The Silent One wrote:On the left side of the red border is a suggestion how the tech description panel may look. It's really only a minor change: the panel's header is divided into two areas, the tech icon fills the left area and the text is centered in the right area.
On the right side of the red border is a modified screenshot that shows how it would look at 1280x1024. Note that there is still plenty space avaiable, so it would likely look agreeable at 1024x768.
I still believe the basic arraignment of this mock-up makes the most sense:
Display controls attached to the top so they don't cover up techs (as it does in the current version)
A floating, resizable window really doesn't make sense in this role. You shouldn't have to move the controls around just to see techs on the outside edge.
Tech info in a single, movable, resizable box which includes the "navigation" info, and which disappears when no tech is selected. I see no reason to separate the navigation window from the main tech window. Both describe the same tech. And in disjoining them it creates two items to reposition to see underlying techs.
silent wrote:This is how it would look at 1024x768... but sincerely, I believe most people nowadays have a greater screen resolution than that.
According to
these recent statistics, 55% of web browsing happens with 1024x768 screens. While that size is likely to become less popular with the passage of time, it will likely be a very common screen size for 2-4 years.
silent wrote:I favour the latest toggle button with the tech category icon.
But it doesn't
look like a toggle button. A glowing button edge doesn't normally have that meaning. There's no reason to reinvent basic button types here.