Next Gen Studio and Explorer - Icons and Collapsibles issue feedback and A11Y

[HealthyKarl]

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to …

To accept the new Next Gen Studio and Explorer (not because the blurry UI only, apparently it came back or the font changed on next gen, but… yeah not only because of the blurry UI or not having the option to change the theme)
_{I don’t know if the Foundation Colors flag is meant to stay, I hope it will not go… What was the point of creating Style Sheets if there’s no plan to use them with care on the new Luau built-in Plugins?}

Technically, I wonder if I should report these as a consistency bug instead, of this. I’ll just mix it.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because …

One accessibility issue less.

It needs to be done, there’s no absolute reason to deny the facts, and it should be impossible to deny the facts. It has to be done.

 

I like that there is a “Compact Toolbar” option
_{but not the blurry text}

Was it even brought to awareness that there’s no border stroke around the search fields anymore?

_{Disclaimer: No. This does not mean that “Output” also needs to be Luauized}

Icons and Collapsibles

Here is one reason I don’t want to enable the Next Gen Studio nor the new Explorer. Again, one is because the UI is still blurry, and I really need to repeat this.

The other one are… Icons?

Where are the icons?

 

Where are the icons here as well? And why is Insert Part and etc. collapsed into a tab now? Is it still fast accessible?

These are the types of questions, that were definitely not asked at all.

 

The only button that I am aware of that somehow was ported and made available as a button, is this:

 

Why Icons?

Let’s take a look.

This is the old one:

Inside “Show” you can see the Icons.

• This one shows you all options in one go, they’re not labeled but they have an icon
• You can hover over an icon to see what it is and then, since you know how the icon looks like you can remember it for some time.
• Easily accessable, all is visible in one go.

In the Next Gen Studio variant, it was replaced by a “Window” tab.

• It has no icons
• Stuff is collapsed, there is no quick overview and access.

Like, look:

Where are the icons?

Reason there should be icons:

• Quick Identification
  • It is extremely useful being able to see and access things faster. Currently, without icons you only have to visually rely on text. This impacts accessibility.

And yeah… there isn’t much else to say.

LIKE LOOK:

Icons.

And where the hell did “Show Orientation Indicator” go on the New Explorer?

Icons…

like look..

Iconless...

• Car
• C_A_R
• caaaaaaar
• vehicle
• bus
• Car
• Car
• Tree
• Car
• Car
• car
• cAr
• caR
• trEE
• tREE
• tree

Icons

• Car
• C_A_R
• caaaaaaar
• vehicle
• bus
• Car
• Car
• Tree
• Car
• Car
• car
• cAr
• caR
• trEE
• tREE
• tree

YOU CAN NOT DISAGREE THAT YOU HAD AN EASIER TIME LOOKING AT THE “Icons”, compared to “Iconless”.

If I ask you, where was “bus”, you’d be able to point to where it was way quicker. Maybe not for everyone, perhaps?

But exactly this is what accessibility is all about. And NONE of the Next Gen replacements have proven to conform to accessibility. This could make Roblox look like that they don’t care about A11Y.

 

Get rid of unnecessary collapsibles

First of all… where did Save CSV and etc. go?

No, I CAN NOT stand having bugs being denied because I turn off a flag. Because this was forgotten on the new Explorer:

You are NOT addressing and identifying the actual issue that was attempted to be presented like that.

Look, the old one used “divider lines”

The new one dares to use divider lines, but compress the things into… collapsibles

THIS IS BAD, you are basically griefing accessibility.

I have to rely that the collapsible works and more aiming with the cursor. What is this, THIS IS NOT meant to be Counter-Strike: Global Offensive where you have to aim on things. This should be easy to use.

 

Talking about collapsibles

These buttons, if you hold down mouse button you get this here:

NOW tell me…

DO YOU SEE, how the old one has 2 buttons. One to click on the icon, and one that is for a collapsible

 

No we are not done.

