Core dev respond to GUI criticism

[yvv]

I leave in EU and hold Euros. I want to send money to my friend in USA who wants USD. I go to transfer tab, specify how much USD I want to send, and the system goes ahead, checks order books and tells me how much Euros it will cost me.

Sounds like you want a Bitshares/Smartcoins version of shapeshift, right?

I've never used shapeshift, but ripple works the way I wrote. A program checks order books and finds a cheapest way to convert between currencies for you. It is a very convenient feature.

[kenCode]

I leave in EU and hold Euros. I want to send money to my friend in USA who wants USD. I go to transfer tab, specify how much USD I want to send, and the system goes ahead, checks order books and tells me how much Euros it will cost me.

Sounds like you want a Bitshares/Smartcoins version of shapeshift, right?

[yvv]

.... Are you asking for something like "Convert" button? Such that you could specify a currency which you have, an asset which you want and the amount and the system would go ahead and buy that asset for you at a market price? Such button would be useful indeed."

I think this function would be very valuable for non-traders to use our system. Please consider this. Thank you

We are considering this:

When we were planning Graphene one of the features we wanted to have was "market orders" - user specifies only amount and buy or sell order executes at current market price. So in Graphene order can be executed in the same block it's placed and also it can be marked as "fill or kill" - this makes market orders much easier to implement. Now we only need to add simple buy/sell/short form to the GUI where user can specify amount, click Place button, agree with price and confirm.

An automatic currency conversion has a nice use case. Suppose, I leave in EU and hold Euros. I want to send money to my friend in USA who wants USD. I go to transfer tab, specify how much USD I want to send, and the system goes ahead, checks order books and tells me how much Euros it will cost me. Such functionality is implemented in ripple and is one of the nicest features of ripple.

[tbone]

.... Are you asking for something like "Convert" button? Such that you could specify a currency which you have, an asset which you want and the amount and the system would go ahead and buy that asset for you at a market price? Such button would be useful indeed."

I think this function would be very valuable for non-traders to use our system. Please consider this. Thank you

We are considering this:

When we were planning Graphene one of the features we wanted to have was "market orders" - user specifies only amount and buy or sell order executes at current market price. So in Graphene order can be executed in the same block it's placed and also it can be marked as "fill or kill" - this makes market orders much easier to implement. Now we only need to add simple buy/sell/short form to the GUI where user can specify amount, click Place button, agree with price and confirm.

This is a good idea.  For reference, Coinbase has a nice implementation (see below).  On the buy side, for example, they give users a choice of a) specifying x number of bitcoins you wish to buy, then they tell you how much that will cost, or b) specifying $x worth of bitcoin to buy, then they tell you how many bitcoins that buys you.   Then you just choose you source of funds, and wallet to deposit into. 

http://i.imgur.com/HWhr84Q.jpg?1

[valzav]

.... Are you asking for something like "Convert" button? Such that you could specify a currency which you have, an asset which you want and the amount and the system would go ahead and buy that asset for you at a market price? Such button would be useful indeed."

I think this function would be very valuable for non-traders to use our system. Please consider this. Thank you

We are considering this:

When we were planning Graphene one of the features we wanted to have was "market orders" - user specifies only amount and buy or sell order executes at current market price. So in Graphene order can be executed in the same block it's placed and also it can be marked as "fill or kill" - this makes market orders much easier to implement. Now we only need to add simple buy/sell/short form to the GUI where user can specify amount, click Place button, agree with price and confirm.

[mike623317]

@vaalzav: From a different thread, but would help us appeal to the masses looking for safety in the event of a downturn. Worth considering dont you think ...

"If you're a trader you want/need the graphs and get off on all the analytical tools and blurb. But if I want to get out of worthless US$ and own things like oil, gold, silver or swiss francs I would just like to be able to do that as easy as possible without trying to understand what the Ask price is or what the graph is supposed to be showing. Bottom line: The price of gold is $1200.. here's $2400 and I now own 2 ounces of gold without any liability.

.... Are you asking for something like "Convert" button? Such that you could specify a currency which you have, an asset which you want and the amount and the system would go ahead and buy that asset for you at a market price? Such button would be useful indeed."

I think this function would be very valuable for non-traders to use our system. Please consider this. Thank you

[kenCode]

how do I set up recurring payments

 
 
and, where is recurring and scheduled payments documented on github and the docs?
https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=recurring
https://www.google.de/webhp?ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Adocs.bitshares.eu%20recurring

[Pheonike]

Or maybe created a separate for exchange and Margin trading like polo. That's way each user type can have a full interface catering to their needs instead of trying to mix the two. We are going to need another tab in future for the bond market anyway.

[tbone]

@svk: It dawned on me that we really need the trading dashboard to be more front and center.  I propose that when a user clicks on the "Exchange" link of the main menu, instead of going to the list of all markets (as it currently does), it should take them directly to the trading dashboard for the last market they were viewing (perhaps default first-time users to BTS:USD). 

Then the table of favorite markets on the trading dashboard (hopefully at top right) can have a link to manage your favorite markets, which takes you to the current "Market Search/Favorites" page linked by "Exchange".  Perhaps the user should also be able to get to this Markets page via a new card in the Explorer called "Markets"?  Either way, the markets page really needs a table view, not just a card view.  And it should be possible to select and de-select markets the user wants in their list of favorites.  Those of you familiar with Poloniex may see where I'm going with this.  It's really nice being able to see the last price (and hopefully 24hr change and volume) of your favorite markets at-a-glance, not to mention being be able to load any one of those markets into the trading dashboard with just one click.

