Ability to preview GUIs outside of StarterGui

startergui
#1

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to visually modify GUIs that are in various locations.

In my game I often have GUIs placed in ReplicatedStorage and StarterPlayerScripts and other locations. I would like to be able to preview/edit them in Studio without moving them to StarterGui each time.

Ideally if I select a ScreenGui or one of its descendants selected in the explorer, it would be rendered in the game window. Deselecting it or changing selection to another object would stop rendering it.

#2

The current behavior can be really annoying sometimes when I forget to put some things back where they belong before testing. This would definitely speed up my workflow when making GUI’s.

#3

As long as I can toggle this on and off i’d have no complaints. I move things out of StarterGui because I don’t want to see it and having it appear when I click on it maybe to look at the contents of the UI as a reference to another UI would get distracting.

#4

Yep, support.

#5

Support, I store my GUIs outside of StarterGui almost all the time, so being able to preview them anywhere would really be a convenient feature.

#6

Or instead of having the Guis under StarterGui show up, there’s a property under ScreenGuis to preview it or not.

That way you can play around with things being there or not without having to move anything around. You could edit your place without having the Uis in front of you without having to turn them off and on.

#7

That could create the misunderstanding for new developers that checking off this box is how you make GUI’s work. It seems to serve little purpose too. Not to mention that it’s kind of bloat to add a new property in GUI’s just for such a small case that doesn’t even have any effect on live games.

#8

Currently, I don’t see why UIs on the starterui are previewed in studio without a way to allow other ui to be seen. Or the other way, when you don’t want to see it but its forced upon you.

This makes it either inconvenient to work (You don’t want to see it / You want to see it) or you have to move things around, disable things, and then remember to fix it all by the end.

I don’t think this is a “small case”, its just something thats been like this for such a long time. I don’t think a “preview” button that they click on and off to see will make confusion as to what it does, its a very simple concept. By default preview can be on for items in startergui and off for other parents, but we can toggle through it if we want.

#9

@iamnoamesa It really is a small case; the feature isn’t particularly important, and it’s just an annoyance with way things work currently. You said it yourself that it is inconvenient.

@Extuls I think this feature should be implemented differently from properties. Merely already gave a different idea, but I also have another one:

I think the whitespace on objects could be utilised more - currently only the + icon is used in it, and it looks out of place and doesn’t fit the style.

Example

Screenshot_696

A rework of the explorer’s style could allow for better utilisation of in-line buttons – could, theoretically, allow something like this to exist:

Notice the visibility and lock icon. They suit the style. This could be done for GUIs, too.

#10

Please no. Explorer already has a lot of information density – adding more with inline buttons just creates noise. We shouldn’t make it even worse than it already is with the white plus.

#11

Yeah, the issue is that it’s not designed to handle lots of information, and there is a ton of wasted space.

it doesn’t seem to have much density for me, and adding an extra button that functions like the create button would barely contribute.

My idea is that it’d just be on hover (or selection) like the + button. It wouldn’t clutter much, and if the explorer gets reworked to look more modern and use space a bit better, it’d be easy to implement well without causing any issues.

To illustrate my point – these images are exactly the same size and the components have the same sizes.

Screenshot_697

explorerRemake

It looks better and would work better IMO (not to mention that it has space to add new buttons). It would work the same as the existing button.

#12

What about a completely separate window? Kinda like what Unity does for it’s interface design.

I think for Roblox, you could right click on a Gui you want to edit and it’ll say something like “Open UI Editor” or whatever. It could be a very nice feature to have. :stuck_out_tongue: