Webthoughts

Have you ever had one of those days where everything that could go wrong did? It seems that Mr. Murphy did not smile down upon me today.

Although I can't go into everything that went wrong today, I can say that it won't be stopping for at least another twelve hours. One of the things that went wrong is that both people that work the overnight shift called out sick today. That means that I get to help fill in the gaps. I'll be into work by 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. That'll make for a long day, mostly because I'll be dead tired most of the day. Joy.

Mr. Murphy, if you are listening, please just leave me alone tomorrow? It would be greatly appreciated.

I have been working an another update to Print Window. This new update will be more substantial than the previous two updates (the 4.0.1 and 4.0.2 updates were primarily bug fixes) as it will include some new features.

As part of implementing some of the new features, I've been considering some GUI modifications. I really like the current Print Window Print Options window as seen here:

It is compact, but not squished. It makes efficient use of the space available and logically lays things out. I believe, and users have told me, that things are generally where they would expect to find them (not universally true, but good enough).

The problem with the design of this window, however, is that it really doesn't allow for future "expansion" of the product—i.e. adding more functions (features). Although, for the most part, I wouldn't say that the GUI is crowded, there definitely isn't more room for more interface elements. This traces back to some design decisions made a long time ago that I am now having to figure out how to solve now.

This problem can be solved in a couple different ways:

• The window could be made bigger to provide more space for additional interface elements.
  
• Existing interface elements could be eliminated to make room for newer elements.
  
• The window design could be completely redone to reorganize elements and add new elements.

None of these solutions appeals to me. It's not that I'm not open to them. It's simply that there is a bit of familiarity with the current interface that I don't want to lose. The basic layout of the window and its controls has been basically the same since Print Window 3.0. Users have come to expect that familiarity to remain.

Although admittedly not the perfect analogy (as the products are completely different), I liken it somewhat to what Microsoft did with Office 2007 on the Windows side of things. Word, for example, had used the same basic interface design since Word 6.0 back in the early 90s. Through the next decade and more, the Office applications looked basically the same. Sure, there were updates and slight tweaks, but the toolbars, dialogs and menus maintained the same basic layout. Users were used to finding certain controls in certain places. Then, when Office 2007 came along, everything was different. Gone were the familiar toolbars and menus, replaced with a brand new thing called the Ribbon that didn't look anything like what came before. Users were confused and felt lost.

That's similar, although on a much larger scale, to what I don't want to see happen with Print Window. I'm not saying that Microsoft was wrong to do what it did with Office, but such a jarring transition caused a lot of confusion. I don't want a lot of confusion with Print Window.

So, that leads me back to the three options as I see them. Once single solution probably isn't the best answer, so instead, it will have to be a combination of two or possibly all three of those options. The only certain thing is that some sort of change is going to have to be made. I am taking the time to reexamine each grouping of controls in the Print Options window to consider how they could be redesigned to allow what needs to be done, and yet still maintain the familiarity that I'd like to maintain.

For example, consider the Icons group on the "Headers & Icons" tab:

There will be a new feature in the next version of Print Window that will affect this grouping of controls in that an additional checkbox control will need to be added along with the "Size:" slider and "Name Placement:" popup menu. I won't go into what the new feature will be just yet other than it is a simple toggle option (either on or off), so the most likely control to be used is a checkbox.

The box you see in the picture above is really all the space available for that grouping because of the size of the window and the group of controls that are on the same tab panel. There is obviously no more room to add another control, and yet one must be added.

Right now, I'm leaning toward separating the "Headers" and "Icons" functions of that particular tab panel into two separate panels. This will give me a lot more space to work with, but adds a bit of complexity to the window design and also messes with the familiarity aspect. But, I think it might not be too bad a tradeoff.

Anyone have any suggestions of how they would handle this situation? Do you think it's okay for a wholesale redesign? Is the "familiarity" concept important to you? I'd love to hear how you think this should be handled!