deskthority

Hi guys,

I didnt know which forum thread to post this in so I just posted it here under keyboards since this is the most visited part of the DT forum !?

My question is regarding our software. Some of you might not have used our software before but if you do (maybe the winners of the input device contest can comment on that ) please let me know what you find good and what you find can improve in our software.

But for those who have not used our software can check out the pictures below or can give us some feedback on what is essential in peripheral software and what you can miss?

Which of our competitions software would you find best? And why?

Examples of our current software: Thanks guys!

Regards,
Bram

Looking at the screenshots, an obvious request comes to mind: support more platforms besides Windows!

But it is a lot of work to write software several times over. And I'm not sure that many gamers use the Mac or Linux anyway.

What kind of features are we missing out on by not using your custom driver?

I am not sure how to say but I don´t like the design. It looks cheap and like it belongs to some cheap noname mouse.
(trigger and the first mouse screenshot)

Mizar looks a bit better

I agree with noobie; the first two screenshots look far too cluttered and the designs on the buttons makes it look cheap.

Cluttered, hard to read, tries very desperately (and miserably fails) to be "cool". Looks like it would be a PITA to actually try and use it.

What others say. Please, take a look at screenshots in my Roccat Savu review. The Roccat Linux Driver project makes use of PyGTK, which is multiplatform (the driver obviously isn't though) and reflects settings of user's desktop enviroment, i.e. looks and behaves relatively native—unlike those proprietary "gaming" apps, yours included.

Looking at the pictures, the font is hard to read, contrast is bad on my system, the GUI looks cluttered. Obviously using standard system widgets would help.

I don't care about the design as long as it's usable. Most people won't use this software anyway after they adjusted everything to their needs.

What would consider useful is a working export and import function to make profiles shareable. People could share their configs this way.

Daniel wrote:What would consider useful is a working export and import function to make profiles shareable. People could share their configs this way.

Good idea. Especially if was cross platform…

The look is too garish / custom UI for aesthetes like us. But then again so is the experience configuring the settings in more or less any Windows game.

Yeah, games ought to be hard.

I played around a bit with the Recon software. It's alright but not the worlds best for the mouse features. One thing I noticed is I couldn't figure out how to change the mouse light color with the DPI like it comes stock.

One config program I've always liked is the Dell Trackpad control panel that was used with the Alps Glidepoint trackpad models. It had a screen where it had the different settings for different features, like scrolling and buttons. It wasn't the fanciest program but it was functional.

+1 for linux and plain widgets

wheybags wrote:+1 for linux and plain widgets

+1 to this +1

davkol wrote:What others say. Please, take a look at screenshots in my Roccat Savu review. The Roccat Linux Driver project makes use of PyGTK, which is multiplatform (the driver obviously isn't though) and reflects settings of user's desktop enviroment, i.e. looks and behaves relatively native—unlike those proprietary "gaming" apps, yours included.

Looking at the pictures, the font is hard to read, contrast is bad on my system, the GUI looks cluttered. Obviously using standard system widgets would help.

+1000000000 to this

I've used the software shortly for the Storm Havoc mouse to switch out some buttons and turn off the LED. It worked really well, and the profiles are stored on the mouse itself so they should work even if plugged into a different computer.
But yeah, the interface looks like it's designed for 14-year old boys.

it's like a product manager said "ehy why pay for a graphics designer? my nephew --who cracked Photoshop-- can do very nice designs, look at this funny GIF he posted on imgur!"

It's common for most (windows) brands anyway.

Look at logitech


Asus


Intel


It's devastating how even big companies don't even try to invest in a nice drivers software.

I understand the need to reach a young/gamer audience, but you can do pretty things even with a futuristic UI

Kurk wrote:But yeah, the interface looks like it's designed for 14-year old boys.

Isn't that the primary target group for "gaming" mice?

TL;DR: Give up and go home.

