InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by Pierre_Admin on 2020/10/24 17:58

Hi IQ Users !

Following a recent discussion on Outliner Software (here)

[quote]

one of “IQ”‘s main problems, together with its abysmal GUI / ergonomics

[/quote]

and other comments from a significant number of users, I'd like to hear suggestions of how some aspects of the UI could be improved, while of course, keeping the soul of what IQ is, a powerful and flexible information management tool

I have my own list of areas that need improvements, but before influencing anyone, I'd like to hear from you, regular IQ users.

So... feel free to comment on this thread and propose things

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Comments

Can't see what he's on about. If you want feature-rich, you have to put all the features somewhere in the GUI and I doubt you've done a worse job of it than any comparable software. Most stuff can be customized anyway.

The only two specific things that currently still bother me are:

1. Too much drag and drop is necessaray for my taste as there is no efficient way to just move items from one grid to a specific position inside another with an Explorer-like cut and paste command, see infoqubeim.com/drupal5/ and the older thread it references.

2. Items' associated events in the calendar should be accessible directy through Live Search if possible, rather than having to go via the Search grid first to access them.

If you're considering a major revamp of the UI as you seem to be, I can only draw an analogy to MS Office. Back in the day, I loved my vertical toolbar with large command icons that I could place at the left of e.g. the Winword window. When the customizable, dragable toolbar was superseded by the Ribbon, I was pretty annoyed as that made it much harder to get at my most frequently used commands and greatly reduced the vertical screen space available for acutally editing text. IMO, the ribbon may have it's advantages for casual users, but is a waste of space and time for accomplshed daily users of the software.

So larger icons would be nice, plus the ability to have a vertical toolbar for commands. I undertook to create larger icons for IQ at one point but gave up when I realized there was no way I could try them out inside the UI on my own, i.e. a Resoure Hacker-type program cannot be used to play with IQ's UI.

[quote=LeftEccoForIQ]

[/quote]

Being possible only to drag and drop for moving items around slows down my workflow using IQ.

Some suggestions have been discussed. One of the possibilities is to extend "move" to marked items.

So, the same way you can add marked items throughout grids, you could alternatively move them.

I agree with Left. I really can't think of major issues to address. I sometimes get frustrated trying to locate a command in the pulldown menus but that's only because it's a powerful program with a lot of commands to organize (a good thing).

I wonder if it somehow got tagged with this from the early days of development. Once something gets labeled on forums, it often gets carried forward even when it no longer applies.

Maybe they are referring to style themes where you can change color schemes etc. Having that would be kind of nice. Not a big deal for me but some people really want that.

Wayne

I think some people are just overwhelmed with the vast variety of ways of building and looking at an IQ Database.

I do think that a "filter builder" would be quite useful, that would mostly dispense with the need to enter the "right" filter text in the Source Filter edit box. I think this would be a big "ergonomics" improvement. Something like the following, but including tags also:

+1 for a filter builder! It's not the whole issue, but it would be helpful.

Plus one from me, too. If the filter sets could be named and saved, it would reduce the need to create single-purpose grids (I think).

Wayne

I agree that a filter builder would be helpful. Just another feature to add to an already feature rich environment.

I sometimes have the experience of hunting around for a command which I know exists but I haven't used for a while. All the frequently used commands find their way onto toolbars so they are more readily available.

I think the main problem is that the newcomer (and people who just want to use the program so they can write a review of it) feel overwhelmed by the density of the user interface.

[quote=Paul_J_Miller]

I sometimes have the experience of hunting around for a command which I know exists but I haven't used for a while.

[/quote]

Indeed, IQ has quite a few commands.

A tool to find commands is the Omnibox: 1. Omnibox

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Are there any command searching tricks? It works well if you you have an idea of what you're looking for, for example "copy", but there doesn't seem to be a way to show all the commands, or all commands starting with the letter a, or things like that.

Good point Keith !

In v116g:

New: Omnibox: Entering a single character now list items starting with that character (favorites, views and commands)

HTH !