By the way, as much as I like using Poloniex, their UI has some real drawbacks.  For example, most of the elements on their "Exchange" page take up way too much space and really aren't laid out very well - plus they have the trollbox taking up a bunch of extra space - so you simply can't see everything you need to see without constantly scrolling around.  It's really irritating.  I don't think we're going to have that problem here.   

[tbone]

We have every number but the the most important, the CURRENT PRICE OF THE ASSET. Get rid of spread amount.  In it's place should be last price. Green if it is higher, red if it lower than previous.

Last price should really be green if at or above the ask, red if at or below the bid.  Same goes for Time & Sales (i.e. Market History) once that API is available. 

[tbone]

This is great feedback, thanks.

I've done a first pass on this in the Exchange yesterday, making the following changes:

• Price chart is now up top, with a button to switch to the depth chart, it's also 400px high instead of 300px
• The bids and ask in the left column have been switched
• There's an option to put the orderbook horizontally below the Buy Sell buttons instead of on the left
• You can invert the positions of the Bid/Ask columns in horizontal mode
• You can invert the positions of the Buy/Sell buttons
• The "Status bar" up top remains fixed when you scroll. It will contain more useful info once that's available from the backend
• I also fixed the issue with extreme orders pushing normal orders off the screen
• All these customizations will persist between sessions in the same browser

I like your idea of putting favorite markets also in the right column, I can't really put 24hr change or anything like that in there though because that data isn't available from the backend. I used to wish for a market summary api call in BTS 1 as well...

I might put in your smaller vertical depth chart also.

About the Price History time frames: the ones we have enabled right now are the default ones that the witness_node is configured for out of the box. I'll see if we can add some more in the backend. Since the time frames available will likely change between different api providers, the backend might also need to have an api call to let us know which ones are available.

And finally about the market history: tbone you are correct, it only shows trades that have happened while you were in that market. The reason is simple: the backend has no market_history api call, so there's no way for me to get it. I've been asking for this since June, hopefully they'll get to it eventually..

Great, I'm really excited to see some of these changes.  By the way, I envision the right column including that list of favorite markets at the top, then the smaller vertical depth chart just below (if you decide to add that), then the Market History.  If you do add the smaller depth chart, perhaps you can make it hideable so the user can choose to see more of the price history, which can be very useful sometimes.  Speaking of price history, I'm surprised that's not available in the 2.0 back end since it was available in 1.0 and it's such a must-have.  In any event, once that data is available, that table should also include the time of the trade as I'm sure you would agree. 

I like your idea of putting favorite markets also in the right column, I can't really put 24hr change or anything like that in there though because that data isn't available from the backend. I used to wish for a market summary api call in BTS 1 as well...

Can't you use the chart data to show the change in price between now and the close of the last daily period? 

A couple other things I wanted to point out:

1.  The order book column headers could be a lot more clear.  For example, instead of using "Price", I would use "Bid" for the price column header on the bid side, and "Ask" for the price on the ask side.  Also, "Amount" is too vague.  I would consider using "Quantity" (which was used in 1.0), it's much more clear.  "Value" is also too vague and I would consider using "Cost" instead.  I know some people will think these things are trivial, but they really do make a difference.  Below is a sample order book with these changes to the headers, plus a couple of changes I mentioned in my previous post. 

http://i.imgbox.com/9XvflGtV.jpg


2.  You may have caught this already, but in the BTS : Trade.BTC market, the prices in the order book are getting rounded to 5 decimals vs. 8 (I added trailing zeroes above just to see what it looks like).   

3.  Also in the BTS : Trade.BTC market, when you buy BTS, the order confirmation Says "Amount to sell: x.x Trade.BTC", which really indicates the total cost of the BTS I'm buying instead of the quantity of BTS I'm buying.  I think that would make more sense for the inverted market (Trade.BTC : BTS) so perhaps technically it's not wrong, but it's going to confuse people and I would recommend matching the confirmation more specifically to the selected version of the pair.  Also, the order confirmation has field labels for "Amount" and "Price, but not total cost of the trade (i.e. QTY * price), could you add that?  So if it's BTS : Trade.BTC and you are buying, confirmation should show:

Quantity to buy:  x BTS  (NOT Amount to sell: x Trade.BTC)
Price:  y Trade.BTC/BTS
Total: z Trade.BTC

4. It's difficult to view the order book on the charcoal gray background.  Can you use black for the background instead, I think the increased contrast will make a real difference. 

Hope you find this helpful.  Looking forward to seeing some of your modifications.  Thanks for your efforts.

[svk]

We have every number but the the most important, the CURRENT PRICE OF THE ASSET. Get rid of spread amount.  In it's place should be last price. Green if it is higher, red if it lower than previous.

This ties in to what I said above: without a market history api call we don't have the current price...

I'll add the price of the last trade that happened while you had the view open, but it won't be there until an actual trade happens..

[Pheonike]

We have every number but the the most important, the CURRENT PRICE OF THE ASSET. Get rid of spread amount.  In it's place should be last price. Green if it is higher, red if it lower than previous.

