Big Box: The selected item can be ambiguous

[Brian Kendall]

LaunchBox version: 12.3
Windows version: 8.1
How often the issue occurs: every time

This is somewhere between a bug report and an enhancement request.

When using Big Box, sometimes it can be ambiguous which item in the user interface is selected. This can be seen using many of Big Box’s themes, but the one I’m using to demonstrate it us CriticalZoneV2. (Either default or BlueBox works.) To do so:

1. Select a platform that has recent or favorited games
2. Move the selection from the platform list to one of the recent or favorited games

There will now be two items on screen that have a blue selection box highlighting them. See the following screen shot:

This is annoying because my eye is trained to go for the first blue highlighted item it sees, which is frequently the more prominent lefthand menu. I’ll then start pressing buttons and get confused as to why I didn’t pick the thing I thought I did!

User interface conventions and best practices say that only one item on screen should be highlighted as active or selected so that the user’s eye can easily pick it out and know what element will be acted on by the keyboard (or in this case a game controller). For a hierarchy of selected items (which is what this is) selected items up the hierarchy should use a different color, generally gray or a less saturated version of the selection color.

Here’s what the above screenshot would look like when fixed:

I can easily tell Super Mario World is selected now!

This is a small detail but would actually be a big quality of life improvement for me. Maybe other people feel the same way too?