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[AD&D 2E Revised] Help with new design for Potions, Dusts, Scrolls

1594026241
Peter B.
Pro
Sheet Author
Hello Roll20. I am working on adding a bit of functional to the AD&D 2E Revised character sheet. Specifically I want to add Initiative  buttons to the Potion, Dusts, and Scrolls section as it often happens that you need to use these items in combat, so an initiative button would be appropriate. So here I will present the current design, and a couple of different alternatives: Current Design As can be seen on the current design, it is currently not possible to assign a speed factor or add any of the items to the Turn Tracker via a Initiative  button. New Design basis I would prefer to keep this section rather tight, so I am leaning against the previous design, and keeping each repeating element in two rows. I also felt that a heading was needed to better indicate what should go in each field. Specifically because both the Speed and Quantity input fields are number input. So my first draft is using a kind of dual heading, because I found a heading for each row of inputs to be excessive and did not match the rest of the design used in the sheet. My main problem arises when I add more rows to each. Should the heading be added everytime, or should there be no heading, or should it be some white space. I will show each of my proposed design, but I would also like if anyone had a better idea for the section all together. The only requirement is that the 3 original fields are kept. The underlying problem is that each element consists of 2 lines instead of 1. If each element was compressed into a single, then this would be solved by itself. Moving the elements to a single line, would increase the width, which is something I would try to avoid. New design 1: Old New Clearly indicates each item, but the extra headings seems redundant. New design 2: Old New This is closer to the original design, but without the headings, multiple elements seems to blend together, which makes it easy to lose track of which two rows are related to each other. This was not too much of a problem before as there was only one button, thus the button helped to indicate each element. New design 3: Old New 3A: Big whitespace 3B:  Small whitespace This is the middle ground between the two. It works alright for a few items, but if the list gets too long the headers gets far away from each element, which again can create confusion.  New design 4: Old New 4A:  Big line 4B:  Small line This uses a <hr> (horisontal line) with a small padding to separate each element from each other. This has the same problem as design 3, as many items can move the elements far away from the heading. However this looks a bit better than pure whitespace as the thin line shows more of a divide without taking too much focus. Your feedback Now Roll20 AD&D 2E users, I would like to hear your feedback on this. Which of these designs do you find best? Or do you have a better design all together? I am very open for input on this
I like the extra headings in New Design 1. I'm a bear of very little brain and need 'you are here' arrows on maps. So anything that makes it clear what to do and where I am is welcome. Thank you for continuing to do this. There are some of us left who run 2e as well as 5e, but 5e gets all the love.
1594045645
Peter B.
Pro
Sheet Author
Lexin said: I like the extra headings in New Design 1. I'm a bear of very little brain and need 'you are here' arrows on maps. So anything that makes it clear what to do and where I am is welcome. Thank you for continuing to do this. There are some of us left who run 2e as well as 5e, but 5e gets all the love. Thank you for your input. I will take it into consideration before making my final decission :)
I like 4b.  If the list gets too long to see the headers hopefully it means the user is now familiar enough with the fields to mitigate most of the confusion.  Also there are only two columns, so it's relatively easy to remember the headings. Alternative suggestions - auto bold or underline text in the "name of potion." field to designate a new item w/o a line or white space in order to condense the rows while making each item stand out.  Or can the heading be set to either freeze (like in excel) so the heading scrolls down as the user views items further down the list?  or repeat the header every x+1 rows, x being the number of rows visible on a screen before the user scrolls down.
Either of option 3 looks good to me, no redundant headers, no extra lines, and a space that separates enough to indicate a different item. Well done, no matter which you settle on.
1594077627
Gold
Forum Champion
Paul W. said: Either of option 3 looks good to me, no redundant headers, no extra lines, and a space that separates enough to indicate a different item. Well done, no matter which you settle on. Same, 3 with either amount of spacing. Can you speak to my DM's about giving out more potions, scrolls, and particularly some of that magic dust? Need some realtime game data to test this properly.
I like 4b.  I also like the idea of the potion/scroll/magic dust name in bold if possible that would set it off just right i think.
1594124798

Edited 1594124814
AquaAlex
Sheet Author
Translator
API Scripter
I find this sheet just has so much info and it is all over the place, too many tabs. But I know some people like it, only suggestion I would have is to try and make the  repeating section to be 1 line per item instead of 2, 2 lines per item just clutters things more. And since this sheet has so many tabs and sections it should be relatively easy to manage. Some nice features would be using similar naming conventions for any new fields as what is used in the "simple" sheet. so that means you can switch between the sheets without anything breaking (as long as the field exists in both you will see it else it will be under Attributes & Abilities section.
1594197582
Peter B.
Pro
Sheet Author
AquaAlex said: I find this sheet just has so much info and it is all over the place, too many tabs. But I know some people like it, only suggestion I would have is to try and make the  repeating section to be 1 line per item instead of 2, 2 lines per item just clutters things more. And since this sheet has so many tabs and sections it should be relatively easy to manage. Some nice features would be using similar naming conventions for any new fields as what is used in the "simple" sheet. so that means you can switch between the sheets without anything breaking (as long as the field exists in both you will see it else it will be under Attributes & Abilities section. I absolutely agree that the sheet is overloaded with information, and not really placed in an intuitive way. I am not a designer, so I don't really feel comfortable to make major design changes. Also I am no that skilled with HTML/CSS in the art of flexboxes. Therefore I try to limit myself to add extra functionality where I see a need for it. About the naming, I try to look at the Simple sheet, to see if there already is a field, but as I have not made everything on this sheet, there tends to be a lot of legacy elements that already differ in attribute names between the sheets. I never change the names of any of the existing fields to avoid player's losing data. I only consider names when adding new fields. I hope it makes sense :)
1594198184
Peter B.
Pro
Sheet Author
Thank you for all your input! I really appreciate all your thoughts and ideas! I am going with solution 3B for now. I am still keeping in mind that in the future a solution with a single row would be better, but that is a task for the future. :)