GUI problem with the main (not the VM) window

[WhatHaveYou]

There's an inclination to try to run a VM by clicking on the 'preview' pane - especially when ( because the VM is powered-off]) it just says (in my case) 'Win 10 Home'). That attempt will be unsuccessful, of course.

[socratis]

There's an inclination to try to run a VM by clicking on the 'preview' pane

Fight your urges! You're strong!

Joking aside, what are you looking for here? A clickable preview that starts the VM?

[WhatHaveYou]

The point is this. Each of the left of the main VBox window and the right of the VBox window contain a large icon representing one's virtual machine. Clicking the large icon on the left starts the virtual machine. Clicking the large icon on the right does not. This will engender confusion on the part of the inattentive user.

If you leave things as they are, many an inattentive user will suffer this small quantity of confusion. If you change things such that the confusion is no longer apt to be generated, then so doing will require a single expenditure of a small or moderate amount of work from some developer(s). I say the utilitarian calculations point to the conclusion: change the UI. How? Well, I don't know, make the non-clickable side look less clickable, perhaps by making it more like a preview (even when there is no real preview to be had, i.e. when the VM in question is not running).

In short: human happiness is best served if the user need not fight an urge. I might add that the alternative may be a slippery slope towards the 'but the plans were on clear display, at the bottom of the stairs, in the locked filing cabinet' school of thought.

[socratis]

Each of the left of the main VBox window

You are referring to the VM listing, right?

Clicking the large icon on the left starts the virtual machine

Slight correction, double-clicking.

Clicking the large icon on the right does not

Because one is a control, the other is an indicator. One that doesn't even the icon of the VM, only a title that says "Preview", and the title of the VM in a black background. It could have the icon (not a bad idea), but the "Preview" is a giver.

perhaps by making it more like a preview

How? What do you have in mind?

I'm not sure how familiar you are with VirtualBox or not, since you joined the forums just yesterday, and you already have 14 posts, all of them in the Beta area! Impressive, but begs the question of your familiarity with VirtualBox, and why straight into the beta.

It's good practice in any GUI design to have both new and seasoned users to test the concepts of the GUI. I remember at a project that we were working, we "used" fiancees, wives and other family members that were unfamiliar with the details of what we were working on, to test the GUI while we were monitoring their reactions. That, in conjunction with some of our power/alpha users.

[WhatHaveYou]

By 'perhaps by making it [the part of the window depicting what it calls a preview] more like a preview' I meant (sorry if I was not clear): making the image look like some sort of glimpse or screenshot of what the VM would like when it - the VM - is running. At present, what I see is the following, when the VM is running

preview.png (23.02 KiB) Viewed 2897 times

And that's fine: one can tell at a glance that it is indeed a 'preview'. Yet, when the VM is not running, I see this:

newPreview.png (19.06 KiB) Viewed 2897 times

This is much less evidently a preview - especially when one sees it in the context of the whole Vbox window. Yes, there is a label that says 'preview' but . . please see my earlier comment about making things very evident. Now admittedly Vbox is a qt application and I'm running it on a computer that mainly uses gtk, and also - because of that - I have customised my qt theming somewhat. So, possibly the preview part of the window does not look exactly as you indended. Yet if the image I inserted immediately above is pretty much what was intended, then I suggest either (1) finding a way to alter the graphic so as to better suggest the idea of a preview, and/or making the 'word' preview stand out more, or apply more clearly to the image below it.

On my familiarity with Virtual Box, etc.: I've used it for two years. I have dived into the beta because (i) I see betas as a chance to make frustratingly buggy Linux programs turn out better, (ii) Virtual Box 5.2 had a problem with screen resolution on my HiDPI screen, and I really wanted that fixed. It does indeed seem to have been fixed (which is why I'll content myself with being vague in my description of it it here).