Improve usability of new beta expressive output widget when sized tall / square

image

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to use the new beta output widget with my current Studio widget configuration.

I have my output widget docked with my properties widget along with other plugins because I prefer to use as much of my screen as possible for the viewport. This means the output widget is sized as small as it can go and is square-ish in the bottom left of my screen.

Currently the new widget is not comfortable to use when sized like this because all of the columns squish together and make the output text unreadable. I can hide the timestamp which helps, but it is still very uncomfortable and removes information from the interface.

This is how the widget currently looks in my configuration:

image image

Most often, I only care about the output message. All other information is secondary and does not need to be immediately onscreen. There are two ways I see to solve this problem when the widget is too thin:

  1. Allow the output table to scroll horizontally so that the message is always onscreen at the default horizontal scroll position, and the other information must be scrolled to. Move the timestamp column to the right of the message column to help keep the message onscreen. My preferred column order would be Message, Source, Context, Timestamp.

    e.g.

    image

  2. Reorganize the output into a vertical format when the widget is small. Each of the three compressed types of header information should be easily learnable; having a bar mapping column header names to values does not seem necessary, users will see “Client”, “Server”, “MyScriptName”, etc. and should understand quickly.

    e.g.

    image
    Timestamp, context, and source are compressed into one or more lines above the message, and is an off-color so it stands out; this information is not important until the user has read the message, so it’s important it stands out from other message text when they scroll up to look for it. Connecting blocks of information with a vertical line the same color as this message metadata should help make it more clear which message the metadata refers to, and make the output faster to scan through.

Please also reduce the icon column’s padding on the left side of the widget. It wastes lots of horizontal space even at its smallest size: image

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I would not have to change my Studio layout to something less efficient for me just so I can comfortably read the new output widget.

25 Likes

Another potential way to save space when the layout compresses is to do something like the following. Collapse both of the filter dropdowns into one context menu popup behind a filter button, instead of having both with their gigantic labels visible at all times. When the filter is not “All” for both messages and context, leave a little star in the corner of the filter button so the altered mode is visible and can be easily checked.

3 Likes

Please… my studio layout is dying…
image

As much as I value the extra information, I cannot use the expressive output in its current form without changing my studio layout (which I’ve had for well over half a decade at this point). Please prioritize making it layout agnostic.

4 Likes