I am a fan of and comfortable with the current interface, likely because I'm a long time user of the product. But, I also understand that newer, less experienced users might be a bit overwhelmed and confused by the plethora of choices. Accordingly, consider this approach which, I think, provides a new level of usability without dumbing down the product.


2 user-selectable product interfaces:


1. The current TOOL-ORIENTED interface.

2. A TASK-ORIENTED interface, where, instead of seeing each individual tool, the user is presented with a menu of tasks that start the appropriate tool depending upon the action selected. So instead of seeing the Registry Cleaner tool, perhaps the user would select "Click here to scan and clean your registry" and Registry Cleaner would start, or "Click here to uninstall a program" and Software Manager would start, etc. Given the large number of things the program does, the interface could get a bit 'crowded' if not implemented properly, so maybe you only put those things on the menu that 85% of your users do 75% of the time. Or maybe you allow the user to create a customized menu, selecting only those tools that he/she would like to 'menu-ize'.


I love PT because it is not bloated - it does what it does quickly and efficiently without a lot of bells and whistles. I suspect that none of us want the program to become bloated and slow, so that would have to be a consideration. But this struck me as a possible compromise to all of the usability concerns I've been reading about on the forum lately.


Food for thought. Thanks.

Why have two different interfaces? Why not simply relabel the tools with task descriptions, and arrange them in column so that the label text fits without wrapping? I guess there would still need to be a left-hand menu for selecting among the various task categories.

Actually you have already the mouse over descriptions of each tool...

We are thinking about something like this. You'll see how it looks when the freeware program is released for testing :

redseujac - I think you may have missed the point. The idea would be that on launching the program, new users would immediately be presented with a menu of tasks (with one-line descriptions, in my opinion; shorter than those currently shown in the tooltips). It isn't to be expected that new users will know about mouseover behaviour.

Brian49 wrote
It isn't to be expected that new users will know about mouseover behaviour.

Why not? Are new users to be considered as stupid or so? I guess not... Almost every program has always and everywhere that mouseover behaviour, or not? When sliding the mouse over a tool the user is clearly informed about the purpose of it. The suggested columns with one line descriptions would take pretty much space, I'm afraid, encumbering the Main Window.


Anyway let's wait till the new program and see...