For a while now, we have indicated we are hard at work with the 4.4.1.X maintenance release… a release intended to be light on new features but really catch up on some long standing bugs and small quality of life issues.
I promise that we are… It’s been quiet for a bit and this is why:
Long story short, the physical layout of the Control Panel and Equipment Profile Manager have been extremely limiting to us. In other words, a single tab row experience can only grow so much before it’s out of room (I understand I can add additional rows of tabs, but I refuse… it is an unintuitive and confusing user experience that I abhor).
This limitation results in three long term issues:
- Passing on good ideas because there is no room for that feature’s settings to be added in an intuitive manner.
- Confusing placement of existing settings that don’t fit cleanly into the current equipment-centric organization (e.g. where does
scalego? It is a property of the camera, sure, but also of the telescope and then, even more confusing, there is a “plate solve” tab… maybe it should be there? There are many such examples. - No opportunity for alternate organizations and layouts. Some users think more in terms of “process” and less in terms of “equipment”. For instance, if you consider the group of “end of sequence actions” some would prefer a layout that, instead of showing end of sequence actions per equipment item, shows all end of sequence options across all gear in a single place.
Have no doubt… correcting these issues is a pretty big lift and incurring this work has not been an attractive proposition for us. Sins of the past and all that stuff.
So… here we go. Finally, this work is in progress. A great deal of it is finished and it will provide lots of opportunities for improvements and new features. The first of which will be the long requested “Periodic Recentering” feature which has a bunch of settings (recentering was actually the straw that broke the camel’s back… I was having a terrible time adding these settings in any way that made sense).
Let’s take a look… Here is the new Control Panel
A quick tour:
The New Control Panel
-
The tab row across the top is gone, replaced by vertical, scrollable tabs.
-
It’s bigger, but still conforms to HD standards, but not so big that you can’t see anything behind it (usually).
-
Related: SGPro no longer has an obscene amount of gear jammed into a single tab named “Other”. Now, you can clearly see FlatBox, Observatory, Rotator, etc in the list with their own tabs.
-
Related: The additional real-estate, in some cases, has allowed us to reduce the number of clicks to find certain settings (e.g. the “Focus” tab has long had a button titled “Other” which held backlash compensation and other settings. This is gone, and its settings added to the main focus tab.
-
Filter Focus Points settings overhaled… Much easier to interpret and use now
-
The new tab list can be configured to match your gear, process and preferences. If Something is just taking space for you (e.g. don’t have a FlatBox), just hide it. Every sequence / profile carries its own tab visibility settings.
-
A much requested addition: All sequences and profiles now carry with them a specific set of parameters that will be used to create NEW targets (need to work on a possible confusion here since these settings don’t have any bearing on existing targets… they are like mini target profiles)
-
The Control Panel finally resizable. This is great news for those which a bunch of switch devices. Not much use otherwise.
-
New Safety Monitor log so you can have a concise view of safety events without wading through logs
-
Made it a priority that the new Control Panel retain a general “sameness” to the existing Control Panel so your years of experience are not invalidated in a single release.
The New Equipment Profile Manager
And that’s not all… We have long felt it important that the Equipment Profile Manager have a similar layout to the Control Panel. They have many, many things in common and it would be disorienting if they each had their own (completely dissimilar) layouts.
Here’s a quick tour of the new Equipment Profile Manager:
- Same vertical scrollable tab list on the left.
- Support of long profile names. Let’s face it… equipment profiles hold a lot of information and sometimes differentiating between two profiles can be a wordy endeavor. You’ll now have a lot more freedom with your names.
- The profile list is now searchable.
- The Equipment Profile Manager is now also a resizable window.
- Much better indicator / display of the profile you’re currently modifying
- Much better “needs save” indicator
- Like the Control Panel, each profile can show or hide different tabs. When a sequence is created from a profile, it will, of course, inherit that tab visibility.
- New control button layout
- Has all of the new tabs described for the Control Panel (new target settings, flat box, rotator, etc)
