V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

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V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by ant »

These new icons take up too much space compared to the old designs in my Debian oldstable/Jessie and Mac OS X/Sierra v10.12.6. They need to be smaller like the old icons. :(
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by socratis »

I don't remember anyone complaining about that during the beta period. Not a single one. I'm not saying that your opinion doesn't count, simply that no one else seemed to be bothered by that...
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by ant »

Wow. Were there many testers? I avoid the prereleases.
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Reason: Removed unnecessary verbatim quote of the whole previous message.
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by socratis »

I have no clue. And frankly I don't think that even the developers have a clue how many active testers were out there. They do know the number of downloads, but that's as far as they can go, since there's no "registration" or anything like that. The beta was not only open to everyone, at some point it was the one that was promoted in the front page of the site.

As far as the quality of the beta, I've been beta testing software since software was invented ;). The VirtualBox ones are some of the most solid betas I've ever encountered.
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by ant »

Ah. I don't mind prereleases if they fix specific issues I have in the stable releases, but I mostly avoid them. It gets annoying to keep upgrading all the time with prereleases since stable releases are frequent enough (just did v5.1.30 on Monday!) on my multiple machines (guests and hosts). So far, this version seems stable enough ignoring the comestic issues. Hopefully, these comestic issues can be improved and fixed later on. Even my online friend doesn't like its redesign in IRC when he upgraded and tried v5.2: 2:54PM <grifter> VBox 5.2.0 GUI dosen't looks smooth and polished like 5.1.x, blocky. :(
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by grifter188 »

I'll get used to the new gui, I guess not much has changed. But it doesn't look as nice and polished. To me it looks cheaply put together. Having the top button bar, with machine tools and global tools on the far right. They look out of place, and in my opinion unbalance the look and feel.
I'll get used to it, I'll have to.
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by socratis »

socratis wrote:I don't remember anyone complaining about that during the beta period. Not a single one.
Well, actually I remembered that there was a discussion about the UI, not about the icons, but more about the overall new layout and the logic behind it. See UI inconsistency in the "VirtualBox Beta / Release Candidate Feedback" section of the forums.

I had started working on a mock up for the UI, never finished it and it actually got shot down before it had a chance of taking off by a couple of developers ;) . I'm going to try and find some time to finish it and upload it, just for the kicks of it...
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by ant »

Yeah the usability seems weird too like for snapshots. :(
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by thorstenhirsch »

Oh come on, how can one not see the bugs in these new UI components? They are inconsistent to the rest of the UI, provide multiple ways to do the same thing (which is really not necessary here) while making the interaction more complicated for both ways.

Let's take a closer look at the menu now. First the old / left side:

Code: Select all

[New] [Settings] [Discard] [Show] <-- consistent buttons (clickable)
Now the new / right side:

Code: Select all

                   button group --> (Snapshots[x]|Details[x]) {MachineTools} {GlobalTools} <-- drop down menus
Where should I begin?
- the Snapshots|Details button group is not always there (why? or: why is this button group there at all?)
- you can activate each button separately (why?) in the drop down menu of machine tools, but you can't deactivate it there (inconsistency)
- you can deactivate it by clicking on its [x], which is part of the clickable area that you are supposed to click in order to switch between Snapshots and Details (not a common UI component, not intuitive & error-prone)

The solution is so simple: since there are only 2 Elements in each of the 2 drop down menus, there is no need to group them. Just put 4 buttons in the menu bar to switch between Machine Snapshots, Machine Details, Virtual Media Manager and Host Network Manager. And there's no need for these button groups with an [x] in each button!

edit: Even worse than the button groups is a "hidden" feature of the UI. After clicking on the [x] in both buttons of the button group (to make them disappear), new content is shown: there's a lot of explaining text available both for the global menu and the machine menu. But you can neither select these pages in the drop down menus nor in the button groups. So this content has no title. There doesn't seem to be a right way to get to this content, it only appears like "hey, show me the global menu, but don't show me any of the 2 submenus available in the global menu".
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by ant »

Yes, usability and design bugs. Definitely bugs.
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by socratis »

Please learn the definition of the word "bug" before you characterize something as "bug". A bug is something that is supposed to work in a certain way "A", and it advertised/documented to work in way "A", but it actually does *not*. That's a "bug".

Usability and design issues/philosophical differences, those are not bugs. Those are differences in opinion.

I'm not saying that I'm crazy about the new layout. I'm not saying that I really like it. So much so, that as I said, it wasn't particularly "loved". But you've got to know where they might be going with that design.

Since we're at it, and this is a users' forum, wouldn't it be fun if you made your own "mockup" of what the UI it should look like? Nothing crazy, just a simple one. And small, let's not overload the server with multi-MB attachments.

Let's have a contest! :)
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Reiner Baumwoll
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Re: V5.2's Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)...

Post by Reiner Baumwoll »

-hi guys,

Wonder if Oracle team read these postings...(?)

Sorry for not being part of "beta testers". Just a humble user since Innotek.
Virtualbox is great.

But, this new look is horrible. Who asked for it? I can live with super-sized ugly buttons. This is just fun.

But, why o why did You switch the buttons "restore" and "delete" snapshots??? What did You think of? Beyond reason.

shaking my head really hard,
regards
/reiner
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virtualbox 5.2.6 ugly look

Post by john.recy »

Hello,

I recently upgraded to virtualbox 5.2.6 on ubuntu, and the buttons now look weirdly big (see picture). Is there any way around this?
link to the image:
ibb.co/giq5RS
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Re: virtualbox 5.2.6 ugly look

Post by socratis »

john.recy wrote:Is there any way around this?
No. That's the new look going forward.

For future reference, 1) you need to crop the images to the Region Of Interest, and 2) please attach the image locally in your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form). Not a lot of people will go to 3rd party sites.

Image
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Re: virtualbox 5.2.6 ugly look

Post by john.recy »

Thanks for your answer. I hope though that this is a bug that is known and that it will be fixed... Is it due to a recent modification of the GUI library?

(I couldn't attach the image, it was apparently too big, sorry about that - maybe by cropping it further it would have met the requirements).
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