Status Bar

[Steve Raiford]

I just became aware that the status bar can be controlled by the user as to what is displayed, and what is not displayed. This is accomplished by right clicking on the status bar and turning the display of specific items on or off.

Here are a few suggestions:

Discussed elsewhere, but to keep everything together, add "Present Layer" to list of possible displayed items.

Allow the user to determine the position in the status bar of each item by rearranging the order of the item in the status bar menu window that is accessed by a right click on the status bar. The item listed at the top displays first, the next item second, etc.

To help make new users aware of the status bar, and to help educate them on its use, add the following in the status bar menu:

"Staus bar - right click to select items to display"

This would be the default message when AR starts with factory defaults. It is essentially prompting the user to set the items he wants in the status bar.

Presently many items are displayed, but I can find no mention that the user can select what to display. Of course he could find this in the manual when it is updated, but it takes very little effort to have this in the status bar display to start with.

Please make other suggestions to make the status bar more useful.

Steve Raiford

[David]

We can add the "current layer" to the status bar. Just like all the other elements in the status bar, it can then be turned on or off. I would suggest to only automatically switch this on when the plan contains more than one layer.

I'm not sure it's a good idea though to allow people to rearrange things in another order in the status bar. Many people change things accidentally, after which helping them can be a bit difficult when all things swapped place.

David.

[Jeff]

"after which helping them can be a bit difficult when all things swapped place"

Unless, of course, you add a button called "Reset status bar order" at the end of the right-click menu...

[David]

@Jeff: we sort of have that: If you start AnyRail while holding down SHIFT, everything is reset to 'factory defaults'.

David.

[Steve Raiford]

If it doesn't happen with "Current Layer" it will happen when something else is added to the status bar in the future. The status bar will be too small to display all of the items.

Presently some descriptions are truncated if there is too much information to display. I would take the approach of allowing the user to dertermine what is displayed and in what order. The truncation then can just be at the end of the string. If the user has selected more items than what will fit, the ones lowest on his list will be the ones that are missing, and he will not possibly have the one that is most important to him truncated. Of course there should be a warning at the time he is selecting items to display, that he has chosen too many and must narrow his list.

That said I don't know how often status bar information is used by the AR staff in helping users resolve problems.

The "Shift Restart" factory reset is very powerful, and very commonly used. This approach leaves absolutely no doubt about the state of any user options.

If the only options that may need to be reset to help a user are in the status bar menu, then having a reset there would be sufficient, but if when the staff is in the process of helping a user there are other items that also often need to be reset, I would then stick with the "Shift Restart" option of resetting everything. There then would be only one thing to reset and the status of the program would be predictable to everyone.

A related suggestion: The Shift Restart tip is on page 74. I would suggest this be put very near the top of the manual, or at the top of a section labeled "Troubleshooting". If a user is having difficulties, it is unlikely he will read the first 74 pages of the manual looking for a way to reset everything to factory settings.

Steve Raiford