If you’ve been following our recent blog posts, you’ll know we have an exciting update coming to MIDAS! You may also have noticed from early screenshots we’ve already posted from this update that the default visual “theme” has also gone through some changes…..
The previous “Default” theme: (MIDAS v3)
The new “Default” theme: (MIDAS v4)
The new “Metro” inspired default theme that will ship with MIDAS v4 will feature slightly larger icons than previous themes – the reasons behind this are two-fold;
1) Larger Screen Resolutions
Firstly, screen resolutions are generally getting larger – for many years the most common screen resolution was 1024 x 768 pixels. A recent study found that currently the most common screen resolution in use is 1366 x 768. As people choose screens with higher and higher resolutions, graphical items appear comparatively “smaller” on screen.
2) Touch Screens
Secondly, touch screen devices (such as tablets and iPads) are now common place, and with the eagerly anticipated release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system later this year (which is very much geared towards touch screen devices), we expect the number of touch-enabled devices to increase dramatically.
If you’re familiar with touch screen devices, you’ll know it can sometimes be frustrating trying to accurately “tap” a very small target area on screen.
Microsoft have conducted extensive research on fingers and touch screens. They discovered that the average width of a human finger is 11mm. As targets for tapping get larger, the percentage of accidental missed taps drops off quickly. Therefore, ideally, a tap target should be at least 11mm (about 40px) in size.
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| “Add Bookings” icon (MIDAS v3) 30 x 30 pixels | “Add Bookings” icon (MIDAS v4) 40 x 40 pixels |
In the previous “default” theme for MIDAS, the main toolbar icons were 30 x 30 pixels in size. In the new “default” theme, toolbar icons are now 40 x 40 pixels in size.
Notifications have also been made more prominent on toolbar icons for MIDAS v4:
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| Buttons in MIDAS v3 | Buttons in MIDAS v4 |
We’ve also increased the size of other buttons and some text elements – all in an effort to make MIDAS more accessible to tablet, iPad, and other touch screen users, and those using higher resolution screens!
We hope you’ll like the new look for MIDAS v4, but if you don’t, no problem! – There will be a version of the previous MIDAS v3 default theme available for v4 as well!
We’ll be keeping a close eye on Windows 8 as it draws ever closer to a full release later this year. It’s currently in “Beta” – or as Microsoft are now calling it “Consumer Preview”. We have already tested our