Five dots under block time are confusing

[0xB10C]

This is more a design issue rather then a technical one. Feel free to close or move if this is not the right place.

I found the five dots under "Blocktime" as pictured below to be confusing. My intuition on a Android phone was to swipe or tap on them to go to other screens / block clock designs. I this always paused my IBD. I think this are two separate problems.

1. It's not clear that clicking on the blocktime will pause the IBD.
2. The dots don't really convey that we don't have connections or are opening connections.

[hebasto]

cc @GBKS

[GBKS]

Thanks for reporting. Others had this feedback also. We have explored ideas around making individual parts of the block clock interactive, with proper tool tips and all.

Hit zones might be something like in the image below. You wouldn't see these, but this shows the separate areas, each one with a different function.

A tool tip exploration for when hovering (or tapping mobile) the peers dots.

Some ideas:

• Tap the logo to pause/resume
• Tap the text to switch between block time and time since last block
• Tap peers to navigate to the peers screen
• Tap the progress dial to... toggle size maybe?

Definitely something we need to revisit.

[epiccurious]

Accidentally pausing during IBD isn't intuitive for a new user or for someone familiar with the standard Core IBD process. (Standard Bitcoin Core has no "single click to pause" functionality). I accidentally left the node paused more than once, including overnight and lost time.

Another idea that I prefer over a "pause" hitbox would be:

• tapping inside the circle to show a message "Hold for three seconds to pause" then require the user to hold down a tap for 3 seconds inside the circle before pausing the node.

This would require a more deliberate action that a single tap and reduce frustration from users.

[epiccurious]

Normally, interactive UI elements with horizontal dots are three dots (ellipsis). What is the rationale for using five dots instead of three?

[GBKS]

By three dots, are you referring to option buttons? If so, that's quite a different UI context. Dots can be used in various ways, like for pagination - one dot per page - often used in areas where you can horizontally swipe between content panels. I don't think there's an issue with using 5 dots here. Each represents 20% of the target number of peers we need for a good connection. 5 is a nice number that can convey the right amount of detail and it's easy to visually grasp quickly (for example, it would be harder to count active dots if there were 10).