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by johnday 1534 days ago
Well done, seems like a cool project!

A couple of comments right out of the gate on the UX/UI:

- Why is the place where you create and browse projects called the "package manager"? I opened that expecting to find plug-ins or similar. (Might just be a language barrier issue.) "Projects view" or similar would be a better term.

- The window-centric design aesthetic is quite unwelcoming to new users, especially if you have to start by opening some specific subset of the windows. Prefer some automated layouts, and preferably some kind of way to snap windows into panels photoshop-style.

- If you are going to stick with a windows-first aesthetic, it's important that those windows behave as ergonomically as possible. For example, if I click within a window, that window should come to the front if multiple windows overlap.

Best of luck with continued development!

1 comments

Thank you so much for your feedback. Let me make some observations: The "package manager" (https://tilepieces.net/documentation/panels/package-manager....) is not only used for projects, but also to create / load / export components (https://tilepieces.net/documentation/data-structures/compone...), and to set the global properties of the application. So I think "Package Manager" is more appropriate than "Projects view".

As for the windows (I think you talk about panels -> https://tilepieces.net/documentation/UI/panels.html) they can be set right, left, above, below (they are fixed below 1024px). They are certainly a bit .. rough/raw/sketched i think you could say... as everything to the UI, but at the moment I think the important thing is that they work.

The third point you are referring to is a bug! I swear it worked until yesterday :)!

> The "package manager" (https://tilepieces.net/documentation/panels/package-manager....) is not only used for projects, but also to create / load / export components (https://tilepieces.net/documentation/data-structures/compone...), and to set the global properties of the application.

Is there a reason to have that functionality exist in the same view? It feels like the benefit of a window ("panel") based UI is that you can dedicate each group of functions to one window and not need to combine different jobs into the same panel.

Because projects and components go together. After creating a project, you can use components in its HTML pages. So I think it's best to put them together. You can find pre-made components in this repository https://github.com/tilepieces/component-examples/ Where possible, I try to put the related features in one panel, as too many panels can be confusing (even in the developer's mind!). Anyway, if you have ideas for improving tilepieces, I have opened a "new features" category in the github discussions (https://github.com/tilepieces/tilepieces/discussions/categor...). I will gladly listen to them.