[svk]

some little things:

I'd like to see a button between the BID and ASK books on the left column, to flip the layout so that BID is on the bottom and ASK is on the top.   

Market history always seems to be empty.  I'd like to see colored numbers indicating whether it was a buy or a sell.

The price history chart need more period options I don't think we need 15sec and 1min, I'd like to see options for 2hours, 4hours, 6hours 12hours

The price history chart only seems to have 20 or so points of history available.  It needs much more than this.  The candles have to much space between them, if you're only displaying a few candles they should be expanded to fill the whole space.  It looks like the volume bars do this already but not the price bars.

On the price history chart if no trades were made for a defined period, there should be a dash "-" (empty candle (or doji) ) on the chart instead of just an empty field.

The price history chart should be on top, depth chart on the bottom.  Price history chart should have much greater height

I'd like to see the Left column depth book centered vertically and I would like to see the last price displayed in the center instead of, or in addition to, the "spread".  I don't know that knowing the spread is really that important for most people.

As far as specific GUI feedback goes:

Wallet Management
I agree with a previous poster that wallet management needs to be a little less confusing.  For example, it needs to be MUCH clearer which operations pertain to 2.0 vs. migration from 0.9.3.  Many people seem to be confused between "Restore Backup" and "Import Keys".  I'm not 100% sure either, but I think the former pertains to 2.0 while the latter pertains to 0.9.3.  So at the very least those buttons could be renamed "Restore 2.0 backup" and "Import 0.9.3 Keys".  Although perhaps more ideally, instead of having all of the buttons bunched together, there would be some separation between a) the wallet functions that a brand new user would be concerned with vs. b) the wallet functions for migrating from 0.9.3 (or from the previous web wallet).

Trading Interface
Although I believe 3rd parties will ultimately offer great trading UIs, I think it's imperative that the default GUI is very usable if we want to bootstrap these markets ASAP.  That said, I agree with most of Xeldal's comments.  Here are some reinforcements and additions to his feedback. Others may have posted additional feedback since I started composing this post a couple hours ago, so there may be overlap. 

1. Order Book
It's standard for bids to be at the bottom, asks at the top (for the oddballs, you could have function to flip).  Also, showing the spread in the middle of the order book is unnecessary. It's much more critical to show the last price in this space.  The last price should be displayed red if it was a sell (at or below the bid) and green if it was a buy (at or above the ask).  The red and green may need to be brightened a little to stand out on the dark gray background.  Also, it's unhelpful for column labels to take up such valuable real estate right in the middle of the order book.  I would move them to the top (and perhaps also the bottom) of the order book. 

2. Charts
I also completely agree with Xeldal's chart comments including the position of the chart as well as how to display the bars, etc.  Another important thing is that when you position your cursor over a chart, it really, REALLY needs to show crosshairs (i.e. both vertical and horizontal line spanning the chart) rather than just a vertical line.   This may seem trivial, but I can't stress the importance of it enough. Also, let's allow the user choose from the most common time frames (see below).  If it's necessary to prioritize some over the others to start, I would prioritize the ones underlined below. 

            1w  |  3d  1d  |  12h  6h  4h  2h  1h  |  30m  15m  5m  3m  1m

3. Market History
Regarding Market History, I'm not sure if it's empty because it only shows trades that occurred since I loaded that market on the screen, or because there just haven't been any trades in that market yet.  Either way, it really needs to show the last x trades regardless of whether you leave that screen and come back. 

4. Markets at-a-glance
Market History really doesn't need to take the whole vertical column.  Some of that column could be used to display a list of your "pinned" markets including the 24 hour volume and price change.  So now while you're on the full view (chart, order book, market depth, order form, etc.) of one market, you can see all of your other important markets "at-a-glance" and easily toggle between their full views. 

5. Market Depth
Finally (for now?), I really don't think the market depth needs to take up so much real estate. It's really just a visual aid and can be much smaller.  It would also make a lot more sense if it's orientation was vertical rather than horizontal (see below, click on link for actual size).  In this orientation you can visualize not only the buy and sell depth, but if you look at the bright red and green line, you can also much more easily visualize how steeply or gradually the price would go up or down with a given amount of buy vs. sell volume. 

http://i.imgur.com/K8GxLV2.jpg
     

Also, positioning your cursor on the depth chart could pop up some details (see second image below). 

http://i.imgur.com/NNBXQRV.jpg


By the way, I do understand that it may be very useful to have the market depth chart visually showing the Settlement Price, Margin Call Price, and Call limit lines.  If those items cannot be displayed in a smaller version of the depth chart described above, then perhaps allow the user to toggle between a larger version of the depth chart and the main price chart (with the default being the price chart, of course) as was the case in the previous GUI.  In this case I would still have the smaller vertically oriented version visible elsewhere.

I hope this feedback helps.  I'm confident that much of this could be implemented without much trouble at all.  And I look forward to seeing the GUI evolve quickly in the very near term.  Thanks for all of your efforts!

This is great feedback, thanks.

I've done a first pass on this in the Exchange yesterday, making the following changes:

• Price chart is now up top, with a button to switch to the depth chart, it's also 400px high instead of 300px
• The bids and ask in the left column have been switched
• There's an option to put the orderbook horizontally below the Buy Sell buttons instead of on the left
• You can invert the positions of the Bid/Ask columns in horizontal mode
• You can invert the positions of the Buy/Sell buttons
• The "Status bar" up top remains fixed when you scroll. It will contain more useful info once that's available from the backend
• I also fixed the issue with extreme orders pushing normal orders off the screen
• All these customizations will persist between sessions in the same browser

I like your idea of putting favorite markets also in the right column, I can't really put 24hr change or anything like that in there though because that data isn't available from the backend. I used to wish for a market summary api call in BTS 1 as well...

