Proposal for tidying up Settings App

The above idea works for me.

I like the new settings version .30 and the new Customise Theme.
I have my highlight set to white on black and its much easier to read - though I still find the font excruciatingly small and difficult to read.

@HughB yes, I'm looking at changing the font. It's just finding one :) But yes, at least Back is at the top now.

@allObjects that's an interesting idea - so just make the top-left of the screen go back?

I feel like on Bangle 1 the appeal for a lot of people was having physical buttons, so 'Back' should still be something for the buttons and not for touch on the screen? It might be on the Bangle.js 1 we keep the same behaviour as now?

For cycling between I think we'd still do dragging on the screen as-now. I think a larger font would go a long way towards helping with that.

@Gordon,

I expect navigation to be as easy and 'light-weight' for pleasant UX, because it includes the most interaction events.

For selecting an item, entering and exiting a change mode and may be even changing the value, I can live with the need for having to press a button, because for to do so safely and best controlled, I use - when wearing the watch on the left wrist - the thumb of the right hand to counter the button press. If I do not counter the press, the watch moves around and the actual click is more difficult to predict - and cycling by a know number of clicks is like Russian Roulette.

No reason though to remove current button 1..3 functionality on Bangle.js 1, BUT adding the touch on top of it:

• Right tough for forward cycling navigation through the menu
  
• Left touch for returning from a (multi-level) menu or select (to the paren location)
  
• Left and Right touch to flipping through the values when having to set a value
  
  

Furthermore, the center touch - which came (again) up in recent posts - could be used for selection of an item and may be also for cancelling a value selection/setting.

A playful training app could be built for helping a user to get the feel for what touching left, right and in the middle is. Touching in the middle - or multi-touch - was something I was considering to use in a game I was working on.

One thing I got out of this discussion for sure is the fact that an easy to use, safe/robust navigation UI requires 5 elements: one for each wind directions and a center, like basic joy sticks with a 'fire' button have. The 'bottom level bearable UX can do with 3 control elements: 2 for 'direction' and 1 for 'action' Taking into account the press time on the action button, it can be an action or no-action/cancel/back (just as in car radios when you press a station button for a bit longer, it saves the current station (Freqency / Channel / Value) 'on' that button rather than tuning the radio to station stored for/by that button. Said so: I would not even need the button 1..3 to do most of the operations - only to really pass thru 'critical barriers' / triggering more consequential actions (like it already is now with long presses, short press to go from app layer into 'system' layer for menu / selections, etc.

For Bangle.js 2, the constraint are much different : less constraints, more options. With the 'high' resolution in any - not just wind - directions, much more similar, but still distinct, unique touch/swipe/drag patterns can be detected and mapped to respective functions. I'm really looking forward to the gesture implementation - which puts me right back into the Palm times... something way superior than a soft-keyboard for getting text in by a very small touch sensor.

I'd like to ressurect this thread.

I still think the layout, grouping of the settings App is a bit random, a bit hacker oriented rather than user oriented. I dont really understand why Make Conectable has to have top place. If this is a frequent visit to toggle for some users then maybe an app is needed to switch it ON for X minutes.

I never use any of the communication settings or Debug, Vibration, Beep - they are just baggage in the way to get to the Theme Menu that I use a lot when testing apps and looking at color handling etc.

I think the following structure would be more logical for the average user.

• App Settings
  < Back
  App Name 1
  App Name 2
  etc
  
• System
  < Back
  
  • Theme
    
  • Locale
    
  • Default Clock
    
  • LCD
    Reset Settings
    Turn Off
    Factory Reset
    
• Communications
  < Back
  Make Connectable Y/N
  BLE
  Programmable
  HID
  Passkey Beta
  Whitelist
  
• Notifications
  < Back
  Debug Info
  Beep
  Vibration
  Quiet Mode
  

That does make a lot of sense to me - what does everyone else think?

Nice - I like it.

Personally I'm not sure on Notifications as beep/vibrate/quiet mode isn't just about that. Any other suggestions for a better name?

Maybe Feedback instead of Notifications? Doesn't feel quite right though...

Alerts?

Are there plans to have a My Setting section on Bangle.js App Loader page?

Design by committee is always an "interesting" process, but agree that a reorganization is required and @hughb suggestions looks good.

What would My Setting do @MaBe?

I guess 'Alerts' might be better for now.

