[Agathorn]

Thought i'd share a quick screen of my current work in progress on Stat Strips, and explain the thinking behind the design.

The biggest problem with stat strips is they are custom windows (usually anyway, there is a way to do them using existing windows but for reasons i'll explain later it has its own problems). Because of that they don't get displayed automaticly by the game upon login and can't be tied to a key shortcut (other than wasting a hotkey slot). Now it IS possible to make a stat strip and either attach it to a standard window so it shows up on login, or have a standard window push it up upon login. But the problem with this is it typically works best if you only have 1 maybe 2 stat strips. Which in my mind presents another problem...Not everyone wants every stat on a strip. One important aspect of Serenity is flexability. I'm not trying to knock any of the existing stat strips, but most of them are pretty much all or nothing. I didin't want that. In the end my problem was thus: How do I provide an easy mechanism to show/hide stat strips yet at the same time break them up into chunks of stats so that individual chunks can be either on or off.

This is what I came up with and I don't know if anyone will like it or not, but so far it seems to be working well for me in trials. The startbutton has been added to so that it can server as a sort of control panel for the stat strips. On the top right of the startbutton window is a small button which expands or contracts the button to show/hide this control panel. Inside the control panel is a series of checkboxes to allow quick and easy toggling of the various stat panels. The panels themselves have been broken down into small chunks so you can only show the ones you want. The stat panels have two modes to them, horizontal and vertical arrangement. The small button in the upper right toggles the two layouts. In horizontal layout they all have the same height so they arrange nicely. In vertical layout they all have the same width again so they arrange nicely.

End result is that when you first log in, it will only take you a couple mouse clicks to get all the panels you want up and ready to go then your set. It also gives you the ability to add or remove certain stat strips during your play session as circumstances dictate. Something that auto show stat strips could never give you.

Anyway as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go.. a quickie shot from uibuilder. The stat strips are shown in horizontal layout and the startbutton control panel is open. When closed the startbutton is no bigger than previously seen with the 4 shortcut buttons.