I might put in your smaller vertical depth chart also.

About the Price History time frames: the ones we have enabled right now are the default ones that the witness_node is configured for out of the box. I'll see if we can add some more in the backend. Since the time frames available will likely change between different api providers, the backend might also need to have an api call to let us know which ones are available.

And finally about the market history: tbone you are correct, it only shows trades that have happened while you were in that market. The reason is simple: the backend has no market_history api call, so there's no way for me to get it. I've been asking for this since June, hopefully they'll get to it eventually..

[jakub]

I think the market page is not very far from being quite good.
I'm not a frequent trader myself so I'll offer a more general perspective regrading more universal issues.
These are my suggestions:

(1) I'd suggest using javascript tabs to split the content into smaller pieces as I assume you almost never need to view everything at the same time. But if that is too radical, I'd at least move the market history list to the very bottom of the page. And instead put the favorite (or most recently viewed) markets in the right column - this should take less space than the market history list.




(2) All those small font labels need to be removed or replaced with bigger fonts. It does not make sense to have them the way they are now because they are illegible anyway so they just pretend to offer information without actually doing it.




(3) The header of the table listing my active orders should be removed if there are no active orders. Or at least there should be some space separating the table header from the chart below or a text label saying something like "Currently you have no active orders". Otherwise the table header looks like something is wrong or like being part of the chart below which is quite confusing.




(4) The market history chart should definitely contain flat candles if there are no trades in a given period.
Also, I'd recommend using the same chart to show the history of price feeds - they could be displayed as a thin gray line in the background.




(5) IMO there is too much contrast between the darkness of the background and the whiteness of the new order input fields. Those fields should be bright but not 100% white. This is clearly an aesthetic issue, nevertheless for me an important one as the text input fields visually dominate too much.




(6) The market depth charts should be perfectly symmetrical when you flip the market from USD:BTS to BTS:USD. I know that technically nothing is wrong as this is just a scaling issue but nevertheless it should be fixed. The two markets are perfectly symmetrical and so should be the corresponding charts.

[jaran]

when you view an account that you are following but do not own from your dashboard page and then click on exchange -> market(bts/usd etc) then that account is set to be the default account for buying and selling from.

For example follow account poloniexwallet then go try to trade some bitUSD and it wants to withdraw funds from the poloniexwallet which you dont own.

There should be the concept of active account on the dashboard page and a user can only set an account they own to be the active account.

[tonyk]

I LOVE it as it is. Change nothing!!!

My favourite features:

NO back button for the light wallet

Price - less order books. - After all who the hell cares about prices while trading?

[38PTSWarrior]

Valantine - thank you for your work. I was a bit critical at first, but the more i use this the more i am beginning to like it. The improvements you mentioned as well as the feed back you are getting in this thread will make this even better.

 

 

Maybe crazy but to just make one round button which glows in different colors. A magic gambling button. 3 settings. Green yellow, red.

Like gambling but with 95%, 85% and 80% chance to win.

The gamblings is always a win because the people do what makes the price better. And the software pays the losses. Maybe they can win different assets which will always be a surprise. New asset creators could pay so their assets get spit out when someone wins.

A BitUSD dice game would be great. Especially one that also lets you play in BTS and pays out in BitUSD. Could really help BitAssets and increase transactions.

There are some valid objections to it though 

I know, that's why the bingo never happened. There must be a way to legally do it. I know a large bitcoin miner and he prefers another coin which gives money by just letting the software run once every 2 weeks or a month.

Maybe that's it, getting freebies only for connecting /edit

[Empirical1.2]

Valantine - thank you for your work. I was a bit critical at first, but the more i use this the more i am beginning to like it. The improvements you mentioned as well as the feed back you are getting in this thread will make this even better.

 

 

Maybe crazy but to just make one round button which glows in different colors. A magic gambling button. 3 settings. Green yellow, red.

Like gambling but with 95%, 85% and 80% chance to win.

The gamblings is always a win because the people do what makes the price better. And the software pays the losses. Maybe they can win different assets which will always be a surprise. New asset creators could pay so their assets get spit out when someone wins.

A BitUSD dice game would be great. Especially one that also lets you play in BTS and pays out in BitUSD. Could really help BitAssets and increase transactions.

There are some valid objections to it though 

[38PTSWarrior]

Maybe crazy but to just make one round button which glows in different colors. A magic gambling button. 3 settings. Green yellow, red.

Like gambling but with 95%, 85% and 80% chance to win.

The gamblings is always a win because the people do what makes the price better. And the software pays the losses. Maybe they can win different assets which will always be a surprise. New asset creators could pay so their assets get spit out when someone wins.

[valzav]

Great idea incomming commander: Make a button 'short USD with safe setting'

I don't understand the collateral and other shorting things. A setting with a 90% chance that I can get little richer in the future would be good.

I am sure many people are not talented in thinking about such complex thing.

Let's try to make a dummy button.