Are you familiar with Memory? The card game. Where you find two things that look the same.

Can I ask you something really really important? Something where I just have a mental breakdown.

 

These icons here:

 

Does the Icon for RodConstraint look the same?

Can I play memory with it? No I can not play memory with it. I can not play memory cards with it.

My memory card would fail because the image does not 1:1 look the same. It’s two different images. This is not good for accessibility. I have to spend extra time on identifying what this icon means.

_{Please, keep the old icons on the Explorer, thanks?}

But I can not play Memory. This means accessibility is impacted.

And where even is “Attachment” in the Next Gen Studio??

 

that’s some feedback for now

[Dogekidd2012]

@HealthyKarl

First of all… where did Save CSV and etc. go?

They’re there when you right-click on a LocalizationTable. They don’t show unless it’s for a LocalizationTable.

@HealthyKarl

And where the hell did “Show Orientation Indicator” go on the New Explorer?

There’s a fix in flight for this.

[HealthyKarl]

Ah, so it only shows up if you click on that Instance with that class. In my case the old Explorer would show you all options. In my opinion, this gives a quick oversight…

How would I know that LocalizationTable had this option in the context menu, if it never would get introduced to me. I’d have to actually discover this context menu option by clicking a LocalizationTable.

 

Maybe some kind of personalization? e.g. an option to show all options regardless of Instance Class Type?

Maybe the logic for showing what option is available or not, is already present? What if it could just show the option, but then re-use that logic to grey it out instead?

 

Like, I’d eventually not know that the CSV thing was actually a thing, if the Old Explorer never showed it to me by default. Like, the literal only way to encounter it otherwise, would have been by right-clicking on a LocalizationTable.

 

Like, please make that a configurable thing.

It was called “Next Gen”. But with these issues, it doesn’t feel like “Next Gen”. One can really not present this and say that it is “Next Gen” ready. Because it isn’t.

When we talk about Sci-Fi as some sort of “Generation”, we’d imagine flying cars and other magic. The new Explorer doesn’t do a lot of the magic that I’d imagine it to do. Infact, I’d just imagine the old Explorer, but better? But now it’s not inheriting the good things from the old Explorer anymore.

 

Like, Roblox has the Source Code from the old Explorer. If things like “Show Orientation” went missing, it builds up this worry about what else is gonna happen to Roblox Studio in the future.

 

 

Now, the New Explorer forces me to explore by myself, making me right click on every Instance Class to figure out if they have a special Context Menu entry. But I think the Explorer is meant to explore for me…

Now, there’s less overview of what exists and is possible, because it gets hidden.

 

idk what I have to do to explain this better

Which of these Instances Classes, has Option C?

Instance Class 1

• Option A
• Option B

Instance Class 2

• Option A
• Option B

Instance Class 3

• Option A
• Option B

Instance Class 4 C

• Option A
• Option B
• Option C

Instance Class 5

• Option A
• Option B

well… there’s one Instance with C

now what if I asked, which of these had another additional option?

When CSV was shown as an option, you get the clue, that it could be for LocalizationTable only. And now, you don’t have this clue… it is “hidden”, as mentioned.

The entry point is not straightforward anymore.

[Dogekidd2012]

@HealthyKarl

How would I know that LocalizationTable had this option in the context menu, if it never would get introduced to me. I’d have to actually discover this context menu option by clicking a LocalizationTable.

If you know about LocalizationTables, you’re probably on the Creator Hub page to understand what they are and how to use them and how to connect to them in scripts. That same page is ideally what tells you how to save and load CSV. If we just showed “Save CSV” and “Load CSV”, that doesn’t tell you any more than “Option C” what it’s relevant to. Can I load a CSV as a data structure? Maybe it’s for analytics, like getting purchase data? Even if it did, like with a tooltip or something, that still gives you only a small piece of the puzzle on everything else you need to do with LocalizationTables. What’s the CSV you’re loading even formatted like? If you export an empty LocalizationTable to find out, what does Key/Source/Context/Example mean?

