UI Rework Thoughts

[Iridium-IO]

Currently working on an alternative UI, I plan to have both the original and the new one feature-equivalent so that it's a personal preference for users, the new one will just have more eye-candy.
Any suggestions would be welcome :)

[theChaosCoder]

Looks nice. You could fill that bottom white space with a listbox to support multiple folders :D

[AMZMA]

don't you think white bg is looks too bright?

[smallg0at]

the “folder" textbox should have width right to the "Analyze Folder" button.
the info button should be more visualizing such as an icon.
the "analyze" and the "compress" option should be placed together with "analyze" smaller.
also, having a bigger font is a good idea.

[Iridium-IO]

Whoops, forgot to keep track of this page.

@theChaosCoder if that doesn't prove to be too hard, that's the idea ;)

@AMZMA White is classy, but I plan on having a dark theme at some stage too

@smallg0at:

1. I tried that, it looked a bit jarring.
2. already done ;)
3. I want to keep analyze and compress separate, way too many users have PM'd me because they've hit one instead of the other, mainly because there's no localisation support for the UI yet. I'd rather people accidentally hit analyze than hit compact.
4. Appreciate the suggestion, but the font sizes are pretty standard throughout Windows so they're fine I think

[Iridium-IO]

• If you're wondering why there's two lots of data, that's future-planning for multi-folder selection so that on the left (the white) you'll see the overall stats for all the folders, then in the sidebar you'll see a breakdown based on which folder you want to view specific details for.

[theChaosCoder]

Estimated compressed = Data from Wiki? Or how do you plan to estimate compression?

[Iridium-IO]

@theChaosCoder
It's using data from the Wiki, capturing the ratios and applying that to your own folder size - this feature is already in the release version, give it a go :)

Here's an example:

Basically I've got the main Wiki which removes duplicates that are too similar in value, but if you have a look in the Wiki folder in the source, it's got more data points for each so that they can be used to generate the estimates.
Also the ? marks are because I migrated that information to the sidebar but haven't update the flyout UI yet

[Iridium-IO]

If anyone wants to test it out:
CompactGUI.zip
The core functionality should still be stable, but the UI will have bugs.

[theChaosCoder]

My Feedback:

• Could you use "click on editbox" (or whatever the name for it is) instead of "click on text" for folder selection?

• Estimated size reduction in % would be nice.

• I would als add the following to: "! Game has issues" -> compression not recommended see Link (to wiki) [or something like that]

• Formatting could be improved
  

[SpoonOfDoom]

I have two quality of life suggestions, although they're not purely UI and require some more under the hood changes.

First, what I would love is if CompactGUI kept track of which folders it has already compressed and could display it somehow, maybe even inside the "Select Target Folder" picker. When I look at my Games directory for instance, unless I keep note myself I don't know which ones I've already compressed without analyzing the folders one by one again.

Secondly, I think it'd be nice if I could send my compression results to the Google Form somehow from within the app. I'd like to share my data, but most of the time I'm too lazy (or simply forget) to type in everything manually.

[Iridium-IO]

@SpoonOfDoom
I've reached the point in the year where university exams are a bit too close for comfort - New features will have to wait until December for now.
But your two requests are a bit tough:

1. Steam updates will undo compression on the files that get changed, so a tracked list of compressed folders wouldn't be accurate after a few days. I'll be working on a feature to custom-mark folders in Explorer that have been compressed though (similar to the blue arrows that show if you compress a folder in Windows) which should sort of help with your query.
2. Doing this would be a massive headache for me unfortunately - I still have to trawl through the lists of submitted data to remove duplicates and troll submissions, and it would suck having to filter out random folders that people can automatically submit. It's just too much grief.

[SpoonOfDoom]

Yeah, I thought it might be a bit out of scope for this. Thanks for considering though.

[TjReiny]

Fix: current usage of the files compressed files + systemmetadata should Show up.