The Logitech one looks nice — it uses some native controls, it's not cramped, and it makes tasteful use of colour. The picture of a mouse with a finger wheel, palm wheel and wheel-to-wheel spotlight/raygun is a bit odd, though.

The Intel window (and that's their old design) is just fugly and confusing (it's as confusing to use as it looks), and whoever designed the Asus window should be shot. Then resurrected and shot again.

The CM programs do appear to make sense, once you get over your "the goggles!" reaction (and since the goggles do nothing, you'll still get eye cancer off that software).

Ultimately, it's a very difficult problem. The Windows stock UI is pretty drab and sterile looking. I don't object to programs having a custom look, but it causes two problems. Firstly, the idiotic managers responsible for most of these products have no taste, so they'll sign off whatever garish garbage they end up with. Custom window designs typically aren't done for the right reasons or by anyone who has the necessary aesthetic sense that such a difficult task requires.

Secondly, the Windows GUI is very primitive. There is no per-process theming, and that is the first step to a correct solution: allow a program to bundle and load its own theme. Microsoft won't allow this, because they keep the theme system completely locked out (though there's a patch-free solution now—UxStyle—that modifies Windows at runtime but makes no permanent alterations, which lets me run a theme to have white title bar text in Windows 8, something Microsoft officially forbid me from doing).

However, it gets worse. The Windows native controls are anaemic. Something programmers frequently need is more complex controls, or more fine-grained control over how they appear and function. For example, I tried to get .NET to draw a slider without the tick marks, and so far as I can tell, that is fundamentally impossible. For 256-step sliders (RGB/HLS) the tick marks waste precious space and serve zero purpose, but I can't remove them.

This has always been an issue with the Web, since HTML was never intended to be used as a general-purpose GUI. is an issue that goes far beyond games and gaming-orientated drivers. I don't know of any GUI that has an intelligent control construction kit that permits creation of compound controls with intelligent application of visuals that can be themed easily. Custom controls on the Web (HTML+CSS+JS) are almost guaranteed to be mouse-only, and the browser has no say in the matter.

Go into Event Viewer in Windows Vista upwards, open the Filter Current Log dialog box for any event log, and try using the keyboard to operate the Event sources control. That's a custom control created by Microsoft that is completely messed up. It has an editable text box that is treated as read-only (anything you type in is discarded, which is extremely stupid). Pressing Escape closes the dialog instead of the dropdown. Type-to-find is single letter only: typing "eve" for "eventlog" takes you to E, then V, then back to E again. It's utterly pathetic.

And that's the other problem. Custom windows and controls frequently don't obey native behaviour rules or follow basic expectations, so they offer poor accessibility and poor ease of use. For people who prefer keyboard control over the mouse, you can often find that you're stuck: some of these custom windows don't respond to the keyboard at all. Even Microsoft don't get the basics right. In Windows 7, press the Windows key, type "Notepad" (for example), then the menu key: you get the context menu for Notepad. Now try it again, but press Shift+F10: you get the context menu for the search field. Microsoft couldn't even figure out how to make Menu and Shift+F10 do the same thing (this is fixed in Windows 8 though), so if they can't, what chance is there that Dumb Funge Co in Taiwan is going to make fake controls that actually work properly?

The Windows GUI is a minefield for absolutely everyone, as it's a rotting prehistoric mess. Windows Forms doesn't appear to be a lot better. The Web has been digging itself into huge holes for years with terrible fake UI, some in the name of arrogance, and some out of necessity from ending up in the difficult position of trying to do something with a platform never designed for those objectives.

Odd that this is one of those rare times when everyone doesn't slavishly clone Apple's stuff. The OS X configuration UI for mouse and trackpad is a fair step up from everything posted here. Certainly no sense of visiting the comic book store guy in Springfield. Keyboard configuration is the one where more would have to be invented, as Apple's options are pretty bare bones.

