Toby,
There has been some discussion of Vuo’s visual design on our Facebook group page lately. I’ve just responded with our latest plans. Since you (and others) are not on Facebook, I’m copying the text of that post here:
I wanted to report back that we’ve attempted to cull the useful ideas that were presented from the previous threads here on Vuo’s visual design. We came up with many concrete suggestions and have spent time trying to understand them and think about what other features we can reschedule in order to mock up and implement these design changes within our timeline for Vuo releases 0.9 and 1.0. I’ll try to summarize what we’re doing with those suggestions:
• Cables and cable paths:
◦ We’re mocking up some new algorithms that would make cables always run horizontally into nodes.
◦ We’re mocking up some variations of the data+event cables being a solid color, or a solid color with an outline.
◦ Option to show linear cables. We made this a feature request (Option to show linear cables) for 16 credits.
◦ Related work: we’re planning on a way to hide some cables, Send and Receive nodes for wirelessly sending data inside a composition (Send and Receive nodes for wirelessly sending data inside a composition.).
◦ Related work: Use option+drag to initiate an event-only cable from a data-and-event output port. Scheduled for work, 0.9.
• Nodes:
◦ Adjust the vertical position of port action triangles. Scheduled for work, 0.9.
◦ Replace the unicode arrow with a triangle to separate the input and output types of a type converter. We will remove the arrow and review.
◦ Change the stateful node indicator. We’re mocking up some variations. Needs to work with any cable changes.
◦ Make node titles smaller. We’re mocking up a node with a title the same size as node class/port labels to see how that might look.
◦ Reduce the stroke width of event barriers. Revisit in the future after other visual design changes have been implemented.
◦ Add option to hide node class names. We made this a feature request (Option to hide node class names) for 16 credits.
• Vuo Editor:
◦ Allow scrolling beyond the composition. Scheduled for for work, 0.9.
◦ Switch to a dark color scheme. We’re investigating how much work it would take to do this, and whether it would be an option or the default. We have a separate feature request, Change Editor window background color and opacity (Change Editor window background color and opacity) that might end up being done in conjunction with this.
◦ Allow attaching some nodes, like “Make 3D Point”, to nodes in the same way that list drawers are attached. Consider after 1.0.
• Vuo Editor behavior:
◦ Two related ideas: Allow designating a trigger port in place of the inserted “Fire on Start” and Fire an event automatically when constant values change. We are investigating making some trigger ports “auto trigger” and enabling automatic cable hookups. These ideas will take some time to coalesce to make sure we increase the Editor’s usability without unintentionally making other things more difficult to do. Stay tuned. Post 1.0.
We also reviewed Pianomatic’s feature request, Cable connection shortcuts and features (Cable connection shortcuts and features), that contained suggestions for visual design changes. We’ve responded to that on vuo.org.