Topic: The official Bitcoin client looks awful - page 3. (Read 4326 times)
Hey that's much nicer, great improvement!
https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15276.0
Tooltips etc are already implemented, there are bars for the number of connections, and on initial block download it shows a progress bar.
Number of confirmations is not visible anymore (it shows a clock or tick icon). Filtering is easier using an excel-like filter row, so there are no longer the weird tabs.
Pull requests are welcome.
Tooltips etc are already implemented, there are bars for the number of connections, and on initial block download it shows a progress bar.
Number of confirmations is not visible anymore (it shows a clock or tick icon). Filtering is easier using an excel-like filter row, so there are no longer the weird tabs.
Pull requests are welcome.
I understand that this may go down like a lead balloon, but please read it anyway because I think it's important.
I'm a programmer rather than a designer, but I can tell a good looking app from one that was made by programmers alone. The official Bitcoin client is one of the latter. For the system to take off we need a good looking client.
How do we make a good looking client?
Well, first of all we need to decide what's wrong with the official client. The main thing I can see with it is that it's full of technical jargon that means nothing to a first time user before they've read the manual, and we all know that users never read the manual. It lacks tooltips to explain the jargon, visual cues and metaphors to show what the things mean. It also just looks ugly, there are no graphics other than the send and address book icons (which are actually reasonably nice and easy to understand IMO)
What does "134,184 blocks" mean to a user? A time-based approach would be more informative. Tell them how out-of-date they are, not some arbitrary number that they don't understand!
What does "2 connections" mean to a user? Showing this as a red to green bar, with a tooltip giving suggestions of how to get better connectivity would be much more user-friendly.
IMO the list of transactions shouldn't even be visible on the first page, it's distracting and noisy. What does "50 confirmations" mean to a user anyway? Offer them some advice here, set a threshold for "confirmed" and have the UI show a confirmed balance and an unconfirmed balance. Advise them how much effort someone would need to put in to steal their BTC based on the number of confirmations.
There are probably other things too, but I personally think the client needs some love from a real UI designer, followed by proper user-testing by people's grandparents.
I'm a programmer rather than a designer, but I can tell a good looking app from one that was made by programmers alone. The official Bitcoin client is one of the latter. For the system to take off we need a good looking client.
How do we make a good looking client?
Well, first of all we need to decide what's wrong with the official client. The main thing I can see with it is that it's full of technical jargon that means nothing to a first time user before they've read the manual, and we all know that users never read the manual. It lacks tooltips to explain the jargon, visual cues and metaphors to show what the things mean. It also just looks ugly, there are no graphics other than the send and address book icons (which are actually reasonably nice and easy to understand IMO)
What does "134,184 blocks" mean to a user? A time-based approach would be more informative. Tell them how out-of-date they are, not some arbitrary number that they don't understand!
What does "2 connections" mean to a user? Showing this as a red to green bar, with a tooltip giving suggestions of how to get better connectivity would be much more user-friendly.
IMO the list of transactions shouldn't even be visible on the first page, it's distracting and noisy. What does "50 confirmations" mean to a user anyway? Offer them some advice here, set a threshold for "confirmed" and have the UI show a confirmed balance and an unconfirmed balance. Advise them how much effort someone would need to put in to steal their BTC based on the number of confirmations.
There are probably other things too, but I personally think the client needs some love from a real UI designer, followed by proper user-testing by people's grandparents.
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