By the way, what does the built in equivalent look like on Ubuntu, <insert preferred other distro here>, Chrome OS and Android? Hell, even the Microsoft Surface if it does this in Metro! It's been a while since I dug into any of them, so it's an honest question. Could be lots to learn there too.

I remember that Chrome OS seems to do it well but can't remember specifics.

The Linux ones in Ubuntu's Unity desktop and GNOME (due to the same settings program used in both) are quite reasonable. But then again, they're not full-fledged macro-assignments or other "gamer" bits. They're (of course) themed with your desktop (via GTK settings), so mine looks a bit like this:



I was going to call them simplistic, but I'm not really sure what other settings I'd want here on my laptop.

I remember that Chrome OS has an "Australian Mode" for two-finger touchpad control (a la new OSX), but then again I don't think I ever wanted to activate it.

That's actually a really nice theme!

That's one part about Linux desktops that I really like compared to the Windows desktop - so many themes and you can basically change anything!

If you're interested, I think it's based on Numix with the desktop font set to Open Sans Regular 10.

Those screenshots present everything I dislike. I seriously dislike the "gamer" style. That's probably the reason why I never liked anything from CM, apart from the upcoming novatouch, which I'm really looking forward to (minus the caps and font on them, of course).

Then again, I have yet to find gaming peripherals software that was done in a tasteful fashion. I suppose Logitech is closest to that, but it's clunky and bloated, so I only used it once to set my mouse up and then store the settings on mouse itself.

Ideally, peripheral software would be clean, very fast, intuitive and not bloated. Hell, it would not even write to the registry. Creative's new Sound Blaster software is pretty close to that, the problem is it takes a few seconds to open and close - even on a top notch machine. For example.

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: The Logitech one looks nice — it uses some native controls, it's not cramped, and it makes tasteful use of colour. The picture of a mouse with a finger wheel, palm wheel and wheel-to-wheel spotlight/raygun is a bit odd, though.

they clearly know nothing about spacing. They mix native windows controls with custom ones. They haven't decided if they want flat tabs (on the left), glossy tabs at the top or --again-- default windows UI (in the middle). The various screens in the many tabs are inconsistent, some are just blank pages with a solitary text in the middle. It's just a confusing UX in a slightly acceptable UI.

I had a Razer mouse before, a Diamondback 3G to be exact, and it had the worse software in the world. It was hardly usable and it gave you are hard time if you wanted to even just change the dpi.
The Logitech gaming software on the other hand is very, very nice (ignore the ugly CoD logo, I got it cheap):
I like how it it not cluttered and looks very clean compared to every-other-gaming-peripheral-software. Also, everything you need is presented in one window. No tabs necessary or anything like that, and best of all, it doesn't try to look fancy with the fake glass effect on buttons/tabs or whatever!

That's funny, LGS is one of the worst "mouse drivers" I've ever used. Unnecessary animations that lagged on my C2D, confusing modes (one remapped stuff on software level only, both looked very similar and I was never sure, which one was active).

Alright alright I already see some very good feedback here..

Interface must be clean, OS Support, Sharing settings, ease of use, ...

Would it also be appriciated to implement more products into 1 software? For example if you have aCM keyboard and CM mouse that you now need 2 software programm's. Would it be a good added value to have into 1 software (like logitech)

Of course!

CM Bram wrote:Would it also be appriciated to implement more products into 1 software? For example if you have aCM keyboard and CM mouse that you now need 2 software programm's. Would it be a good added value to have into 1 software (like logitech)

that's very simple!

As a purist I have to say "A mouse which requires software is a bad mouse" I like to plug in the gnawer and play!

cookie wrote:As a purist I have to say "A mouse which requires software is a bad mouse" I like to plug in the gnawer and play!

let's say that an OS that needs a software to operate a mouse is laughable.

Agreed! If we need specialised software for a mouse, keyboard etc. it better be for some non-standard functionality like storing macros in the device's flash memory, etc and not drivers for it...