Inspector: highlight buttons on mouse over

• Mar 22, 2019 - 10:27
Reported version
3.0
Priority
P1 - High
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
closed
Regression
Yes
Workaround
No
Project
MuseScore

OS: Windows 10 (10.0), Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.1.0.6145, revision: 003ae6b

Open a MuseScore file and click on an element. The problem is immediately obvious in the Inspector.

Comments

• Mar 22, 2019 - 14:01
Status active ⇒ by design

This makes it match the toolbar (check and you'll see) and the appearance of unselected buttons in most other software. It's still visually clear that it is a button because of the icon, and once clicked the appearance of the selected button is the same as it is in 3.0.5.

Reply

• Mar 22, 2019 - 16:18
Title Outlines of buttons missing in the Inspector. ⇒ Show button outline on mouse over?
Severity S4 - Minor ⇒ S5 - Suggestion
Status by design ⇒ active

When you mouse over the icons in the toolbar area they become highlighted temporarily. However, in the Inspector there is no mouse-over highlighting.

Reply

• Mar 22, 2019 - 16:36

FWIW, it might be a common UI design on macOS, but it's not really on Windows. At least I can't think of any comparable examples.
Borderless buttons are common/expected in toolbars but not anywhere else in my experience. So I can't really say what expected behavior would be since I can't really compare it to anything.

Is the use of borders something that was a complaint in that video critique of the MuseScore?

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• Mar 22, 2019 - 18:33

My main inspirations for the changes were LibreOffice's Properties panel and Sibelius's Inspector. I would be surprised to learn that either of those appears differently on Windows.

I think it was among Tantacrul's complaints, albeit indirectly—he zooms in on the Inspector and says something about visual clutter, which I hoped to reduce by this particular change. (I hear the devs have established a line of communication with him...) Now that it's brought to my attention, though, I definitely agree that the outline should appear on mouse hover, as it does in those other examples I mentioned.

Reply

• Mar 22, 2019 - 18:49

I see what you mean in LibreOffice, at least for recent versions (I think this may be a relatively new change?)

I'm all for doing things consistent with other apps and following modern design principles. I might like more than just those two examples to cite, but I have no particular feelings one way or the other on this specifically.

To me, though, far more important to fix the width, which unfortunately got worse for text. That's the kind of thing that actually matters more than quibbles about the specific appearance of a button.

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• Mar 23, 2019 - 10:43

Spinners, list boxes, and snap-to buttons are highlighted in the 3.x Inspector, but not text boxes or check boxes. Shouldn't they all be highlighted on mouse-over (as in 2.x)?

Reply

• Mar 24, 2019 - 03:17

Isaac, I agree with the general change, but it would be good to have something on hover. It wouldn't hurt clutter to have things happen on hover which would be really useful for visual input. If you want it to match the toolbar, I would include something on hover since the toolbar has that. It's expected behavior and the fact that people are confused should be enough to warrant the change.

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Fix version
3.1.0