Hi guys, In general, I am very impressed with what I have seen of Roll20. I do, however, have one concern that is growing in size the more I use Roll20 (I have used Roll20 in-game for about 80 hours only, so I don't class myself as an expert by any means). I will present my concerns here in the hopes that the program will improve over time. I do feel, that some of these suggested changes are trivial to implement, particularly the shortcuts, but that there will be stiff resistance now that Roll20 is operational - most people do not like change. I suggest that the changes are for long term ease of use and improvement to the intuitive use of the toolset present within the program. The changes will also reduce the learning curve involved in getting up and running as both a GM and player. 1. Unifying the UI - Keyboard Shortcuts: I must admit, the first time I went to your help pages and looked at the Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts I could only reconcile what was before me by assuming a school kid had defined the settings. While this may come across as insulting, it is not my intention, but rather to point out it was clear that keyboard shortcuts had not been given an appropriate amount of attention and/or consideration. There are many good books out there on the design of UIs that should be consulted when creating a program. In order to deal with the UI using keyboard shortcuts I propose two options, other than the current setup, as indicated below. The options can be listed in the Settings Tab along with other program-specific settings. CURRENT Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts SUGGESTED
OPTIONS - Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts Option 1: Logical / Intuitive
This setup is the most intuitive being based on the first-letter of the words for the tool description as provided in-program (at least as much as is possible). It increases the number of hands used to access controls, while maintaining consistency of input across each tool set. Each tool group in the Toolbar, other than Help, has been designated a group-initiating key, with the Sidebar being allocated ' S '. Allocate the following keyboard shortcuts for the Tools: Why <spacebar> for
Pan? Simply because it is the standard practice in Acrobat Reader, Photoshop,
as well as other drawing programs. Pan, however, has been allocated a mouse action - right-click and drag, so this is superfluous, but essential nonetheless.
Why ‘E’ for Select/Move? Because
’S’ is already a major group-initiating key for “Sidebar”. Also, ’E’ is
typically chosen to represent “Use” or “Activate” within an FPS game
environment, which is loosely related to Selecting and Moving objects.
Select, Pan, Measure,
Dice Roller and Page Toolbar all have only one initiating key because these
Toolbar choices do not have a sub-menu under them. Turn Order also does not
have a submenu, however, Roll20 already implements a sub-menu-like choice to Add
a selected token to the Turn Order.
There
is no left sidebar, so why bother stating it is the “Right Sidebar” – just “Sidebar”
will suffice. The Dice Roller GUI/window has its uses, however, it is regularly advised not to be used, but rather that the GM or Player make use of the macro feature in chat, in order to speed up playing. The Dice Roller group-initiating key is therefore given a non-home row key 'R'. Lastly, the Zoom tool is given its own major group-initiating key, ‘Z’. This would allow for the different zooming options with ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ … ‘0’ representing 10%, 20%, 30% … 100% respectively, while ‘-‘ and ‘=’ can be set to 120% and 150% respectively, by way of example. Option 2: Efficiency / Gamer Friendly Loosely based on the idea of "left hand for keyboard", "right hand for mouse" of PC FPS games and the like, as well as the menu position/order in the Toolbar (as much as is possible). Again, <spacebar> for Pan, etc. This appears to be what the designers originally planned, but lost the plot when they got to "Show Turn Tracker" by using 'y' and the Page Toolbar being 'p'. These last two keys are right-hand keys. The original Right Sidebar shortcuts are a complete mess. Each tool group in the Toolbar, other than Help, has been designated a group-initiating key, with the Sidebar being allocated ' S '. Allocate the following keyboard shortcuts for the Tools: This setup reduces the number of hands used to access
controls, while maintaining consistency of input across each tool set. While it
does forego the first-letter intuitive nature of Option 1, it dramatically increases
speed of input. Again, there
is no left sidebar, so why bother stating it is the “Right Sidebar” – just “Sidebar”
will suffice. 2. Unifying the UI - Token Group Manipulation This suggestion and indeed this whole topic has come out of discussion regarding token manipulation in another Topic thread . Currently, from my own understanding we have the following situation: Single click and drag on a token group --> move the top-most token only - the default action. Double click and drag on a token group --> move all tokens in the group simultaneously, irrespective of their relative positions - final landing positions maintain relative positioning. Alt clicking selects the topmost and brings up its surrounding menu. The first two points above are my concern here. They do not conform to application standards and hence disrupt the intuitive nature of groups. I know of no program that implements object groups in a similar fashion to Roll20. Every program I have used (and I use a lot) groups objects in such a way that when you go to move any object within the group, the entire group moves by default. In order to move individual objects the grouping structure to which that object belongs must be dismantled/ungrouped. I appreciate that Roll20 developers see the need to enable individual token movement, however, it should not go against established standards. What Users expect is: Single click and drag on a token group --> move all tokens in the group simultaneously, irrespective of their relative positions - final landing positions maintain relative positioning - the default action. Any other actions the devs feel are needed should be added as a superset of actions rather than changing the base set of actions, namely add in to the set of actions: Double click and drag on a token group --> move the top-most token only. OR Right-click and drag on a token group --> move the top-most token only. OR CTRL-click and drag on a token group --> move the top-most token only. etc. I had other UI Unification ideas, but have forgotten them. I am sure they will come to me and I will add them here. Does anyone else have ideas on Unifying the UI? I would be interested in hearing them.