Good idea, we thought about this too. When we were planning Graphene one of the features we wanted to have was "market orders" - user specifies only amount and buy or sell order executes at current market price. So in Graphene order can be executed in the same block it's placed and also it can be marked as "fill or kill" - this makes market orders much easier to implement. Now we only need to add simple buy/sell/short form to the GUI where user can specify amount, click Place button, agree with price and confirm.

[38PTSWarrior]

Great idea incomming commander: Make a button 'short USD with safe setting'

I don't understand the collateral and other shorting things. A setting with a 90% chance that I can get little richer in the future would be good.

I am sure many people are not talented in thinking about such complex thing.

Let's try to make a dummy button.

[CLains]

One might see the wallet as just up to speed, but as I understand it the current speed of development is an order of magnitude faster. There also seems to be a million other avenues available from where we are now, so I for one am very optimistic!

[hadrian]

I'm very happy with the GUI, but decided to try to find a way to improve it. This is the first thing I came up with, and I think it's important:

The wallet should "Auto-lock" after an operation (if it was locked beforehand).

As it stands at the moment, if the wallet is locked when you request an operation requiring your private keys, you must enter your password. This unlocks the wallet to enable the operation, and the wallet then remains unlocked afterwards.

I would prefer to see the wallet automatically return to the state it was in before the operation was requested. That is to say, if it was locked before the operation it should automatically lock again after the operation. If it was already unlocked, it can stay that way.

Examples of my reasoning:

• Security best practices - there's no point having it unlocked unnecessarily.
• User doesn't have to remember to lock the wallet after an operation, such as transferring some money.
• Protection from mistakes - the wallet can be locked for the majority of the time, so average Joe can mess around, exploring the wallet without worrying about accidentally doing something stupid. The request for a password would act as a prompt to think, and it offers peace of mind.
• Protection from bad actors, and from children mashing the keyboard in the case of the a wallet left unattended!
• Protection from a malicious person waiting for you to carry out any operation, who could then forcibly take over your wallet and have unhindered access because it doesn't lock itself afterwards.
• The user can always manually unlock the wallet and leave it in that state if they're doing loads of operations.

Are there any arguments against what I've said? I can't think of any good ones...

[MJK]

Valantine - thank you for your work. I was a bit critical at first, but the more i use this the more i am beginning to like it. The improvements you mentioned as well as the feed back you are getting in this thread will make this even better.

 

[donkeypong]

We are very thankful for your hard work so far and hope you continue improving the interface. Thanks, guys!

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

The idea behind BitShares 2.0 was to create "platform" and provide some basic infrastructure, like blockchain, close to real-time API, reference wallet, referral program and let third parties build and monetize their own solutions built on this platform.

This line out of everything caught my attention... because I think it summarizes very well what people right now need to understand as the right context for their expectations. A 'basic infrastructure' is a good way to describe it.. with the API/wallet/refer/blockchain system for 3rd parties to build on.

I think what people today are forgetting is the 3rd party part. Sadly it will remain this way until they begin to really make a showing and utility really takes hold. I certainly am doing my part on that front very very soon.

As for the rest of your work Valentine I have been at a loss for why everyone is complaining so much for what has been delivered for the MVP. I thought it worked fine for what we needed and then some. I am sadly not going to be very helpful in this area though. I am not much of a designer when it comes to UIs or pay much attention to how difficult or easy things are for me using them. I will however take note from others who are better than I and pass on what feedback I get when I get it.

Keep up the good work! 

[roadscape]

And we are not going to stop here - there are big plans: the help system is under heavy development, just take a look at Membership page to have some idea - we are planning to add detailed help content to almost every page, also there will be "app tour" for new users. React native mobile GUI for iOS and Android should be out in a couple of months, all the backend and keys management are already in place; more gateways support is on the way; most of the blockchain features like proposed transactions; blinded transfers; privatized bit assets - all these are planned to be implemented before the end of year. The architecture we’ve chosen for 2.0 GUI has proven itself to be very effective and we are really getting up to speed (remember on one of the mumble sessions BM said this is the future of web development), and take a look at number of commits to graphene-ui repo - it's close to 2k already - twice as much as toolkit has got being longer under development.

And all these despite the fact that core developers were struggling for months to feed their families due to BTS price decline and dev fund melt down; and the idea to give up and return back to real-world salaries looked very attractive, btw community support was very helpful during that time, so I want to thank all you guys for staying here, even those with negative feedback, if you are still on the forum and you are testing software - this means that you still believe in BitShares and this really gives us the hope.

 

The GUI is definitely an improvement.. and the important thing is that we now have a strong GUI architecture to build on. React is a great choice and hints at where you may be taking it.. Thank you for your work and commitment to further enhancements.

[tbone]

As far as specific GUI feedback goes:

Wallet Management
I agree with a previous poster that wallet management needs to be a little less confusing.  For example, it needs to be MUCH clearer which operations pertain to 2.0 vs. migration from 0.9.3.  Many people seem to be confused between "Restore Backup" and "Import Keys".  I'm not 100% sure either, but I think the former pertains to 2.0 while the latter pertains to 0.9.3.  So at the very least those buttons could be renamed "Restore 2.0 backup" and "Import 0.9.3 Keys".  Although perhaps more ideally, instead of having all of the buttons bunched together, there would be some separation between a) the wallet functions that a brand new user would be concerned with vs. b) the wallet functions for migrating from 0.9.3 (or from the previous web wallet).

