UserFriendly
 

Basically i feel that they need a drag and drop UI builder instead of this unfriendly WYSIWYG. get to a more user friendly level, like Macromedia's old flash builder with your element editing at the bottom and buttons and info in a side panel .
what im wanting to do is basically layout then edit and this ui builder doesn't accommodate that.
I feel alot more UI's would generate with this building layout due to the fact is easier to operate and cuts down on confusion and most importantly ....SAVES playtime.
Just Trying to figure out how to use the current builder is very time consuming and agrovating at times when it just won't do what you want.

We Need a basic screen that loads all the source windows like you do ingame where you can have a true WYSISWYG Type atmosphere with options to open and close each hud your working on {instead of the massive tab system} . with resize and remove options on a toolbar for the elements. anyone who has used Dreamweaver for building web pages can understand what im getting at. < TIME EFFICIENCY WITH THE SAME OUTCOME>

Then have basic click and drag element toolbar on the side where you can search the tree and drag it to the hud you have open. this cuts out alot of the BS that comes with all these "tabs with no real visual editing" you have to open and confusion of what is where and size you want that should be preselected to minimize visual workspace.I know there is alot of extra things that a program like this just won't do...thats why we have notepad right.

Look at other programs that edit visual user input and learn from there pro's and con's basically. what makes them good or what people don't like about them.
whats the use of making mistakes if we don;t learn from them.;)

I can agree that the UIBuilder could have more features, what maybe you could be more specific.

You can do quite a lot with the UIBuilder, and I use it probably 99% of the time.
Maybe if you have specifics of things you're trying to do, or figure out, some of us who've used the program for a while could gives some pointers or help :)

But as far as something like Dreamweaver intensive for a XML ui structure seems a bit overkill to develop /shrug

UIBuilder is actually pretty nice considering the size of the group of people that use it. A more 'drag and drop' system just really isn't warranted imo, it'd probably be much more effort to develop such a thing then it'd be worth for those that use it.


Besides, real power is in actual code, not WYSIWYG editors ;)

You kidding right? The UIbuilder is crap and full of bugs. Yes it has come a long way since the games release but it is still far from good. But then most of its issues is how the UI is actually implemented with XML. At this stage I do agree I don't think it would be worth any ones time to develop a new one for this game.

*shrug* Being able to multi-select things with the cursor/tree and edit lots of data at the same time is useful. being able to position things around, resize, etc. Seems very useful. Plus you can trigger some events with onshow and test out various code from within the builder.

I mean if we're talking window templates or pre-made crap, it seems more like silver platter, extra crap, which you could easily just make yourself and duplicate. So dunno.

But hey, ideas are good to throw around, and ya never know what could get implemented by simply suggesting and asking.

Yeah it has it's bugs, but it's better than nothing at all. It still lets folks that are not as familiar with actually editing the XML make relatively simple changes. It also lets you see the window tree organization and a rough idea of how something would look in-game.

It's not a polished tool, it's more of a development tool. It's nice that they let us have it, rather than keeping it inside; it's more of a bonus than a feature included in the game.

Making UIbuilder more consumer friendly might allow the average player to move some stuff around to where he wants it but it will not make mods better. For the people building the more advanced mods it's probably not going to do much anyway because less time is spent on doing layouts than on working around UIscript bugs.

In my opinion the hypothetical budget for an UIbuilder makeover would be better used for a makeover of the UI core (LUA is something that got mentioned a while ago, and I cannot post on a topic like this without mentioning the persisting lack of Unicode compatibility in current UIscript ;)). This would result in better mods for everybody.

I have been tinkering around with some software (liquid xml studio), that makes moving the elements around easier and less confusing, but its very expensive and aggravating, tired of looking at code getting a headace ill get back with you after i research a better way to go..

Ok, see you in a year again then. SCNR ;)

Hehe, I didn't notice the 2010 on the very first post... until I scrolled down and saw my post saying exactly what I would have said again now :D

You're certainly welcome to look at stuff like that, but given the way EQ2's UI works I doubt you'll find an easy WYSIWYG solution. The work to make something that would know all the foibles about how EQ2's UI parsing is done would be more work than trying to do things in code or UI Builder, hehe.