Feature Request: Shortcut key, menu and selection colour
Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2013 10:22 pm
VSO Video Converter is, by and large, one of the best pieces of conversion software out there. It is however let down by one or two little things. The problem I run into most frequently (nearly every time I use it) is that there is no (I think) support for shortcut keys. E.g., when selecting several videos, I have to click the Remove Selection button. In nearly every other part of Windows I would use the Delete key to perform the same action.
Likewise, the normal behaviour for context menus is to select something with a left click and perform an action from a menu using a right click. While I can select video files as normal, a right-click acts like a left-click. The expected Windows behaviour is that either I;
a) get a context menu or
b) nothing happens
That last one is occasionaly frustrating as it means that I'm no longer selecting what I originally had - and it's easy to miss and remove the now incomplete selected video files from the set.
This brings me to my last point - the UI selection colour. The colours for the different selection states, Selected, Active, Mouse Over and Unselected are very similar (sometimes identical) and difficult to distinguish.
Currently there are only 2 shades to indicate status, Active (bright) and Inactive (dark). Active however indicates 3 different states: Selected, Active and Mouse Over. You'll note from the attached screenshot that the last three items appear selected. However only two of them are. The last one remains highlighted because I ran the mouse over the list. There is no way for me to tell that any action I carry out on the selection *should* only happen for the middle two. In reality it actually removes all three. From experimenting it would seem the mere act of moving my mouse over an item selects it. This is not the expected selection behaviour used by every other part of the Windows system (and iOS, linux...).
Rather than two (very close) shades of grey, the various selection modes should be shaded to be more distinct. I propose the following tweaks;
a) Selected items are tinted by the system's Windows Text Highlight colour
b) The currently active selection (i.e., the last one you clicked) is indicated by changing the colour of the item border perhaps. Windows itself usually does this by drawing a dashed line around the item. Looks ugly though. The current web standard is to colour the border of the item with focus, e.g., like Chrome.
c) While highlighting an item when the mouse moves over it is fine, you need to make sure that you capture the WM_MOUSE_LEAVE message so that you can correctly clear the selection when the mouse leaves the item area.
Likewise, the normal behaviour for context menus is to select something with a left click and perform an action from a menu using a right click. While I can select video files as normal, a right-click acts like a left-click. The expected Windows behaviour is that either I;
a) get a context menu or
b) nothing happens
That last one is occasionaly frustrating as it means that I'm no longer selecting what I originally had - and it's easy to miss and remove the now incomplete selected video files from the set.
This brings me to my last point - the UI selection colour. The colours for the different selection states, Selected, Active, Mouse Over and Unselected are very similar (sometimes identical) and difficult to distinguish.
Currently there are only 2 shades to indicate status, Active (bright) and Inactive (dark). Active however indicates 3 different states: Selected, Active and Mouse Over. You'll note from the attached screenshot that the last three items appear selected. However only two of them are. The last one remains highlighted because I ran the mouse over the list. There is no way for me to tell that any action I carry out on the selection *should* only happen for the middle two. In reality it actually removes all three. From experimenting it would seem the mere act of moving my mouse over an item selects it. This is not the expected selection behaviour used by every other part of the Windows system (and iOS, linux...).
Rather than two (very close) shades of grey, the various selection modes should be shaded to be more distinct. I propose the following tweaks;
a) Selected items are tinted by the system's Windows Text Highlight colour
b) The currently active selection (i.e., the last one you clicked) is indicated by changing the colour of the item border perhaps. Windows itself usually does this by drawing a dashed line around the item. Looks ugly though. The current web standard is to colour the border of the item with focus, e.g., like Chrome.
c) While highlighting an item when the mouse moves over it is fine, you need to make sure that you capture the WM_MOUSE_LEAVE message so that you can correctly clear the selection when the mouse leaves the item area.