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

As far as access to commands that can be activated from the keyboard, it is possible for a user to create their own supplementary interface by using any of several programs, such as Radial Menu (the one by "Learning One"), Quick Access Popup, Lintalist, etc. The ones I have listed would require some rudimentary knowledge of Autohotkey (mainly just of the Send command) to use for this purpose. With much greater knowledge of ahk, one could completely design one's own interface, but I don't think it's necessary to go that far. There would be an obstacle in sharing one's personal IQ interface with others, in that the keyboard access for a command varies depending on how one has customized the IQ menus. It still might be easier than trying to share how one has customized the IQ menus by IQ's own flexible system of customization. I don't have a personal IQ interface yet, but probably will eventually, but I'm not a good designer. Perhaps ultimately some other user with good insight into useability will do so. The point is that various such interfaces could be designed by users, and I imagine many users with a personal IQ interface would be happy to share theirs.

It's a bit weird that Find functions are a bit scattered in different places in the menus:

Edit > Find and Replace

View > Views > Live Search

View > Panes > Advanced Search

Grid > Other > Auto Search

2. I think there are some keyboard shortcuts that have no GUI alternative. For example, in live-search you press Ctrl+Shift to see more than the first line of an item value. But the live-search GUI itself contains no method or indicator to do this so far as I know. But I realize the compact display may not permit it conveniently.

3. I've always wished that when Grid Auto-Search or Column Filter is activated, all occurrences of the search/filter text would be simultaneously highlighted, so that the hits could be more readily located.

Respectfully, geeks and engineers are the last two groups you want to look to for on advice on a UI

The poster in that forum is correct. In the case of IQ I am forgiving, because:

1. It's a power users tool and there is nothing else remotely like it. However the fact that there is nothing else remotely like it, yet it still has less market share than many inferior products, is largely in part because of the UI.

2. With effort, it can be customized to some extent have a better UI.

The first issue that IQ needs to address if you want to improve the UI is to create a good core navigation structure. Right now it has none, and that is why so many people feel lost when they try it. Below is a fairly typical example, and I'm choosing it only because it's a fairly powerful program so it's a *little* close to an apples to apples comparison. Of course IQ is still 10x more powerful, but there really isn't a good apple to apple comparison I can think of.

Here is what I have done with IQ to give it some structure (the white area had some personal info and was cut out, hence the gap):

So structure is the first part that needs to be improved. That doesn't mean all users need to use that structure, but it needs to have a default structure.

Once you get a core structure done, we can proceed to phase 2 :-). UX is part of what I do and I am happy to help if you think it worthwhile. BTW, this is why I asked you on FB a long time ago how locked in you are to the component you use for the UI, so I could understand how far you could veer from the current UI. I cannot remember the name of that component.

I think it would be great to have a sidebar - it could be switched easily and quickly between different IQ panes (properties, tags, advanced search, perhaps other things like tabs, document pane, home page) by a simple dropdown control. This could conserve precious space. Firefox has a sidebar like this as shown below. David's Omnifocus screenshot also shows a somewhat different type of easily switchable sidebar.

[quote=jimspoon]

[/quote]

I agree Jim. IMO here are the things a sidebar should do:

- Provide access to grids and it should be automatic requiring no work on the part of the user. When a user creates a grid they should be prompted to assign it to a category, and then it should appear in the sidebar under that category. Categories should be collapsible.

- Tags should also be in the sidebar (and collapsible)

- There should be a section at the top called favorites that could link to favorite items or grids.

I believe the 3 items above should be shown together in one unified view.

I think it's important to keep it a clean view and not try to do everything. There could be an optional drop-down or similar to get to other things such as properties, tho I am not sure those need to be shown in the sidebar.

The sidebar should also not have to be created, as required right now for a home pane. It should simply be locked in as a UI element, and it should be able to be hidden with a hamburger icon on the upper left.

Hi All !

I like the idea of the sidebar. Right now, the only UI with something resembling a sidebar is the Calendar.

It could have a dropdown to show one of:

Grids, arranged in a hierarchy with categories. Possibility to include grid sub-views
Favorites
Tags
History
Search (mini Live-search)
Today's (events, todos, etc)

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Another idea:

With the increasing number of options, I think a search / filter box on the options dialog would be very useful.

It supports Search as you type... Press F3 to find next match

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Lol, sorry!

I didn't know that. It's not obvious to just start typing. Once you know it, if you can remember it, that does work well if you know what you're looking for..