Well, this would allow users to config their setting via browser

I like it. But for now I would prefer a menu without so many submenus for the following reasons:

• The menu doesn't remember the currently selected item so when going to a submenu and then back it jumps to the top of the item list. This makes it difficult to find the right submenu. For example when looking for the Quiet Mode settings I would assume it's in the system settings but it is not there. Going back jumps to the top of the list so I would have to scroll down again to find it in the Notifications submenu.

• When tapping the Back button too often it goes back to the app instead of the app launcher. From the app launcher it would be easy to open the settings again. But having to go from the app to the settings again because you accidentally hit the Back button too often can be annoying.

I wonder if these two issues can be resolved? IMO it would also improve usability quite a bit.

I like it.

My favourite colours:

• Alerts seems a bit better than Notifications.
  
• Shouldn't Debug Info be under System?
  
• Communications could be called Bluetooth.
  
• Usually when I'm done fiddling with settings, I just want to load the clock. But it would probably help if the top-level < Back option was labelled < Exit instead.
  

My 5 cents

• Add a prefix/suffix ">" to submenu entries i.e ">System" or "System >"
  
• Agree about a "My Setting" function from AppLoader that allow a quicker configuration or extracting the config file from the browser.
  
• Agree about replacing "Notifications" by "Alerts"
  
• Prefer "Back" than "Exit"
  
• Communications/Bluetooth section can be called Connections
  

• Input and Moving

  • Bangle1 Up =Area1 or btn1 , Bangle2 Up =swipe up
    
  • Bangle1 Down =Area2 or btn3, Bangle2 Up =swipe down
    

  • Bangle1 Enter =Area1+2 or btn2, Bangle2 Enter =btn or click in the center

But it would probably help if the top-level < Back option was labelled < Exit instead.

Good idea, that would help a bit.
But it wouldn't solve the main problem I'm having with the menus (app launcher as well as settings): Often when I want to scroll up or down a random menu / app is opened instead. And when I want to actually tap to open a menu it scrolls instead. So often it goes like this:

1. Open the app launcher
   
2. Try to scroll to the app / settings menu to open it
   
3. After some scrolling a random app / menu item is opened
   
4. Trying to go back - but instead of going one step back it goes back to the clock => Repeat from step 1.
   
5. Alternatively tapping back goes indeed one step back but jumps to
   the top of the menu. => Continue with step 3.
   
   

This can be quite frustrating.
But maybe this is just me being clumsy.
And maybe I'll just end up writing my own menus. The possibility of doing this is one of the reasons I like my Bangle so much (despite its limitations) :)

I had this to start with. But it got solved when I realised as long as the highlighted app is the one I want I can tap anywhere on the screen to open it. My main issue is that sometimes I often overshoot when scrolling, maybe its slightly sensitive. Getting these subtle 'feels like' things 100% unnoticeable is actually quite hard in my experience. Once you dont notice any irritation then the UI is usually really nice to use.

Alerts seems a bit better than Notifications.

Agree.

Shouldn't Debug Info be under System?

Yes, make sense.

Communications could be called Bluetooth.

Yes - that would be better than my first thought.

Just a thought, but could some common settings, such as quiet mode and brightness be separated into a separate 'quick settings' app?
This would be especially useful on the B.js 2, with big touchscreen buttons instead of the fiddly scrolling menu to navigate.

I guess everyone's idea of what are frequently used settings will be different. But the concept is good.

could some common settings, such as quiet mode and brightness be separated into a separate 'quick settings' app?

Yes, absolutely. Nothing stops someone making an app that tweaks just those settings - much like someone made a 'Power Off' app recently that allows them to just tap to power off.

Coming up with an easy way to show a grid of icons is on my To-Do list, and it could make apps like this much easier - not that it's that hard using the layout library at the moment: https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js+Layou­t

Wondering if I should start to make incremental changes towards this proposal ?

Also wondering what Flatten Battery does in the new utils menu and what its purpose is ?

Wondering if I should start to make incremental changes towards this proposal ?

That would be great, yes!

Also wondering what Flatten Battery does

It does what it says. It provides an easy way to flatten the battery as quickly as possible! Some hardware in the Bangle is hard-wired to the battery, so the only way to power cycle it for testing is to flatten the battery.

Some people may also want to leave it half-charged for shipping.

Flatten the battery.

I think I will give that one a miss :)