(!!!) Improving NGUI: Voice your opinion

[jtfrench]

All I want for NGUI is a definitive programming guide. The NGUI "Bible" of sorts. The definitive place where all forum hooplah can be resolved with a simple answer like "Read Chapter 10: Constructing Multi-Resolution UIs".

That would make my day.

I voiced this here: http://www.tasharen.com/forum/index.php?topic=7463.msg39076#msg39076

[ArenMook]

@helmesjo: Switch the anchor type to advanced, and you can specify 4 individual anchors, which can be set or not, and which can even point to different objects altogether. If you wanted some widget's height to be adjusted by another, then do just that -- set top and bottom anchors, and don't touch left and right.

[helmesjo]

I'm sure it can be solved in that way, but it's no solid solution IMO. Because of each anchor being relative to the object in worldspace from object to object (A's distance to B), if A is somewhere else in the scene (not even at the same height), the "A-bottom to B-Top"-anchor will be some arbitrary number I'll have to manually calculate depending on how far they are away from each other, right? For more than extremely simple UI's, this will not work (lets say I later on move B without changing it's height, A will still change height).

Right? This is because of the anchors always working with the rects edges (instead of also allowing to only manipulate the height for example). If you look at my link you see that constraints can be set to specific attributes (width, height, CenterX, CenterY etc.). That allows for one "widget" A to both stay centered in X to B, while at the same time keep same hight as B (since CenterX is not a combination of two anchors hooking from A's top & bottom to B's center with some hardcoded distance).

Trying to keep it short so sorry if it's hard to understand my vague examples! (:

[adam718]

Hi.
I want Popup list to be improved like in PC and in Mobile. (scrollable when many items)
When i add 10 or 20 items to popup list, it doesn't scroll in certain area.
Popup list stretches to the last item so that i can't select the item which is out of the screen.

I love NGUI.
Thank you.

[jingato]

I would like to be able to add gradients to sprites. It would also be cool to have either liner or radial gradients.

I'd also really like to be able to hold shift and have widgets scale uniformly when using the handles. Also be able to hold shift when dragging a sprite to constrain the movement to a sigle axis.....similarly to photoshop

[Anomalous Underdog]

I'll add my vote to having percentages for the new anchor system. It's one of the reasons I'm still using the old UIAnchor and UIStretch.

Also that "keep ratio" thing that UIStretch does. To make an analogy, it's like in a typical image browser. You can:

1. auto-fit the image's width to the window (which may cut off top & bottom parts of the image)
2. auto-fit the image's height to the window (which may cut off left & right parts of the image)
3. auto-fit the image's width & height to the window, ensuring all of it is shown in the window <-- it's this behaviour that I can't seem to create with the new anchor system, but I can, using UIStretch.

Last reason, UIAnchor and UIStretch allows me to anchor and/or stretch multiple sprites at once.

For example, a row of buttons, I parent them all to an empty game object. That empty has a UITable or UIGrid so all the buttons inside it are arranged nicely, then I use UIAnchor to snap them all to the right edge of the screen.

Perhaps if we had a new class that can contain sprites inside it? It would be just like a sprite; it has width and height, it uses the new anchor system, but it doesn't render anything. It would only be for layouting. "UIContainer" perhaps? Right now, I do this by having a sprite whose alpha is set to 0, but that's rather awkward.

Also it seems UIButtonOffset doesn't take into account when the screen/window size changes. When the screen size changes, it still tries to tween to the old position.

Also minor suggestion: in the new anchor system, when using advanced, how about a button to clear a sprite's anchor per direction? right now when I want to clear it, I have to click on the circle so the selection window comes up, scroll all the way to the top so I can choose "None".


EDIT: btw, please tell me if any of what I describe is not the recommended way of doing things.

[arkon3]

For me the biggest problem or need is the new event system. I used to be able to hack UIButton etc to make send message send a parameter to the receiver. Can't figure out how to do this with the new event system. I have many times needed to have one receiving function but need to do something based on a parameter.

[Ivian]

Disable accepting input per panel.

In NGUI 2.x I had for each window a separate camera, so when i was hiding them i could disable UICamera script, and everything was fine. Now i can have only 1 camera, so i have to use UIPanel as a root for window. There would be nice, if there would be a "acceptInput" field for panel. I've already modified some code, so it works, but I'd have to update the code each time NGUI updates.

[hexaust]

Any chance of adding rulers and guides support? 

[gyd]

Add "Set as Current" button on Tween*s' inspector please

ex:
TweenPosition

from x[0] y[0] z[0] [Set as Current]<====
tp    x[0] y[0] z[0] [Set as Current]<====

[zazery]

Add "Set as Current" button on Tween*s' inspector please

You can already do that, checkout the options in the gear menu on any of the tween scripts. It should probably be mentioned in the documentation. I only learned about it through watching the video tutorials.

[gyd]

You can already do that, checkout the options in the gear menu on any of the tween scripts. It should probably be mentioned in the documentation. I only learned about it through watching the video tutorials.

oh my god, thanks!

additional:
i think if there are arrow (or other button type) button on the Inspector, will be more easy to use.

[Jofator]

First thanks for great NGUI.

Maintaining localization in projects is pain.
NGUI helps, CSV support helps, but still localize out of context is hard to do.
And this is where NGUI helps with its localized preview.

It would be really GREAT not only preview BUT MODIFY previewed text for any language!

Best regards!
Jofator

[helmesjo]

NESTED PANELS WITH CLIPPING

I apologise if this is a repeating question, but I did some searching (also checked FAQ) and all I can find is you telling people "this isn't possible". Now, is it _really_ not possible, or is it to much trouble? Because this is by no means an "advanced"/"OP" feature, and should definitely be present. I don't wanna bust your legs, but paying a big chunk of money for a GUI-plugin and not being able to nest for example scrollviews in a logical manner is really crippling... I'm aware that most of the times it can be somehow solved using different approaches (fake-clip by blocking with extra sprites), but this takes increasing effort and limits the design of the UI.

If it's a limitation in Unity, I'm sure you have some great peeps to convince that this is necessary.

[Nicki]

@helmesjo: It's certainly possible, but it's performance heavy to do. I've done a double scroll previously where a vertical scroll contained sub-horizontal scrolls, but it requires that you keep track of each clip area which is not entirely without troubles. There's no easy way to make this built in.

Essentially, you need a scrollview controller that keeps track of all the sub scrollviews and adjusts the rects. Pretty custom stuff, I'd say.