den4b Forum

re.member

Member

Registered: 2011-02-05

Posts: 1

Countdown message GUI small suggestion

Hi. First things first: thank you very much for your efforts and great utilities. I had been looking for something like shutter for a long time. I had the old version for a while, but the latest version is just amazing; and didn't find it until recently. I had been using another little timer, has the same principle of presets and a lot of possible actions but it can only execute one task at a time. You actually did a huge leap from V2 to V3 in shutter. Congrats on that.

I have a couple of small suggestions:

1. I've read another topic kind of related (http://www.den4b.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=910). My guess is that Countdown could be either an event or an action: an event to be monitored, on an action to pause execution of other actions. Either way, I think it should have an option for the countdown to be visible (not only in balloons); something like the Message action (which I'm currently using as a countdown, bypassing the countdown event to execute a series of tasks but with the option of having the timer visible). So why not be able to use countdown in either event or action? This way you can start immediately a series of actions and countdowns between them even without monitoring any events.

2. Let countdown be a countdown and a message a message. The current message action works more like a countdown. It's great that it has a timer, yeah (and should keep it as an option), but it could also get a "static message" option, with: ok, cancel or dismiss, and optional snooze (5min, 10min, etc), so that it stays there until user intervention.

3. The countdown/message GUI: A suggestion for improvement. (completely a personal point of view)
Current message GUI loses it purpose because of Windows' fonts and buttons. You have to read it to get that its a countdown.

A few changes in font colors and sizes could make a huge impact on usability.

(buttons from bottom-left to upper-right: keep on top, pause/resume countdown, break action-open app, minimize to taskbar, minimize to tray, quit app)
for a countdown, a reverse progress bar works better
"message" and "remaining time" could be switched (location and size) for the message action.

Just my 2 cents to make an already amazing useful app better IMHO.
AMAZING work. Thanks again.
Best regards.