Google Summer of Code is over and I still didnt blogged about the new interface for Conduit I wrote. Well, going back to university and doing multiple things at once can really slow things down.

This shows the new UI with some conduits at the left
This shows the new UI with some conduits at the left

Ok, so this is not final but I think it’s an improvement over the old UI. The thing is, I was tired of owner-drawn widgets and I was tired of right-clicking things at the canvas (users didn’t even know that thing in the middle was the canvas). And the new UI gives me a reason to use all the work I did to rebuild the configuration system (see why dialogs was not enough?).

What I still don’t like about it, is that it’s hard to get an overview of the conduit. Sinks are usually hidden so you don’t even know they are there sometimes. I was thinking about adding a button to hide and show the configuration, but I think that is confusing and not HIG-friendly.

Another thing I’m unsure about is tabs. Everyone has tabs nowadays, do why not Conduit?

New UI with tabs
New UI with tabs

Hm, I don’t like that, it does look better but it’s rather confusing.

I do like design, but I’m not very good at it. Anyone interested in giving me some tips? Maybe someone could draw those Mac-looking mockups, that would be great!

Btw, thanks a lot John Carr and John Stowers for giving me the opportunity to work on this Summer of Code.