moonif / macbox Goto Github PK

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I just installed MacBox for the first time ever, and noticed some unnecessary "friction" when trying to click a toolbar icon:

1. I tried to "Add VM" ("+") but my click was silently discarded (because the "hitbox" of the button is way too small: technically my mouse cursor was actually hovering over the text "Add VM" but that shouldn't matter)
2. I was also expecting a tooltip to appear when hovering over the button(s) (even though there's already some text e.g. "Add VM")
3. Also, there was no visual feedback when hovering over the button(s): the normal "button shape" UI feedback didn't appear

Describe the solution you'd like

1. Make the "hitboxes" much bigger to make it easier to click them (see mockup / screenshot further below)
2. Add descriptive tooltips when hovering over the button(s) (for example: I can only guess what "Printer Tray" might mean in this context, and the same goes for "Screenshots")

• tooltip: "Create or Import a Virtual Machine"
• tooltip: "Show Printer Tray for selected Virtual Machine" (??)
• tooltip: "Show Screenshots Folder in Finder" (??)

3. Show visual UI feedback when hovering over the button(s) (i.e. show "button shape", see screen recording + screenshot further below)

Describe alternatives you've considered
I guess the alternative is to not do anything, but I honestly can't see any downside to making these tweaks.

Additional context
Mockups / screenshots:

1. Make the "hitboxes" much bigger, also allow clicking on the text etc:

3. Example screen recording of the "button shape" UI feedback that appears in other applications when hovering over toolbar buttons (example from Finder.app)

Screenshot of the same thing:

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I don't think it's ever necessary to clutter the UI of an application by always having version information visible in the main UI. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other application that feels the need to always show it. Version information can normally be found (only) in the About dialog.

Describe the solution you'd like
Hide the version information from the main UI. I can't think of a valid reason why it should always be visible, except as a needless placeholder for an occasional reminder to update the application, but it's better to just explicitly show a dialog or something and automatically offer to update MacBox and its components when necessary (and not clutter the main UI at all times).

Describe alternatives you've considered
If the user wants to find out what the current version number is for some reason, the standard way is to use the About dialog (maybe the current "Version status: up-to-date" text can be added there too, with a button to update if necessary).

I hate unnecessary preferences, but even a user preference (default behavior: hide the version info) would be better. I really hope it doesn't come to that though.

Additional context
Here's an example from Whisky. When Whisky notices that its component "GPTK" has an update available, it shows a dialog box:

This is the normal update dialog for Whisky application updates:

It would be great if you could change the key combo for capture/free the mouse. I am using MacBox on my Laptop and the default keys are hard to find :-)
Maybe there is an option for that in 86box.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Adding directories straight to /Users/username (i.e. the user's home directory) should be avoided at all cost, especially on macOS. Applications should never add anything straight to ~ unless explicitly requested by the user.

Just think of what would happen if every macOS application added their own stuff straight to /Users/username by default (yuck)

Describe the solution you'd like
Please use ~/Library/whatever (or /Applications!), or almost anything else. The user's Unix home directory should remain uncluttered.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I haven't used MacBox (or 86Box) enough to understand what might have been the motivation to use ~ by default instead of e.g. /Applications or /Library/whatever. I'm already pretty sure I wouldn't be convinced by the (technical?) reason though. :)

I really hope this is at least just a temporary hack/workaround, and that things will be fixed in the future.

Additional context
Even Linux applications don't do this. I found issues like this for other projects too, but I don't think it would be tactful or relevant to add links here.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
It's frustrating that you can't see the disk name clearly. I have to try shrinking the header panes but then i can't see the ID and the the size etc...

Describe the solution you'd like
Well im guessing at some point there needs to be an option here to denote LBA and not just CHS - so the panel will get wider... perhaps horizontal scrollbar although i cringe as I suggest it. Perhaps you just show the final part of the pathname, and allow you to double lclick on this to get a popup with full pathname??

By the way - think its great, makes using 86box much easier

I'm trying to figure out why 86box won't run. I get this error:

86Box could not find any usable ROM images. Please [download](https://github.com/86Box/roms/releases/latest) a ROM set and extract it into the "roms" directory.

But ... I'm not really sure where to put this. What folder do I download the ROM into?

