Desktop UI improvements


It seems that interface elements are highly scattered. Maybe they should be composed together. And the “sync” indicator highly distracts attention because of blinking while typing.

This issue will be fixed soon, so that it doesn’t change to “Sync now” immediately whe you start typing.

Do you mind suggesting an alternative design?

From our standpoint, they are scattered for a reason: they are related to different things. By the principle of proximity, they need to close to the thing they operate on so users don’t get confused.

In this case:

  • [1] is for pane management;
  • [2] is for navigate. This is not visible on the web app, because the browser already includes backward/forward buttons. It’s placed at top left because that’s a familiar position in a browser to find these crucial buttons;
  • [3] are actions for the current pane. If you close the pane, you won’t see them.
  • [4] are global actions which should be always available.
  • [5] are actions only applicable to the current document.

Dumping them together would make the UI less scattered but more cluttered, plus it makes it a lot harder for the user to find the right button to click on.

I hope that makes sense.