Michael Matti's dashboard

A comment on the problem "Button size is reset if I edit the button text" in EaSynth:

I think the best combination would be no auto-resizing on content change, but retaining that little "Auto Size" button on the property panel (alongside the Size row) for users who've made big changes and want the extra help. – Michael Matti, on October 28, 2009 14:35

Michael Matti shared an idea in EaSynth on October 28, 2009 14:11:

Feature request: Viewable/editable opacity values

I really appreciate that opacity control for setting the background transparency of some items. Problem is, if I want to match the opacity level of different elements, there's really no way to do it:



That slider has no clear granularity, and the alpha channel value you're currently on isn't even shown as a tooltip. So, if you're trying to match up the transparency of different elements, all you can do is "eyeball" it and hope for the best.

At the very least, could we have markings along the length of that slider? Better yet, how about a numeric field or stepper where we could set the precise intended value, maybe expressed as a percentage: 0-100%

As always, thanks much.

Michael Matti reported a problem in EaSynth on October 28, 2009 13:57:

Element upgrade request: Padding needed in Post-It

Title pretty much covers it, but here's a picture of the problem:



Unlike the excellent Balloon element, Post-It has no padding at all around its text. It's not obvious at first because its dummy text is centered when you add it, but switch to left-aligned and the issue is obvious.

For that matter, shouldn't the default be left-aligned anyway? Not sure how many of us center all of the text of our notes...

Thanks. Hope that's an easy one.

Michael Matti replied on October 28, 2009 13:46 to the problem "Button size is reset if I edit the button text" in EaSynth:

Same is true of the combobox control. For that matter, editing the content of a text area will reset the area's height, and changing the content of a table will reset both width and height. Basically, half the time I change the content of a widget I have to reset its size back to the way I'd intended. Really starting to get on my nerves...

Michael Matti started following the problem "Button size is reset if I edit the button text" in EaSynth.

A comment on the idea "Icons should support on-click events" in FlairBuilder:

Great ... thanks much! Does that mean a new build is imminent? – Michael Matti, on October 27, 2009 13:05

A comment on the idea "Feature request: Batch image export that preserves page names" in EaSynth:

Thanks, that would be wonderful. I can see the need for some sort of regular-expression based character normalization, and that really shouldn't confuse anyone. – Michael Matti, on October 02, 2009 14:41

Michael Matti shared an idea in EaSynth on October 02, 2009 14:16:

Feature request: Batch image export that preserves page names

Very glad to have the "export all pages" option, since I usually makes changes to multiple pages in a plot and it's great to export everything at once.

But the way batch export currently works, I provide a "base" name and the PNGs are named base.png, base_2.png, base_3.png, etc. Since the source page names are not preserved when the images are created, I'm left guessing and double-checking what's shown in the images when I used them in reviews and standards docs.

Could we have the option, during batch export, of making PNGs match the name of their originating pages? It would really help with workflow.

Thanks much.

A comment on the idea "I edit mode: Display the page number AND the page name" in EaSynth:

Thanks for solving the mystery, and for a fix in the next release. – Michael Matti, on October 02, 2009 13:31

Michael Matti replied on October 02, 2009 01:49 to the idea "I edit mode: Display the page number AND the page name" in EaSynth:

Xavier, thanks for the response. Here's the lower-left corner page indicator on my screen:



Trust me, that page has a proper name, along with the rest of the pages in the plot. And it really is build v1.6 -- I double-checked. This is on a Mac, just in case that matters.

Michael Matti started following the idea "onMouseOver and onMouseOut?" in EaSynth.

A comment on the idea "I edit mode: Display the page number AND the page name" in EaSynth:

Did this really make into v1.6? I've got that version up right now, and still can't find the page name. The status bar page selector only shows "Pages: 1/9". – Michael Matti, on October 02, 2009 00:04

Michael Matti started following the idea "I edit mode: Display the page number AND the page name" in EaSynth.

Michael Matti shared an idea in EaSynth on October 01, 2009 22:52:

Element request: some simple, generic charts

On my second ForeUI project, the application's landing page was designed to be a dashboard with a few simple charts. I faked that by importing and scaling some PNG images of charts, but it would have been a lot more convenient to have basic bar, line, and pie chart elements available to drag into place.

Both Balsamiq Mockups and FlairBuilder provide simple chart elements, and surely you don't want them to have an edge on the feature count. ;)

A comment on the idea "Flairbuilder should allow the addition of custom icons" in FlairBuilder:

Interesting, tricky topic. As I mentioned below, fail-proof viewer access to the icon library is my biggest concern. But there might be a way to provide that without embedding the icon binaries in the FBP file. What if we combined the earlier namespace idea with the idea of zipping PNGs into icon libraries? The namespace would correspond to the name of a zip file in the same directory as the FB project file. Within each of these namespaces/zipfilenames, the filename of each PNG would provide the icon name metadata, same as currently implemented in the Icon control. Since the preview engine already knows about (and has access to) the FBP file location, it would be able to load the adjacent icons. And the zipped icon sets would be fairly easy to distribute with the FBP by passing them along as one or two sibling files. – Michael Matti, on September 21, 2009 21:31

Michael Matti replied on September 21, 2009 19:55 to the idea "Flairbuilder should allow the addition of custom icons" in FlairBuilder:

I think custom icons really have to be embedded in the file -- there's just no way to ensure that stakeholders/reviewers will always have the necessary images. For icons, we're usually talking about 16x16 PNGs, so the file size hit shouldn't be too bad.

Everything's a trade-off, but in this case I think a mild-to-moderate FBP size increase would be worth it to avoid forcing viewers to chase down icons.

Michael Matti shared an idea in FlairBuilder on September 21, 2009 19:32:

Need font size control for menubar (and spacing control for lists)

Surprised that the menubar's properties panel doesn't include a font size control. Especially since the list control does have font sizing, and parking a list under the menubar is the way to simulate an opened menu.

While we're on that subject -- can we get some control over the vertical spacing between list items? By default there's an oddly large gap, and no way to tighten it up.

Michael Matti shared an idea in FlairBuilder on September 21, 2009 19:17:

Icons should support on-click events

Title pretty much covers it. Since icons by their very nature are click-to-interact screen elements, they really ought to provide built-in on-click actions. Had eight of them lined up as a toolbar on a master page, then discovered that I'd have to overlay eight little hotspots on top to get preview interactions to work.

Shouldn't need those extra steps.

Michael Matti replied on September 21, 2009 18:49 to the idea "Flairbuilder should allow the addition of custom icons" in FlairBuilder:

A followup to this item ... I've been a registered user for two weeks now, and one of my ongoing frustrations is the small subset of Silk icons that FlairBuilder provides. There are 1,000 icons in the full set, and I'd like to have either the full set built in to FB, or a way to supplement the icon library with the ones that were left out. Using the image component feels clumsy, since that doesn't let me include the extra icons with menus (except as images layered on top).

So, please keep this near the top of the to-do list ...

Michael Matti started following the idea "Flairbuilder should allow the addition of custom icons" in FlairBuilder.