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UI/UX & Product Guidelines

These guidelines define the workflow refinements, accessibility rules, and product constraints for the application interface.

Accessibility & Preserved Decisions

  • Orthogonal Preset Systems: Strict separation of Color Themes, Typography, and Export Templates. Writers can mix and match without coupling.
  • Quick Contrast & Saturation (Non-Destructive Filter): Global sliders to relieve eye strain. These must operate purely as a runtime transform in the C# rendering pipeline and never mutate the underlying stored theme values.
  • Keyboard Navigation Parity: Ensure all UI elements have full keyboard equivalents (no "dragging only" workflows).
  • Translation: The interface utilizes native C# Avalonia resource dictionaries (.resx or equivalent), fully discarding the legacy Node-based JSON dictionary approach.
  • Interface Scaling: Interface text is resizable independently from the manuscript text zoom.

Workflow Refinements

  • System Theme Auto-Detection: The C# UI must default to match the OS system theme natively, providing a "System" mode toggle alongside the explicit Light/Dark switch.
  • Unobtrusive Theme Switching: Discard the jarring app-wide theme swap. Implement small, unobtrusive color circle toggles in the UI (greyed out when un-hovered) for quick palette swapping.
  • Decoupled Theming: Outline boundary lines, scrollbar colors, and scene breaks must be decoupled from generic UI lines in the Avalonia theme palette so they can be independently customized.
  • Outline Contextual Scoping: Contextual commands (like Rename or Delete) in the Outline's right-click menu or via Shift+Del must strictly act on the selected outline item holding focus, not the currently open manuscript chapter.
  • Focus-Driven UI Logic:
    • Shifting focus back to the writing space should automatically close the Outline panel if it was opened via a temporary focus shift.
    • "Shift focus to Outline" split into two explicit behaviors: Focus from current chapter vs Focus from top.
  • Outtake Escapability: Outtakes cannot be "escaped" into a void. Closing an outtake must return the writer to the origin chapter it came from.
  • Book Homepage UX:
    • Chapter lists are single-click to open, double-click to trigger inline renaming.
    • Set-aside chapters list must be interactive on the homepage.
    • The "Author" field collapses when empty to avoid visual clutter.
  • Quick Canvas Return: A dedicated "Show Desktop" style shortcut to immediately return the user to the lowest-level writing canvas from any higher-level view.