HIG help: how to handle multiple views of the same data

FROM : Scott Ellsworth
DATE : Mon Apr 18 21:31:15 2005

Hi, all.

I am seeking opinions about how to make my interface less crufty. See 
screenshots at <http://homepage.mac.com/fuz/astro.jpg> and <http://
homepage.mac.com/fuz/side.jpg>.

This app that displays a game board and data for all pieces in the 
main window - astro.jpg - and a drawer containing data on the current 
selected piece, plus some display prefs pulldowns.

The main window is a custom NSView for the board, and an NSTableView 
for the list of pieces, contained in an NSSplitView.

Next to the scrollers for the game board, I have a game board zoom 
popup, a navigation popup to show just a segment of the board, and a 
popup for the style of piece shown on the board.  These controls are 
used a lot.

I also have a drawer for an inspector, which shows details of the 
selected piece, and some pulldowns that color certain pieces on the 
game board.  The pulldowns are used too often to go into a prefs pane 
that takes any real time to get.  Keeping them open all the time has 
to be an option.

This is rather crowded, and I think my interface is suffering for it.

The resulting questions:

1.  Should the table view and the game board be in separate windows? 
Clicking on the board selects that row in the view, and vice versa.

2.  Should the "color the map" popups be moved to a separate floating 
pallete?  If I do that, would that be a good place to put the zoom, 
filter, and type popups currently in the scroll bar?

3.  Is a drawer the best place to put an item inspector?  Would a 
floating window be better?

This is currently an NSDocument-based application.  Am I going to 
just suffer when I try to convert it to a multi-window app?

Scott