[HealthyKarl]

If the option is always shown, then I’d also know where it would be at all times, because the location would always be the same.

In the old Explorer, if the option is irrelevant in the current context, then it would just be greyed out. At least, that could be made an option to personalize.

And if it is greyed out, I might have looked at it while greyed out, and might will be able to recognise it later.
If I ever look up LocalizationTables on the Creator Hub and see it mentioning CSV, I’d remember that I used to see the “CSV” options before and could tie it together.

 

Not showing the options keeps the menu more clean, maybe some prefer that. But hiding every option without greying them out impacts those that want an advanced overview of what exists.

 

The Next Gen UI has a Compact setting toggle for example, and these are settings as well.

[athar_adv (athar_adventure)]

As someone whos made their own explorer plugin Jexplorer, I wanna comment on a few of the points in this post

@HealthyKarl

I don’t know if the Foundation Colors flag is meant to stay, I hope it will not go… What was the point of creating Style Sheets if there’s no plan to use them with care on the new Luau built-in Plugins?

I agree, the point of using stylesheets (atleast imo) is to make configuring the look of the UI much much more accessible, to the point that even users can modify it via a UI. I don’t really get the point of using stylesheets if everythings going to be locked behind fflags anyway?

@HealthyKarl

Icons and Collapsibles

Here is one reason I don’t want to enable the Next Gen Studio nor the new Explorer. Again, one is because the UI is still blurry, and I really need to repeat this.

The other one are… Icons?

Where are the icons?

Where are the icons here as well? And why is Insert Part and etc. collapsed into a tab now? Is it still fast accessible?

These are the types of questions, that were definitely not asked at all.

The absence of icons is 100% a huge peeve on my part too, icons are easily recognizable and make developing faster over time.

It’s like if you replaced all the icons and graphs of European traffic signs with the text blobs that are American ones, you’d definitely see alot more traffic accidents such as turning around when not allowed, reckless parking, wrong turns, etc :V

Also, regarding the blurry UI, I actually tested this out with Jexplorer comparing text sizes, heres what i found:

TextSize 16

TextSize 14 (default for Jexplorer)

As you can see the TextSize 16 looks alot like the next gen ui. Coincidence? Maybe. But it’d be really funny if all the blurry text was simply caused by a small difference in TextSize lol

[HealthyKarl]

Imagine you have a Toolbox.

If you open it, you can see things like Wrench, Hammer, Screwdriver and etc.

All the things that are available are visible. And you can pick the tools you need.

 

Now, imagine you walk up to a broken machine and the Toolbox would magically only show you the things you need, while it never shows you the full contents of the Toolbox.

How would one feel?

The options can stay hidden, all that is pointing out to, is to have something that let’s you see what options the Explorer could offer.

[S0MBRX]

@HealthyKarl

I have to rely that the collapsible works and more aiming with the cursor. What is this, THIS IS NOT meant to be Counter-Strike: Global Offensive where you have to aim on things. This should be easy to use.

 

Talking about collapsibles

couldnt agree more i have been searching for a post where someone mentions this. You have to be incredibly accurate to do simple things like change the colour when applying colours to parts FIX THIS PLEASE!!!

[Denied_ID]

I’m still baffled on how icons are pretty much non-existent. I can take a guess that the checks are causing this indent rather than icons? Maybe it’s an internal thing where it only accepts checks, and basically all of these can be checked and unchecked internally. It’s a stretch, but maybe that’s why they still have no icons.

[TheVersion1DDevForum]

File < Beta Features < Next Gen Studio = off

Restart Studio

[ltsRealJr (One)]

i hate this new stupid meta of devs to prioritize looks over speed

[HealthyKarl]

I made a simulation where the icons are back New Explorer - Update - Feature Request Edition