For some reason, MacBox can't find my virtual machine. It searches everywhere, but nothing pops up. I've tried to add it myself, but I have no idea what files it is looking for and where to find them.
Any ideas, what I'm doing wrong?

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Here are some suggestions on how to make things easier and less confusing for brand new users (who have never seen MacBox UI before), i.e. improve their first impression of MacBox by tweaking the UI when there are no VMs yet, which is what every new user will experience.

• When there are no VMs yet, the "Printer Tray" and "Screenshots" buttons are not functional -> I think they should be hidden until they become relevant (i.e. until a VM is selected)
• When there are no VMs yet, there are 1+4 mysterious "-" symbols in the UI + 3 random words and icons + more broken buttons below
• Also, when there are no VMs yet, the user has to first figure out that "+" must be clicked to actually start using the application

Screenshot:

Describe the solution you'd like
Remove UI elements when they are not needed (when there are no VMs yet):

• Hide "Printer Tray" and "Screenshots"
• Don't show VM specific stuff yet: hide "Name", "-", "Description", "Specifications", "-", "-", "-" and "-", icons and buttons

Instead of the VM info stuff, show helpful stuff instead, e.g. yet another hint on how to add a new VM (see further below for more details)

Describe alternatives you've considered
Don't hide confusing UI items when they are not yet needed, and let new users figure things out themselves :)

Additional context
I think UTM does this well, please consider doing something similar:

• UTM hides unnecessary VM specific buttons when no VM is selected
• UTM shows help items (for example a VM gallery link and a hint on how to add a new VM) in the area where VM details will later appear when a VM is selected

(PS. UTM also uses a Sidebar which one could argue sort of looks "more modern", however I personally would remove the "Hide Sidebar" button because I think it's an unnecessary footgun for beginners)

Screenshot: UTM when there are no VMs created yet

Screenshot: "normal" UTM when there are VMs

I'm trying to compile the March/latest version using XCode 14.2 (14C18) and it's reporting the following error in a system dialog box upon opening the xcodeproj file: "The project at ‘/XCode/MacBox-mainMar/MacBox.xcodeproj’ cannot be opened because it is in a future Xcode project file format. Adjust the project format using a compatible version of Xcode to allow it to be opened by this version of Xcode."

I just tried to open/recompile the version of MacBox from January (1/9/24) and it did not report this error. Any idea what might be causing this?

Thanks!
Rich

Running MacBook 0.3.8, today a new release became available (apparently!) and the new release alert box comes up. Clicking "dismiss" closes the box, but it instantly reappears. This happened about 10 times in a row. After quitting and restarting MacBox, the same behavior ocurred, but less frequently. Finally, it seems to only appear once per run on startup, but then the version check seems to re-run and it pops up again some time later.

One click of "dismiss" per invocation should be enough :).

To Reproduce
Have MacBox open when a new release comes available.

Expected behavior
Clicking "dismiss" should prevent this dialog from appearing for the lifetime of the current invocation, or at least, for a good long time (or maybe ask for "remind me in X days", or offer "never ask again for this version", etc.).

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Let's pretend a brand new user downloads MacBox.app.zip for the first time ever and because there's no hint to drag MacBox.app to /Applications, the user accidentally launches it straight from e.g. ~/Downloads
-> I think MacBox should offer to automatically move the application to /Applications instead (the standard place for macOS apps).

Describe the solution you'd like
Offer to automatically move the application to /Applications (see further below for details)

Describe alternatives you've considered
Another alternative would be to distribute MacBox as a disk image and try to persuade/trick the user to move the application to /Applications manually (i.e. the "standard" way to install macOS apps...)

I think running apps from the "macOS standard place" should be encouraged. I can't think of a valid reason not to run MacBox.app from /Applications.

Additional context
Several other applications offer to automatically move their .app file to /Applications if launched from a non-standard place. I think they might be using this or something similar: https://github.com/potionfactory/LetsMove/

Example screenshot:

Using the Voiceover screenreader, I can't choose a template. It seems like the list is some kind of non-standard interface element (Voiceover announces it as a 'combo box'), where visually I assume it is a table? Is there a way to fix this? There are also a couple of unlabelled buttons on the main screen that presumably have graphical icons but no text label so VoiceOver simply reads them as "button", the remove button for machines for example.