Feature Request UI/UX Improvements Suggestions

Hello, I am the developer for Survival City-Builder Darfall https://store.steampowered.com/app/1961600/Darfall/ and we are using the Localization package as our localization solution. As you can imagine, game like Darfall has quite an extensive localization, so we are using it quite often

I would like to add here some UI/UX suggestions we have came across while using this package, as they would make our work much easier and quicker, hopefully some of them can be implemented in the future, as I know the 1.5 release will already have some improvements.

I will split my post into separate threads, as this forums allows to upload only 5 images in total.

 

Go To Localization Shortcut



Currently this little button opens the Localization Tables window on page 1

but I think, in case a key is selected (in the picture its Darfall/CodexEntry_Armor_Desc) it should open the page where this key is located. A bonus would be that the page would also scroll vertically to that key entry, but that may be harder to implemented.

 

Hide Lanauges in UI


100% of the time, when we are developing a game, we are adding/modifying keys in english only, but as is in the picture, all the rest of languages are also present there. This is just not necessary, as developers will just modify single language here, and then export it for translators in .csv to translate the rest.

I would suggest that it would be possible to hide the rest of languages in this UI, this could be set in the localization settings somehwere.

Then the entire LocalizedString UI would be much less cluttered, and us developers could then easily just fill out only the data we need.

 

Hide "Add Locale" Button



A new locale into the game is added maybe once in a lifetime of the game, or once per several months, if new language is supported. This button does not really make sense, as 99.9% of the time in this UI part, developer wants to just add a key and set its value, or modify the key value. New locales are usually added via Localization Settings anyway:


I would suggest to either remove this button, or to add some checkbox into Localization Settings, whether this button should be shown in the LocalizedString inspector.

The same goes for Enable Fallback and Wait for Completion. We have not even once used these settings from this UI, and I presume other developers don't do this per each LocalizedString as well.


It would again remove unnecessary clutter from the LocalizedString UI.

 

Default Table Collection


I would suggest to be able to set a default Table Collection for any new LocalizedString. As for examle in our project, we have just a single Table Collection, and it just adds additional clicks to click on this dropdown, and select our only Table Collection from the dropdown for each LocalizedString.

There is some setting in the UI, but not sure it really works (String Table is Darfall), but new LocalizedStrings still have no default table collection selected.


This default collection could again be set in some settings (can be per project) and would save hundreds of additional clicks when creating new LocalizedStrings in the UI.

 

Scrollbar for LocalizedString Entry Value

The current text area for the entry value does not have a scrollbar, and its very hard and clunky to write longer text that does not fit into this area


I would suggest adding a scrollbar into this text area, as with other text are fields in the UI, as now, the only way how to scroll to text down is to use arrow keys on keyboard.

For example we only add and modify values in this UI, so this text area is used probably 99% of the time. So this UI improvement would really make a huge difference

 

"Smart" Localization Flag

The "Smart" localization checkbox is currently per each language, this does not make sense, as devs use smart localization for the entire text. Each translation for that key will have the smart tags, like {0} anyway, as these are not translated by translators.



The issue is, currently you need to click "Smart" for ALL the languages for a single translation, which is a nightmare and not usable.
Whats worse, if you add brand new langauge into your project, it will not be marked as smart, so every translation that should be smart will be broken for that new language. (I have tested it)

Suggestion:
Add a global "Smart" flag for entire LocalizedString instead per each language.

 

@karl_jones any news update the new update?

 

Something that bothers me constantly is the property drawer for LocalizedStrings not offsetting some fields correctly.



The fields with an X need to be offset by 2px. It is not enough to just use EditorUtility.labelWidth (has been that way for a while now).

Because Unity decided to do this in PrefixLabel method:

 

Nice one, thanks