[UX] visual hover feedback on objects and in/outlets

[ben-wes]

adding this as discussion since it's not a clear issue and there could be different solutions ...

plugdata shows hover/mouseover feedback in a different way than vanilla:

• vanilla changes cursor appearance (most remarkably the circle on in/outlets for creating connections)
• plugdata changes appearance of the objects to be interacted with

both are valid and support proper interaction. personally, i like the visual feedback on the object very much (actually, both options could be combined as well).

one thing that confused me when using plugdata is the way that in/outlets are highlighted (i.e. displayed as actual circles) when hovering the object. to me, this implies that an interaction in this context will affect the in/outlets, while the actual interaction will be related to the object (moving it).

when hovering the in/outlets, the additional visual cue is very subtle (only slightly larger display of a single in/outlet), which imo makes it hard to anticipiate whether i'll be moving the object and creating a connection.

a suggestion i would make here: don't highlight in/outlets when hovering object interaction area and highlight the object itself in that case (would give a better hint on the possible drag-interaction - and i think, i've seen hover-feedback implemented by alex?). only highlight in/outlets when inside their interaction area, which would clearly indicate the connect-interaction there.