Trading Interface
Although I believe 3rd parties will ultimately offer great trading UIs, I think it's imperative that the default GUI is very usable if we want to bootstrap these markets ASAP.  That said, I agree with most of Xeldal's comments.  Here are some reinforcements and additions to his feedback. Others may have posted additional feedback since I started composing this post a couple hours ago, so there may be overlap. 

1. Order Book
It's standard for bids to be at the bottom, asks at the top (for the oddballs, you could have function to flip).  Also, showing the spread in the middle of the order book is unnecessary. It's much more critical to show the last price in this space.  The last price should be displayed red if it was a sell (at or below the bid) and green if it was a buy (at or above the ask).  The red and green may need to be brightened a little to stand out on the dark gray background.  Also, it's unhelpful for column labels to take up such valuable real estate right in the middle of the order book.  I would move them to the top (and perhaps also the bottom) of the order book. 

2. Charts
I also completely agree with Xeldal's chart comments including the position of the chart as well as how to display the bars, etc.  Another important thing is that when you position your cursor over a chart, it really, REALLY needs to show crosshairs (i.e. both vertical and horizontal line spanning the chart) rather than just a vertical line.   This may seem trivial, but I can't stress the importance of it enough. Also, let's allow the user choose from the most common time frames (see below).  If it's necessary to prioritize some over the others to start, I would prioritize the ones underlined below. 

            1w  |  3d  1d  |  12h  6h  4h  2h  1h  |  30m  15m  5m  3m  1m

3. Market History
Regarding Market History, I'm not sure if it's empty because it only shows trades that occurred since I loaded that market on the screen, or because there just haven't been any trades in that market yet.  Either way, it really needs to show the last x trades regardless of whether you leave that screen and come back. 

4. Markets at-a-glance
Market History really doesn't need to take the whole vertical column.  Some of that column could be used to display a list of your "pinned" markets including the 24 hour volume and price change.  So now while you're on the full view (chart, order book, market depth, order form, etc.) of one market, you can see all of your other important markets "at-a-glance" and easily toggle between their full views. 

5. Market Depth
Finally (for now?), I really don't think the market depth needs to take up so much real estate. It's really just a visual aid and can be much smaller.  It would also make a lot more sense if it's orientation was vertical rather than horizontal (see below, click on link for actual size).  In this orientation you can visualize not only the buy and sell depth, but if you look at the bright red and green line, you can also much more easily visualize how steeply or gradually the price would go up or down with a given amount of buy vs. sell volume. 

http://i.imgur.com/K8GxLV2.jpg
     

Also, positioning your cursor on the depth chart could pop up some details (see second image below). 

http://i.imgur.com/NNBXQRV.jpg


By the way, I do understand that it may be very useful to have the market depth chart visually showing the Settlement Price, Margin Call Price, and Call limit lines.  If those items cannot be displayed in a smaller version of the depth chart described above, then perhaps allow the user to toggle between a larger version of the depth chart and the main price chart (with the default being the price chart, of course) as was the case in the previous GUI.  In this case I would still have the smaller vertically oriented version visible elsewhere.

I hope this feedback helps.  I'm confident that much of this could be implemented without much trouble at all.  And I look forward to seeing the GUI evolve quickly in the very near term.  Thanks for all of your efforts!

[tbone]

Thanks for that Valantine, it's great to hear your perspective. I hope people will provide their feedback in the form you asked for, I can see that is much more useful than the general form usually offered. I will certainly keep that in mind as well. I tend to look at things from a detailed perspective and usually feel like I have to guess a lot to get things done.

And we are not going to stop here - there are big plans: the help system is under heavy development, just take a look at Membership page to have some idea - we are planning to add detailed help content to almost every page, also there will be "app tour" for new users. React native mobile GUI for iOS and Android should be out in a couple of months, all the backend and keys management are already in place; more gateways support is on the way; most of the blockchain features like proposed transactions; blinded transfers; privatized bit assets - all these are planned to be implemented before the end of year. The architecture we’ve chosen for 2.0 GUI has proven itself to be very effective and we are really getting up to speed (remember on one of the mumble sessions BM said this is the future of web development), and take a look at number of commits to graphene-ui repo - it's close to 2k already - twice as much as toolkit has got being longer under development.

This is as close to a roadmap as we've ever seen IMO, and it needs to be formalized and prominently publicized. There's a lot of things CNX could publicize but chooses not to for various reasons, but I feel like when it comes to milestones and schedules much more should be said. I hope you don't catch hell for posting this, I know there's been issues in the past of too much disclosure. I hope we can leave those things behind us and look forward to more open discussions of priorities and goals.

Why would he catch hell?  I don't think he's saying anything bytemaster hasn't already said.  He's just reminding people because it seems many have either forgotten or never really understood what the Bitshares 2.0 / Graphene GUI is supposed to be.  Personally, my expectation has been for the new GUI to be 3 things: 1) a much more usable interface than we had before, 2) the beginning of the new governance model, and 3) a working demonstration of the platform's capabilities so that business builders would be able to more easily wrap their minds around what subset of functionality they would like to build into their own GUI, how they can add value, etc.  So we should really be looking at the audience for this GUI as investors, early adopters, and business builders...NOT typical end users. 

