A Survey of UI Layouts

[cilki]

Most sysinfo UIs have a two or three panel design. One for a high-level overview of the system and one containing specific details organized in a list or tree.

Speccy

Speccy probably has the overall best interface for it's simplicity. The information itself is organized into a tree which is intuitive and easy to navigate. Graphs are shown inline when asked, which is nice, but it seems like they should also be available somewhere else (together in one location).

Astra

Astra duplicates a lot of information which I think should be generally avoided. Astra's tree also mimics the Windows device manager which can become very deep for some components.

PC Wizard

The menu panel on the left is hideous, but I like how a high-level description is given for each category in the upper panel and the details are in the lower panel.

Design Takeaways

• Don't duplicate information
• Don't use large unlabeled icons
• Don't overdo it with trees
• Simple is better

I think we should go for a two panel layout with a small header section at the top containing version information, etc. The "categories" panel would be a list of categories which changes what's displayed in the main panel. The main panel would be organized as a tree, list, or whatever layout is most appropriate for the data.

Any other ideas?

[cilki]

Here's an example of the header I was talking about.

[dbwiddis]

I definitely like the single panel on the left with descriptive words. The Speccy layout is a good example.

When there is lots of info, the right hand side should be split into two panes, upper/lower. The upper will have info for the whole system (e.g., for processor, various overall system CPU specs, or for the OS, the version and build stuff, for networks the IP and gateway) while the bottom half could have a scrollable table (per-processor ticks, or process list, for networks the list of IFs, etc.)

[dbwiddis]

Here's apple's take on what I just said.