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Auctioneer::Technical: SearchUI: Ways to overcome the required hardware input when buying/bidding an item.

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    • CommentAuthorSNiLD
    • CommentTimeOct 6th 2008
     
    Currently if you press a Buy First/Bid/Buyout button from the SearchUI interface you will get a popup window requesting you to confirm your action. I've heard that this is because Blizzard requests a "hardware input" from the user to confirm bids/buyouts to prevent automation. I don't know how the system works under the hood and I don't know what kind of tools the API provides but here are some ways that quickly comes to my mind to overcome the issue:

    If you can hook mouse-over events then you could create a request when user mouseovers bid/buyout button. After that the button would go gray and when the request is complete the button would come available as red/(green if changing the button color on the fly is possible) to confirm the bid/buyout.

    If there is no mouse-over event hooks then you could disable the bid button after the user has pressed it and enable it when the actual request returns requiring user input (the button could be green again if that's possible). The button also could read "confirm" if changing the button labels is possible.
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      CommentAuthordinesh
    • CommentTimeOct 6th 2008
     
    I'm not really sure what you're proposing. If I'm reading you correctly, both your suggestions would still require two key clicks to get from a search result in SUI to a confirmed purchase, but you're just saying we should re-use the buttons that currently exist, rather than popping up a new dialog. while that might work, it would also break the ability to queue up multiple purchases, then confirm them all in a row.

    Unless you're suggesting that just mousing over the bid or buyout buttons would cause the bid process to proceed, which might be doable, but would be contrary to standard user interface design and would be quite confusing to users, and not particularly user friendly. I suppose it could be an advanced option or something. It would also break the queuing described above.
    • CommentAuthorccox
    • CommentTimeOct 6th 2008
     
    At the moment we currently require 3 clicks: one to select the line item, one to bid/buyout, and another to confirm the bid/buyout.

    Yes, I think he wants to avoid the extra dialog (as do I) -- making it act more like the auction house bid/buy.
    • CommentAuthorRockSlice
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    I don't think this is actually feasible.

    The PlaceAuctionBid() function doesn't give any immediate feedback on whether it succeeded or not, and if there's no hardware event, it doesn't give any feedback at all.

    There's also no function to check for hardware events, so it looks like we may be SOL on this one, unless there's someone who can figure some way around that.
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      CommentAuthorHirsute
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    Would it be possible to have checkboxes/or just multiple highlighting in the SearchUI, then press the bid/buy button to bid/buy on all selected auctions, bringing up a prompt for each one individually once the search was done, it would reduce the buying some, at least, and it looks like most of that is already there, just the ability to queue multiple auctions up at once would need to be written.
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      CommentAuthordinesh
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    multi-select in scrollframe is my #1 wish list item right now. it isn't currently possible.
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      CommentAuthorNechckn
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    Anyone who missed the IRC discussion,

    The title may make it sound a bit "off", just to clarify, this is not talking about circumventing any of Blizzard's checks and balances- we are simply trying to make the SearchUI as user friendly as possible, within those bounds.

    Happy Sales,

    Nikk :shades:
    • CommentAuthorSNiLD
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    It wasn't obvious that you can queue stuff with the pop-up window open and I didn't know such a feature existed before you told that. Thanks for that.
    For queuing items you could have a queue button and reserve the bid/buyout buttons just for confirming the actions. This way it would be more obvious to the user as well that the items are inserted into a queue.

    The problem is not the amount of mouse clicks but where you have to click. When the confirmation window pop-ups evidently further from your cursor you have to keep moving the mouse to confirm every click. This does not reduce the amounts of clicks to one. You could reduce the amounts of clicks to one if you did the request when the item was highlighted from the table (with the assumption that the user is going to click the suggested button, bid or buyout). Sometimes the user doesn't want to press that but at those times it's OK to do a second request.

    In a nutshell:
    Highlight item -> Request bid or buyout (based on the suggestion given by the appropriate module).
    User pushes bid/buyout button -> The auction is confirmed.

    If the user pushes other button than what the request was for, a new request will be generated and a second click on that button is required to confirm the bid/buyout.
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      CommentAuthordinesh
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    how are you highlighting items, if not by clicking?
    • CommentAuthorSNiLD
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    Posted By: dineshhow are you highlighting items, if not by clicking?


    Sorry I should've said "you could reduce the amount of clicks by one" instead of "You could reduce the amounts of clicks to one" my mistake.
    • CommentAuthorRockSlice
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2008
     
    Posted By: SNiLDif you did the request when the item was highlighted from the table

    I'd considered this. The problem remains that the auction still isn't guaranteed to be there at the moment you click SearchUI's button (you may not even be at the AH), which means we'd still need some way to tell if a hardware event was active (which we don't have)
    • CommentAuthormes
    • CommentTimeOct 15th 2008
     
    No, his suggestion makes sense. You'd still get a confirmation but you'd only be clicking the item, then the confirm buttom.

    Now, you have to click the item, then buy/bid, *then* the confirm button.

    That said, I'm still not sure I like the proposed interface much better than the current one.

    I think the ability to multiple select and queue a whole bunch of items at once would be the best option. You'd still need to do an extra click for each item at the confirm stage, but at least getting the items queued would take less time.

    That said, the fact that you skip to the next item after queueing a bid, and keep a queue of requests, *and* offer an ignore for session only button right next to the bid/buy buttons is a half-decent workaround. I may be able to get used to making a decision on every item for the session, in which case this will work about as well as hirsute's proposed method.

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