The entreprenuers and business builders among us will create the GUIs that attract the end users.  As mentioned by OP, some will develop trading platforms, some will develop wallets, etc.  They are incentivized to do so by the referral system, and much development is already going on behind the scenes. 

Speaking of the referral system, I do think we probably need to modify the fee structure and therefore the referral system itself.  But that's fine because the new governance model is taking shape, so we can debate the specifics and make whatever changes need to be made.  So as far as I'm concerned, things are on track and anyone that can look past the current share price will prosper greatly. 

By the way, I saw on another thread that one of our fine community members (was it Phillyguy?) suggested to lzr1900 that as a large shareholder now, he might want to consider being a little more positive/constructive in the forum.  lzr1900 responded by asking something along the lines of "how am I supposed to do that"?  My answer to that would be: "have some damn vision, man".  Geez Louise.

[Thom]

A couple of little things:

• Put a "reload page" button on the settings page where you add server URLs, or do it automatically after entering a new URL, or at least a message to prompt users to reload the page after selecting a different server to connect to. It's not obvious you need to do that to connect to the new server.
• Add "total blocks produced" and "total paid to this witness" values on the witness explorer page
• Add a zoom button on explorer page so more items can be viewed on a single screen. Lots of wasted space as it is.

[bitacer]

I think you guys are doing  great  , I would love to see a responsive theme with tabs so it can be used on mobile devices. Keep up the good work , excellent progress

[testz]

Well said 

[pendragon3]

Initially I was planning to respond with this in one of the GUI criticism topics, but it grew pretty large, so I decided it deserves a separate forum thread. So in response of my post I would like to see your thoughts on "fundamental issue” I mentioned below as well as your questions about our future plans and your ideas and suggestions. (Please note, that when you say “NXT/Crypti/you-name-it-wallet is better/cleaner” or Poloniex exchange is better - it’s not really helpful). I think most helpful UX feedback comes in the following form: “As <experienced (or not experienced) forex trader> (or <paypal user>, etc) I do <some operation> very frequently so if would be very helpful you put <this data> at <the bottom>; or you put <this button> on <top of the page>; or you remove <something> because it bloats UI”.

I think the most fundamental issue is that half of the community would like to see BitShares GUI as exchange, the other half as cryptocurrency wallet with built-in exchange. And in general - there is no consensus on what BitShares is.

And we are not going to stop here - there are big plans: the help system is under heavy development, just take a look at Membership page to have some idea - we are planning to add detailed help content to almost every page, also there will be "app tour" for new users. React native mobile GUI for iOS and Android should be out in a couple of months, all the backend and keys management are already in place; more gateways support is on the way; most of the blockchain features like proposed transactions; blinded transfers; privatized bit assets - all these are planned to be implemented before the end of year. The architecture we’ve chosen for 2.0 GUI has proven itself to be very effective and we are really getting up to speed (remember on one of the mumble sessions BM said this is the future of web development), and take a look at number of commits to graphene-ui repo - it's close to 2k already - twice as much as toolkit has got being longer under development.

Great. Glad to hear about all of the exciting planned features.

BUT, let's remember that we must walk before we can run. One of the first priorities should be ensuring that users can import their balances safely, easily, and securely. It seems a number of users here have had problems importing their balances from 1.0. There's nothing that erodes a BitShares supporter's confidence more quickly than an hours-long wallet import procedure that leaves them frustrated, wondering what's happening, and worried that they just sent all of their balances to limbo.

Imo, problems with wallet importing, missing balances, etc. are one if the main reasons for big price declines in the past few days. This is nothing new--something very similar happened after the launch of the first wallet last year. Remember that time? Why did the price of btsx crash after the launch of the first wallet?. It wasn't because of the lack of cutting-edge features. It wasn't because of concerns about the back-end. And it wasn't due to disagreement about whether the GUI should be more or less like an exchange. The price crashed mainly because the wallet was prone to crashing, and people were concerned about missing balances (one could argue also that the market peg was unraveling, but that happened a bit later).

Bottom line: the devs' FIRST priority for the GUI should be to make the key/wallet import procedure smooth and seamless. This is a no-brainer. After the import problems are solved, everything else, including the BTS valuation and growth in the user base, should be much easier.
 

[Xeldal]

some little things:

I'd like to see a button between the BID and ASK books on the left column, to flip the layout so that BID is on the bottom and ASK is on the top.   

Market history always seems to be empty.  I'd like to see colored numbers indicating whether it was a buy or a sell.

The price history chart need more period options I don't think we need 15sec and 1min, I'd like to see options for 2hours, 4hours, 6hours 12hours

The price history chart only seems to have 20 or so points of history available.  It needs much more than this.  The candles have to much space between them, if you're only displaying a few candles they should be expanded to fill the whole space.  It looks like the volume bars do this already but not the price bars.

On the price history chart if no trades were made for a defined period, there should be a dash "-" (empty candle (or doji) ) on the chart instead of just an empty field.

The price history chart should be on top, depth chart on the bottom.  Price history chart should have much greater height

I'd like to see the Left column depth book centered vertically and I would like to see the last price displayed in the center instead of, or in addition to, the "spread".  I don't know that knowing the spread is really that important for most people.

[phillyguy]

I think the wallet, explorer and transfer tabs are all very clean and user friendly. I also find the exchange page where and I can pin/unpin my favorite pairs to be very useful and appealing.

