never obscures other content with the doors open.
If this could be solved, closing doors might be not be
needed.
ciao,
Torsten.
Is that on a phone? The doors don't obscure each other on a desktop.
[image: image.png]
On Mon, 18 Dec 2023 at 20:06, Torsten Paul via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
On 18.12.23 21:01, nop head via Discuss wrote:
Does anybody want to close a door once opened?
Yes, mainly because we have not found a safe layout that
never obscures other content with the doors open.
If this could be solved, closing doors might be not be
needed.
ciao,
Torsten.
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
Thank you for the continuing OpenSCAD Advent calendar. I'm a fan of it, and
I check it daily every year. I download and read and run the .scad files.
On Sun, Dec 17, 2023 at 12:18 AM Harm Jeurink via Discuss <
discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
May be not the right place to ask.
In 2021 Ulrich Bär made an very nice Advents calender.
I really liked that very much.
Was that an idea for 'just then'?
Anyone heard from this 'project' after that?
Thx
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
On 12/18/2023 12:11 PM, nop head via Discuss wrote:
Is that on a phone? The doors don't obscure each other on a desktop.
24 is the big problem (2021):
Unless it's on the left side (2022):
But: they're doors. Doors can be opened and closed. You might not
ever choose to close them, but they should be closable.
But but: this is a good argument for it not being all that necessary
that the "close" action be really obvious.
