Quicksilver-esque

[Neilio]

This actually doesn't look very much like Quicksilver, but it's close to how I had QS set up. At any rate, I like things very clean and straightforward.

 

http://neil.io/6jl9

 

BTW, it'd be nice to be able to manipulate the icon sizes and visibility.

 

Also, from a UX perspective clicking on the item you want to change makes sense when everything is big, but selecting small items like the separators, scroll bar, etc. is way too difficult. It's made even worse if your trying to match colours across the entire UI.

 

I'm also finding the preview weird compared to how the final item looks. Part of the problem is the background the preview is on is quite dark, where as the actual app often floats over lighter items like open windows. It'd be useful to either be able to change the background colour, or even better, pick a more neutral default.

[vinyldust]

Ya, you're right - Since you can only view it on that purple, I had to actually call up alfred to view it over the finder window...  might be a neat small tweak!

[Andrew]

If I get time, I'm going to make the background changeable by clicking on it so you can see against a light, dark etc background. Also, I made the hitzones for the separators and scrollbar bigger than they actually are - I'll check if they need to be even bigger.

 

Lovely looking theme btw! If you cmd click in one of the rows (not on the text), you can reduce the gap between the text and subtext (and make the icons a bit smaller as a consequence)

[Neilio]

If I get time, I'm going to make the background changeable by clicking on it so you can see against a light, dark etc background. Also, I made the hitzones for the separators and scrollbar bigger than they actually are - I'll check if they need to be even bigger.

Thanks! I guess my biggest concern as a UX nerd is the way it's currently set up it's not obvious or easily discoverable what parts of the UI is tweakable, and once you've figured that out, it's difficult to know what options are available.

Honest curiousity: is there a reason you set the theming system up like this, where you're actually clicking on the items you want to tweak rather than use separate controls that use the example UI as a live preview?

One way I could see this improved is using a select-style menu that lists all of the available tweakable items. When one is selected, that area briefly glows in the preview so you know what you're changing, and you get a contextual list of items you can change. Benefits hee are the items available to theme and their themable options are easily discoverable.

[dan]

Thanks! I guess my biggest concern as a UX nerd is the way it's currently set up it's not obvious or easily discoverable what parts of the UI is tweakable, and once you've figured that out, it's difficult to know what options are available. Honest curiousity: is there a reason you set the theming system up like this, where you're actually clicking on the items you want to tweak rather than use separate controls that use the example UI as a live preview? One way I could see this improved is using a select-style menu that lists all of the available tweakable items. When one is selected, that area briefly glows in the preview so you know what you're changing, and you get a contextual list of items you can change. Benefits hee are the items available to theme and their themable options are easily discoverable.

 

I agree with this. The UI worked well when it was just colours that could be changed as it was obvious what the options were and where to click. However now that much more is configurable, I'm not sure it works very well. Having to cycle through options with no way of seeing the full list of options or any indication of where you are in the list makes it clumsy to edit some of the attributes. Especially when the editing causes the window to change such that the mouse is no longer in the right place to change that option again!

 

I realise it's a boring interface, but just having a form with all the options on it would make life quite a lot easier. It doesn't have to be the primary interface for it, perhaps putting it under an 'Advanced' button would be a good solution, but I think a more basic way of editing would be good.