Here is my feedback:

1.) The price history chart should be much more prominent, with easy toggles for 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, 1 year, All time, etc. Not just the buy and sell walls.

2.) The wallet settings are not intuitive to find. Clicking on "Wallets" after clicking on Settings is not obvious. Maybe on the right hand side of the screen after you click on Settings, just listing the Wallet settings rather than requiring a click through would be useful.

3.) My personal preference would not be a black background with colored fonts, so maybe an option to toggle this in the top right corner to a white background and dark fonts would be useful too.

4.) Show transfer history on the Transfer tab, underneath the fields for address, amount, from, to, etc. Also, how do I set up recurring payments on the transfer tab as well?


Overall I probably have less complaints about the GUI than most. I really really like the wallet and explorer aspects. I hope that is helpful feedback, thanks for your response.  (And sorry for the edits, I started this post without opening the wallet again and reviewing it first).

[Thom]

Thanks for that Valantine, it's great to hear your perspective. I hope people will provide their feedback in the form you asked for, I can see that is much more useful than the general form usually offered. I will certainly keep that in mind as well. I tend to look at things from a detailed perspective and usually feel like I have to guess a lot to get things done.

And we are not going to stop here - there are big plans: the help system is under heavy development, just take a look at Membership page to have some idea - we are planning to add detailed help content to almost every page, also there will be "app tour" for new users. React native mobile GUI for iOS and Android should be out in a couple of months, all the backend and keys management are already in place; more gateways support is on the way; most of the blockchain features like proposed transactions; blinded transfers; privatized bit assets - all these are planned to be implemented before the end of year. The architecture we’ve chosen for 2.0 GUI has proven itself to be very effective and we are really getting up to speed (remember on one of the mumble sessions BM said this is the future of web development), and take a look at number of commits to graphene-ui repo - it's close to 2k already - twice as much as toolkit has got being longer under development.

This is as close to a roadmap as we've ever seen IMO, and it needs to be formalized and prominently publicized. There's a lot of things CNX could publicize but chooses not to for various reasons, but I feel like when it comes to milestones and schedules much more should be said. I hope you don't catch hell for posting this, I know there's been issues in the past of too much disclosure. I hope we can leave those things behind us and look forward to more open discussions of priorities and goals.

[topcandle]

And all these despite the fact that core developers were struggling for months to feed their families due to BTS price decline and dev fund melt down; and the idea to give up and return back to real-world salaries looked very attractive, btw community support was very helpful during that time, so I want to thank all you guys for staying here, even those with negative feedback, if you are still on the forum and you are testing software - this means that you still believe in BitShares and this really gives us the hope.

Would you say that most work now is Front-end rather than back-end capabilites?  How much is back-end finished to say were out of beta?

[JA]

VERY well said val.
  love u

[valzav]

Initially I was planning to respond with this in one of the GUI criticism topics, but it grew pretty large, so I decided it deserves a separate forum thread. So in response of my post I would like to see your thoughts on "fundamental issue” I mentioned below as well as your questions about our future plans and your ideas and suggestions. (Please note, that when you say “NXT/Crypti/you-name-it-wallet is better/cleaner” or Poloniex exchange is better - it’s not really helpful). I think most helpful UX feedback comes in the following form: “As <experienced (or not experienced) forex trader> (or <paypal user>, etc) I do <some operation> very frequently so if would be very helpful you put <this data> at <the bottom>; or you put <this button> on <top of the page>; or you remove <something> because it bloats UI”.

I think the most fundamental issue is that half of the community would like to see BitShares GUI as exchange, the other half as cryptocurrency wallet with built-in exchange. And in general - there is no consensus on what BitShares is.

While we were planning the GUI we decided to try to satisfy both points of view and build reference wallet that would be easy to customize, so the exchanges would turn it into exchange UIs, wallet service providers into a simple wallet suitable for general public.
The idea behind BitShares 2.0 was to create "platform" and provide some basic infrastructure, like blockchain, close to real-time API, reference wallet, referral program and let third parties build and monetize their own solutions built on this platform.
Another goal for the BitShares 2.0 GUI was to have all the functionality of 0.x wallet, so the current users wouldn't feel 2.0 as downgrade. Even if 2.0 GUI may feel not accomplished but it serves both goals well - it gives you a taste of Graphene capabilities and performance and also it's far superior to 0.x wallet.

And we are not going to stop here - there are big plans: the help system is under heavy development, just take a look at Membership page to have some idea - we are planning to add detailed help content to almost every page, also there will be "app tour" for new users. React native mobile GUI for iOS and Android should be out in a couple of months, all the backend and keys management are already in place; more gateways support is on the way; most of the blockchain features like proposed transactions; blinded transfers; privatized bit assets - all these are planned to be implemented before the end of year. The architecture we’ve chosen for 2.0 GUI has proven itself to be very effective and we are really getting up to speed (remember on one of the mumble sessions BM said this is the future of web development), and take a look at number of commits to graphene-ui repo - it's close to 2k already - twice as much as toolkit has got being longer under development.

And all these despite the fact that core developers were struggling for months to feed their families due to BTS price decline and dev fund melt down; and the idea to give up and return back to real-world salaries looked very attractive, btw community support was very helpful during that time, so I want to thank all you guys for staying here, even those with negative feedback, if you are still on the forum and you are testing software - this means that you still believe in BitShares and this really gives us the hope.