Core dev respond to GUI criticism

[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.