I do think there is a lot to be said for a simple find box, with a nagivate section to quickly see everything. (example from ultraedit)

However,

In v116h:

New: Options dialog: Filter-as-you-type to help find settings

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Another thing:

Would it be possible to do the 'Grid Auto-Search' from a toolbar box to have more visual feedback? While the current 'Ctrl-F3, then type blindly' approach does work, I find I don't like using it. On top of the visual reassurance, you'd also be able to re-use previous searches from the toolbar box for other grids if implemented. Also, a 'highlight all occurrences in grid' toggle button near the box would be very welcome for me.

Maybe in-grid search directly from the Omnibox (that would make it more 'omni' as well, I guess...) would be the best way to go, triggered when pressing something like Ctrl-Enter rather than Enter for full search. Maybe add a 'quick search' checkbox or button next to the Omnibox to enable quick search via a mouse-click also.

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

I like the idea of the sidebar. Right now, the only UI with something resembling a sidebar is the Calendar.

It could have a dropdown to show one of:

Grids, arranged in a hierarchy with categories. Possibility to include grid sub-views
Favorites
Tags
History
Search (mini Live-search)
Today's (events, todos, etc)

[/quote]

+1 Sounds great.

I also suggest adding on the sidebar the "Layout" options.

Currently, in the default IQ, "Layout" lives as a sub-menu of the "View" menu.

I customized my IQ adding "Layout" as a main menu.

Alternatively, I'd suggest that a "Layout" icon be added to the standard toolbar.

"Layout" is so powerful, allowing the user to have variations of the UI according their needs and purposes.

I still believe there should be an indication in the grid when an item contains additional text that is not shown in the grid (e.g. the first handful of lines may be shown but the item may have two pages or more of text). In those cases, there's always a risk of accidental deletion. But maybe it's too hard to determine just how much text appears in the grid interface (scaling, font size etc.)? In that case, maybe items with a lot of text in the item field (say, more than 200 words) should be flagged on principle in the grid. I seem to remember you stating, Pierre, that having a lot of text in the item field may cause problems.

Hi,

Would like to propose a more verbose view in the Grid (as an option), where the item column shows several other data ie thumbnail of first image from document pane (if available), truncated text from document pane and also the tags. For me the thumbnails give a good visual cue what the item is about. The verbose view should be on all visible rows (I'm only drawing on one line item)

I like LeftEccoforIQ's suggestion for a box for in-grid quick/auto search.

I really liked what EccoExt provided for this - a combo box directly above the grid, where you could type in your search text. There were small "Filter" and "Hilite" toggle buttons. You can have neither button on, the Filter button on, the Hilite button on, or both. In the example below, I have both buttons toggled on. So only items with the text "tooltip" are shown (with context parents), and the word "Tooltip" is highlighted.

The hilite toggle was particularly useful for visually locating the search text within longer item text, so I could very quickly determine the relevance of each item.

Very simple and intuitive!! I think this would be a great improvement to the UI.

In the example below, the yellow highlight on yellow background isn't so good, so the highlight color should be customizable.

EccoExt was my inspiration also...

If you do Ctrl+Shift+G and enter keyword(s), a bright yellow filter bar appears at the bottom of the grid. You can type in this bar and the grid will filter

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

If you do Ctrl+Shift+G and enter keyword(s), a bright yellow filter bar appears at the bottom of the grid. You can type in this bar and the grid will filter

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[/quote]

If the filter text is in a hidden subitem, the parents are not expanded to show the subitem with the filter text. Would it make sense to expand the parents to show the subitem on application of the filter?

IQ now loads hidden items so these should show. Just ensure Grid auto-updates is set to true (manage grids)

[edit] I see what you mean, I'll expand parent items [/edit]

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Not so much a major revamp, as a usability improvement: I'd like the Field Properties dialog to have a slightly different layout where there is more space for important information:

ID column a bit wider to see the number
Name colmnn a lot wider to read the name
# items column a lot narrower because it is too wide for the information that it contains
When I increase the width of the dialog box, the name column gets wider, not the # items column
the side panel on the right resizable to become wider, so I have more space for editing row equations and conditional formats

Thank you

Cyganet, try dragging the border line between the column headers. I can resize the ID, name, type, and # columns.

Hi jimspoon, I do that already every time I open the dialog box. But it keeps reverting to this layout, which isn't useful:

Doing this dozens of times gets old, and I'd rather be working on my database than fiddling with the interface.
That's why I would like the default column widths to be adjusted, or for my adjusted column widths to be saved.

I'm preparing an update centered on minor UI issues, I'll include a fix so column widths are saved

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer