[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7127) [FS] Screen design

[Morgan Jones <morgan.jones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ok here's a new hastily thrown together layout idea.

Please note that I haven't covered everything; I just wanted to see if
this idea was worth pursuing or not.

As I said before having as much of the map visible as possible is IMO
essential to a good layout.  I was also thinking about how it's
frustrating that if you want to find a city or unit you have to open
the find city, city or military report, select the unit, click popup
or centre or whatever and then close the dialog to see the map again
(well unless you've got a massive screen resolution).

So my proposal is that the main GUI has different pages that you can
switch to and from without ever opening anything over top of the
mapview.

I've attached a picture of the GUI as it might appear on both the 'Map'
page (minimap, current unit, etc) and a hastily put together idea of
the 'Cities' page (i.e. the City Report).

Not all reports or dialogs will work well like this, the city popup,
the help menu, and the spaceship screen spring to mind and these would
still have to be opened over the map.  Ideally though these would also
be part of one big dialog/screen each on seperate page.  Some like the
city popup page, would have subpages.

The overall effect of this is that there would be only three parts to
the entire screen:

- The main GUI (see picture), which would be present all the time.
  
- The mapview itself

- A large GUI that appears on top of or replaces the mapview when
called.

Is this idea worth pursuing?

     -Morgan

Layout3.png
Description: PNG image