Hello

I cannot believe that in certain threads 2.3.0 was hailed as a fix-all solution for all UI problems. Here is what's new (in terms of UI bugs and questionable features)

Help From Setup dialogs

Pressing the HELP button on setup dialogs seems to have no effect, however several minutes later, without any further request for activation of the help pages, the help index pops up.

Tooltips:

Tooltips do not adhere to standard Windows UI guidelines. It would appear that the text foreground color is hard-coded black but the background color is taken from the appearance settings, hence, if you have a setting of say, Yellow on Black to make tooltips stand out, all you get is a solid black line where the tooltip should be (black fore on black back).

File Monitor:

The file monitor still only adds a tiny fraction of new file entries to the "Shared" list, however, even if you cannot see a new file in the list, it is shared. You can only tell when people start downloading them though.

Removal of right-click menu options:

The "Clear" function has been removed from the right-click options of the "Uploads" section, also there no longer is a "Clear Failed" option at the bottom of the screen. If you want to keep your uploads list uncluttered and view only successful transfers, then it's tough cheese, it would seem, however so far no uploads have taken place so I do not know how BS2.3.0 manages the upload section.

UI Inconsistencies.

The right click options "Clear" and "Clear All" are present for the download section, but not for the upload section. The "Clear Failed" and "Clear Completed" options are present on the download section but not in the upload section.

Useless:

The setup menu has one entry for each of the tabbed section in the setup dialog, you gain nothing over the previous version (Setup button then choose section) but it gives inexperienced users the impression that certain settings can only be accessed via the appropriate entry in the setup menu, so if you have settings to change in several sections, a lot of people will now close the setup menu every time they have finished with one section and call up the setup menu again simply to change sections. OK there's plenty of.... silly people, that's why firms carry out detailed usability studies.

Additional.

The tiny little "Expert controls" and their tiny little section of the window is just play ugly. It would have looked A LOT BETTER had they been moved AT THE TOP, but since you have the tabs there and the controls are section-specific, you would have to redraw the entire window. I am not sure how that would look, but I doubt it could be worse than it is now.

OLD UI BUGS:

Still there, regardless of some threads that specifically stated that these would be cleared up.

The most annoying: Some windows (Web page, Initial web page) are not presented on screen. Only their title-bar button is present, clearly activated but with no window in sight. All you can do with these windows is to close them by right-clicking on their task bar button.

Bearshare reduced to the pilot lights:
Has always been this way, and it's still there even though the pilot lights themselves are now in the opposite screen corner.

Try this:

1) Double-click on the pilot lights to reduce Bearshare to the pilot lights strip.

2) VERSIONS UP TO 2.2.7: Move the pilot lights strip to the top-right hand corner of the screen.
VERSION 2.3.0: Move the pilot lights strip to the bottom left of the screen.

3) Double-click the pilot lights strip to restore Bearshare's window.

OOPS What is that ? the window is now 96% off screen, and what's more, if the window was maximized before you reduced it to the pilot strip, now you will find that you CANNOT MOVE IT. To fix it, right-click the task bar button and select "Restore".

When the user double-clicks the pilot lights strip, the window size and origin (coordinates) should be stored so that it can be restored to the same size and postion upon further request.

Weird selection shapes / Redraw Issues.

Have you ever tried selecting multiple items by drawing a box in the upload or download sections ? Like you do in Explorer ? It does not work but try this: hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse across the upload or download section, at first you will see the normal selection area box, but then as you keep moving the mouse around the screen (with button depressed, of course) all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes will appear.

Ever searched for a file whose name is considerably longer than the file name column width ? I cannot determine at what lenght this starts, but when the file name(s) you obtain from the search passes a certain length, the entire section flashes once per second or so as the section is made to redraw. This stops if you widen the file name column so that the whole file name becomes visible, and starts again if a longer named file arrives. It happens ONLY for the portion of the search results you have on screen at the time, so you might need to scroll up/down to see this.

So, the UI probelms are still there, compounded by new ones and some questionable interface designs.

Guys. Bearshare is a good application, it takes very little to sort out these problems but you have allowed some of them to exist ever since the beginning, you should also consider releasing test versions and requesting user input when you change the UI.