Software suggestions to increase useability.

[Ian]

As someone who has used many different tuning solutions, over quite a few years I have a few suggestions to help smooth the interface to make it more user friendly. Some may have been mentioned before, some not.

Click open, click close tables. When a table in selected from the list of tables on the left, it opens with a click. I suggest allowing the same table to close with a click as well. Instead of having to move the cursor to the X on the table itself. It speeds the checking of tables, and at least for me helps keep the screen less cluttered.

Add hotkeys for simple operations. Like the flag hotkeys, it would be nice to have value increase/decrease keys. Like the plus/minus buttons in the keyboard window.

Hotkey legend window. Add a dialog box, possibly accessed from the help drop down, that lists all the keyboard hotkeys. Increase value, decrease value, knock flag on/off, o2 flag on/off, keyboard window open/close, etc, etc.

Allow the use of the Control key (Ctrl) to select non uniform groups of cells. Holding the shift key selects continuous strings or boxes of cells, I propose that the Ctrl key allows similar function, but with non continuous groups, or even multiple non adjacent cells.

Auto Fill. When a group of cells is selected, and a single cell value is changed, I suggest allowing an auto fill feature that fills all selected cells to the input value. Maybe enable/disable feature in the right click menu, next to the "highlight flags" enabler.


Maybe some of these features are already available, and I just don't know how to access them, but I figured I would suggest them anyway.

[Matt]

Good suggestion with open/close tables. Should be easy to implement
http://www.nistune.com/mantis/view.php?id=178

Which hotkeys were you thinking of. I have a list of them (use F1 to show all current hot keys). Maybe I show this from HELP also?

There are +/- and PAGE UP/DOWN for the increase and decrease keys already

There is also a Display > Keyboard window which has arrow keys, +/- keys, K and O for knock and O2 and % adjustment for cursor only operation

Had to disable the CTRL only selection of cells when I added the interpolation features... the reason is that interpolation requires a straight line set of rows/columns so using SHIFT. I turned off CTRL at this time as not to confuse the function. Not sure how to work around this, only way I can think is to scan the selected cells and see if there are gaps before allowing interpolation to continue

[Ian]

Good suggestion with open/close tables. Should be easy to implement
http://www.nistune.com/mantis/view.php?id=178

Which hotkeys were you thinking of. I have a list of them (use F1 to show all current hot keys). Maybe I show this from HELP also?

There are +/- and PAGE UP/DOWN for the increase and decrease keys already

There is also a Display > Keyboard window which has arrow keys, +/- keys, K and O for knock and O2 and % adjustment for cursor only operation

Had to disable the CTRL only selection of cells when I added the interpolation features... the reason is that interpolation requires a straight line set of rows/columns so using SHIFT. I turned off CTRL at this time as not to confuse the function. Not sure how to work around this, only way I can think is to scan the selected cells and see if there are gaps before allowing interpolation to continue

Huh, dont know how I missed the F1 trick. For some reason I need to use Function (FN) F1 to bring it up, stupid Dell. Those are definitely the hot keys I was looking for. Maybe add access to that legend in the Help drop down, so everyone knows where to find it.

How about the auto-fill feature. It seems very clunky to me to either change a cell, then select a group, then run the fill command, or select a group, change a single cell, then run fill command. If I change a single cell in a selected group, I would like to fill the whole group automatically, which is why I selected the group to begin with. Or am I just going about things all wrong?

[Matt]

You can use ENTER key to enter the new value on the selected group rather than FILL

Enter allows +/- and % plus direct entry changes

[Matt]

Looked at clicking an entry on the LHS pane for an already open window - it will bring that window to front. Maybe right click to close. Looking into that instead

[Matt]

https://www.nistune.com/mantis/view.php?id=178
For next version

[RomChip200]

You should also think about the increase use of Nistune on Windows10 tablets.
On 7" 1280x800, the icons buttons, even in large mode, are still too much small to be used.
I always use the tablet in hibernate mode, so Nistune is never exited, it helps to speed the up and down times each you enter/leave the car.
So I cannot use autoconnect and need to use the tiny buttons to connect (a nightmare). Think about how the buttons are in Android Auto.
You don't have keyboard either on a tablet, so Fn* shortcuts don't help ...
To be future-proof, maybe you should brainstorm about a scenario of actions that is launched each time a double tap is performed into the main window of Nistune ... my 2 cents

[Matt]

Most tuners do not use tablets because there is no keyboard to make changes. They tune with a variety of tuning software which is keyboard based. Look at other tuning software on the market.

Anyway despite this I've recently moved to a newer notebook laptop with high resolution display on a small screen and am noticing the resolution is higher, and to compensate the font scalers have increased within windows itself (eg 125% or 150% increase) so default non scaled fonts are a lot smaller

Its an absolute pain since all the windows need to be rewritten to be scalable (not just the graphics, but the fonts, positoning etc). I will work through the software and increase what I can. Some items like the AFR trace window need a complete new window and code write to separate the adjustable grid from the panel (non adjustable) beneath it