It's a common heard complaint that the Bitcoin client looks unattractive, is not user-friendly, etc. - basically, it doesn't invite people to use it. I've spent the past day or so on making an interactive mockup that will hopefully solve that issue.
This design is targeted at novice non-techie users, not at tech-savvy users.Before you read any further, read this again:
If you are tech-savvy and think "I would never use that, too shiny" - you are not understanding the purpose of this proposal. Read the above again.
On to the proposal.
I have an interactive mockup at
http://www.cryto.net/projects/bitcoin_ui/ - it will only work properly in Chrome, Firefox, and similar modern browsers, as CSS3 is rather heavily used. For those that do not have a modern browser, a few screenshots follow:
(the wallet screen)
http://owely.com/51dNOFE (the Address book)
http://owely.com/5z09ah (the New address screen)
Some additional information:Due to the absence of a date/time column in the transaction lists (to keep it simple and non-intimidating for novice users), this should be shown in a tooltip or similar, to make sure the exact date and time of a transaction are still within the users' reach.
The idea of the address book is to instruct users to label their new addresses after the person they give it to - this way the transaction list can just show 'from John' rather than a vague address.
Some things (like the Own address / Address of someone else tabs) are not implemented in the mockup, as the workings are more or less obvious.
This is not a proposal to
replace the current UI of the Bitcoin client, but rather a proposal to add a new default UI so that novice users can get started easily. There should always be an option to revert to the 'old UI', for those that wish to do so.
Whether you are working on the main Bitcoin client, an alternative client, or a web wallet, feel free to implement this (although in the case of a web wallet, I would suggest rewriting some of the code as the HTML/CSS is very very messy right now).
Feedback is welcome.
EDIT: If you want to take the design, and change it around, feel free to do so as well.
