For me, PA is the most valuable addon available and I think it's great that you are putting in such effort to work out the issues you have identified. Thank you for creating this awesome tool!
I am going to try to offer some constructive feedback based on my use of the live version and my testing of the alpha for the new one. If my feedback can be of use to you I’m glad, and if it cannot then I understand, it is probably because I have not fully understood what you are trying to achieve.
About the UI...
What I find most problematic about the alpha UI at the moment is that the distinction between the Aura Browser and the Aura Editor is a bit confusing. In short, I think you are trying to do too much in the Aura Editor while not letting the Aura Browser manage some of the things that it ought to. I will go into more detail about what I mean.
In version 4, we used to have separate pages that contained auras (arranged in matrices), and as I understand it, what you now create and call “Auras” in the Aura Browser correspond to what those pages used to be. They are “containers” in which you can keep your different sets of auras. In turn, what used to be called Auras are now called Displays and these now exist only in the Aura Editor—you both select which one to edit and edit it within the Aura Editor.
So effectively, it’s like the Aura Editor isn't just the editor but also behaving as the browser for the different Displays within an "Aura", thus housing some of the utility that the Aura Browser used to. This leads to the structural depth of the Aura Editor becoming very large while the Aura Browser isn’t as useful anymore because it’s not very often that I switch which group of auras that I am working with (not as often as I toggle between individual Auras/Displays, at least).
I used to be able to create/delete/select my Aura/Display in one window (Browser) and then immediately be presented with editing options in the other (Editor). Now I basically have to do all of this in the Aura Editor window which leads to a lot of clicking back and forth in the structure. Is there a reason that I don’t understand for why some of the tasks of the Browser have been shifted over to the Editor? At the moment it just feels like the Editor has become confusing, click-intensive and cumbersome to work with.
I think it’s a great step to stop having a set number of pages that can contain a set number of auras and instead work with more abstract “containers” of auras. But why are these containers currently called “Auras” and why are the auras themselves called “Displays”? Why not just say that an Aura can now be a texture, a text, a counter/timer, a time bar, etc and these can be organized in something called Groups?
On some of my characters I use between 50 and 100 auras. In those cases it’d be great to have elaborate ways of organizing them but I also realize that many people probably settle for making 5 to 10 auras and are happy to just have them stored in one simple group. Thinking about the alpha of the new PA gave me the following idea, which is really just an idea and I have no clue how well it fits with either your design intent or the coding behind PA—but for a moment, suppose the following:
Within the Browser you can create Auras and Groups. An Aura can be a texture/text/timer/etc. A Group has no visual representation on the screen but can contain other Groups and/or Auras. (So it’s basically like a hierarchical folder/file system.) Now, while the Group doesn’t have any visual representation on the screen, it still has its own positioning parameters (just a non-visual anchor point), and can have its own activation triggers (which are then inherited by any Groups/Auras within the group). So, for example, if you have a number of Auras that you want visible only when you are in combat, you can make that a trigger for the Group and then you don’t have to set each Aura within the Group to only display when in combat.
I also see a potential here that it might make for performance increases since it might then be possible to program the addon so that it will know that it can ignore trying to evaluate any triggering parameters of the individual Auras within a Group if the Group itself isn’t triggered. A system like this could accommodate very complex collections of Auras, while at the same time, for the user that is satisfied making just 5 to 10 Auras, he/she doesn’t need to worry about creating any Groups or the complexity that can be achieved thereby. So it is up to the individual user’s needs how advanced and deep the structure of this part of the addon becomes.
So basically, the Aura Browser would handle Auras and Groups in terms of create/delete, cut/copy/paste, import/export and selection. Whenever an Aura or Group is selected, its properties are opened for editing in the Aura Editor window. (The Aura Editor would now be a relatively shallow structure, not needing the breadcrumbs anymore, but instead the Aura Browser might require some sort of breadcrumbs structure to handle going back up in the Group hierarchy.) And, as already said, triggers and positioning (maybe even a scale multiplier) would be inherited through the Group hierarchy.
I realize that this design might be far from feasible when compared to current design intents and I’m sure you can see many problems with it, but I wanted to share it none the less as an idea that I think would make the UI work better at least for someone using PA the way I do.
I also realize I haven’t mentioned anything about how custom made triggers or sources would work in this design but that is because I don’t feel like I yet understand how you mean for them to work on the whole. I would imagine though that the Browser would also handle the creation/deletion/selection of these and that the Editor would then be where their properties were handled.
I made a visual example of how I imagined the Browser possibly working in case my explanation in text managed to be unclear. I hope you don’t take offense to me playing around with your design so directly. I in no way mean that my suggestion is flawless and I fully understand if it is of no use to you in any way.
