Free advice for RIGOL ..... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 05:09:53 pm
content: Just watched Dave's rant on EEVblog #325 - Rigol DG4162 Voice, just couldn't agree more, that tiny dot cursor design is just plain stupid.C'mon Rigol, you must sack the whole staffs at your user interface dept, pictures below should be self explanatory ...You should consider to send me one of your cool high end gear for free, since this advise alone is definitely cheaper than your staff's annual salary there. LOL ...

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 06:12:38 pm
content: Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to get these suggestions via Rigol's official "service" into Rigol's internal bug tracking system, and get it prioritised high enough that it'll be actually fixed in the next firmware.

author: olsenn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 06:17:20 pm
content: Who cares! I know the little yellow dot is not the most effective way of showing the user which line is selected, but it still works. I think they have bigger things to worry about than this.

author: chrome
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 06:29:02 pm
content: Everyone is blowing this way out of proportion.I need glasses for reading stuff that's like more then 3feet (a meter) away, I can't read the numbers from that far but I can still see that dot .

author: Short Circuit
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 06:43:31 pm
content: Can't we leave the echo-ing of video fragments to the Youtube comments section?

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 07:11:35 pm
content: Uh, the Rigol fanboys are waking up.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 07:59:11 pm
content: Quote from: olsenn on August 02, 2012, 06:17:20 pmSo back when I was a kid, I had an Osborne 1. Go ahead and Google that if you don't know what I am talking about, I'll wait. This was back in the good old days. At a certain point, their magazine (The Portable Companion) had an article about how you could solder some bodge chips piggyback style on the motherboard to turn the underline cursor into a reverse-video block cursor. Like I said, the good old days. This was a big win back in the early 80s, as on the small, low resolution screen it really improved the cursor visibility and cost next to nothing as an upgrade and would have been zero cost at the design stage. This was certainly not the invention of the reverse-video cursor, and even at the time it was clear that this was an obvious oversight in the design phase, and in fact later revisions of the O1 had a block cursor instead of an underline.The point of this nostalgia is that this was 30 years ago, and we shouldn't still be making the same mistakes. Some poor bastard "software engineer" at Rigol was faced with a choice: two equally difficult (or equally simple) options: one is clearly superior and the other decidedly inferior. That software engineer made the wrong choice simply because _he didn't realize he was making a choice_.So no, this isn't a catastrophe. It doesn't make their product useless, but it shouldn't have happened, and they should take this sort of thing seriously.

author: Rufus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 08:36:00 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on August 02, 2012, 05:09:53 pmI don't have a Rigol generator so I don't actually know but from this picture and watching Dave fumble around I don't think it works like you think it does.If you go into this waveform select screen there is always one of them selected. There is no concept of a cursor, you just move the selection around and back out of the screen with the return button top right. Maybe someone who has one can confirm.I agree the selection dot is naff. The file menu is the only similar screen on the DSA-815 and it shows the selected file/directory with an inverse bar.

author: FenderBender
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2012, 09:19:07 pm
content: Well I think the dot is more elegant. Usefulness...I couldn't say; I've never used one. Not the worst thing ever.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 12:47:21 am
content: But inverted cursors are so, like, 1970'sDave.

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 01:10:37 am
content: I prefer animated GIFs in place of the dot.

author: FenderBender
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 01:19:22 am
content: Quote from: AntiProtonBoy on August 03, 2012, 01:10:37 amYou kid now! In 5 years watch..

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 01:23:24 am
content: Quote from: FenderBender on August 03, 2012, 01:19:22 amWe need Clippy, the microsoft paper clip!Dave.

author: PeterG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 01:32:54 am
content: That little dot opens the door wider for Human Error........IMHORegards

author: FenderBender
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 01:37:48 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 03, 2012, 01:23:24 amHaha.Clippy has his own game:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_Hero_2

author: RCMR
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 01:43:43 am
content: As Rigol probably knows -- you can't please all the people all the timeThe dot doesn't look too bad to me -- but perhaps it shows up better on video than it does in real-life who knows?Anyway, I probably won't be selling my Rigol test gear because of this and I have to say there are many more important aspects to a bit of gear's performance than how it manages the job of highlighting selected data on its LCD.Damn you Heathkit, why did you go out of business!

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 03:04:50 am
content: I wouldn't be surprised if there was a patent somewhere about inverted bar for menu options. But I doubt that's the reason rigol went for that.I would actually prefer the blinking underscore character " _ " under numbers, it's fairly obvious that way...And for file selections and whatever, i would be fine with brackets --- [ option ] ... if there's a reason why they couldn't invert the selection

author: PeteInTexas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2012, 04:34:50 am
content: Quote from: mariush on August 03, 2012, 03:04:50 amYeah, a rectangle with rounded corners would look great

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2012, 07:47:50 am
content: I doubt whoever implemented the dot agreed or possibly even cared about the decision, because this was likely one of those "design decisions" that the UI team comes up with as a result of marketing saying "we want something different/new/sleek/minimal/etc."Inverse video or a rectangle around the selected option is one of the oldest ways to do it, and it works really well, but someone probably thought "it's ugly/old-fashioned/cluttered/etc." and thus we end up with something that fits the marketing criteria but otherwise isn't better.

author: ErikTheNorwegian
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2012, 10:58:20 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 03, 2012, 12:47:21 amDave, i loved the 70`s... still do..Music was GREAT, not hipetyhophouse dunk like today..Electronics was great, HIFI was selfmade speaker kits and jap amps, if you not had the money for a Altec Lansing speakers or even better Quad electrostatic and amp..SEX was free and pretty risk free, the worst that could happen was that you made a broad pregnant with your sexstick.. No AIDS to be afraid of. If you cought somthing it was a easy fix with a 7 days cure of doxylin drugs..Drugs was pretty safe to, designer drugs was drugs that designers used.. not something that blows you brains permanently.The calculators had just arrived and made school and math ok at best..You could speed in your car, no photo boxes and laser tricks and other unsporting tricks they pull today from the cops..Those where the days..

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 13, 2012, 03:57:26 pm
content: To me they messed up a nice UI experience by using the "dot" selection. It looks like the UI was too designer driven and not properly reviewed in a focus group; or even worse, the designer was a friend of someone high up in senior management!The inverse selection works me, 70's retro is still very cool !, If I was head of UI design, I would have added UI themes.I guess the good thing it's probably easily fixed in software and it's still a very sexy UI compared with my HP1660