FEATURE REQUEST - Disable or toggle on/off the forced Discord overlay in the Glowforge interface

It is just distracting, annoying, and useless. Glowforge, you should not only listen to your users but take immediate action to remediate our concerns. We are the reason for the company existence.

If you have time to create a downgraded version (aka Aura) instead of improving the already aging GF, you certainly have time to make this “feature” optional.

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yep, my experience exactly, came here to say this. It’s fine if they want to add that as a feature, some people might like it, but it should be optional and easy to disable.

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We hear your feedback, so thank you for letting us know your thoughts on our chat feature. This is all being passed along to our team and documented. Thank you!

Please give us an ETA on when we will have the ability to turn off the chat window. Thank you.

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This is an interesting thread. I have a Glowforge theory that makes me believe we just need to give up the belly-aching and accept that the Discord overlay is here to stay. First, a disclaimer. I bought my first GF on the first day of crowdsourcing and waited somewhat impatiently 2 years for its arrival. I’ve been pleased with my GF and even bought a second one. I am NOT a GF hater. That having been said, I have come to realize that the folks at GF don’t care what their customers think. They believe they know what is best for the customer and that’s what they intend to provide. As someone who has been on the GF boards from the beginning, it’s actually funny to go back and read all the requests that been submitted. “It’s going into the hopper” made folks feel their input was being considered, but it was the modern equivalent of sending them the old “bedbug letter”. Today, there is a software developer/manager at GF that put the Discord panel in and is bound and determined it will stay in. Live with it folks and hit the “hide” button.

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We can’t give you an ETA on anything…we’re just other owners like yourself, and support does not monitor this forum. You can make that request at support@glowfoge.com

I have filed a support request. Is Emilyhuh not a glowforge employee?!

Yes, she is. She will see your request, but is pretty much funneling all the requests and complaints to the powers that be, also.

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The problem is that this very feature fits the definition of SPAM.

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Spam is any unsolicited communication sent in bulk . Usually sent via email, spam is also distributed through text messages (SMS), social media, or phone calls. Spam messages often come in the form of harmless (though annoying) promotional emails. But sometimes spam is a fraudulent or malicious scam.

Also, the solution should be easy. As I recall, a SPAM email was not considered SPAM if the sender provided a way to opt-out from the list of senders (not to hide the msg, but to get removed from the list)

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and while you’re at it, can you make the annoying pop-ups disappear when clicking on an image? Sometimes they cover the image you’re trying to adjust and position. You already have a way to invoke text pop-ups, put the alignment and measuring and other tools in that menu and leave the work area clean.
Thanks.

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Do you mean the menu or the submenus (see image below)?

  • If the menu, then yes, they appear all the time, no way to get ride of them, but IMHO, they are not as disruptive as they are on the edges, but I can understand they could.

  • If the submenus, then I agree they are annoying. But, they appear only when you click on the menus and then keep appearing until you click a second time on the menu. Probably not your case, but it took me a while to realize that :slight_smile:

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Hi Artexmg,
It’s the menu. I have no issue with the sub menu because I asked for it when I made a selection on the menu.
What I’d like to see is the ability to have the menu pop-up from the vertical ellipsis just as pop-ups or other options would when you click on “Test” or “Insert Shapes”. Same goes for the “Image - Adjust artwork”.

I have a small laptop display that works fine but adds to my time on the machine if I have to keep switching modes to move the image to see what’s hiding under the stuff I have no need for.

I have a list of other requests that I believe would make my GF really useful but this is not the place for them and I’ve probably over extended my support for getting rid of the unsightly and useless chat window.

Another quick thought, shouldn’t the Preferences section be used for these things rather than someone deciding what they think is good for us? After all, isn’t that the point of having a “Preferences” capability/option?

Thanks for listening

I totally get it: when I work on my laptop, every single covered area is a nuisance.

That is not the case when I’m on my desktop with a big monitor, then I don’t care as these areas are a small piece of my workspace.

Yeah, the Discord chat gets more than 1/3 of the screen. That’s a lot if you’re in a small laptop screen (say, 13"), and it gets worst when you are farsighted (or have presbyopia).

That’s the very reason for a preferences menu. But I get their software is not mature enough yet to have all the bells and whistles. I’ll be happy when they remove the unsolicited chat.

You are welcome :slight_smile:

I’s not a question of s/w maturity, it s question of usability testing and planning. They have chosen a quick and dirty way to implement a new feature w/o regard for use-cases. If they are doing this to introduce a new feature then fine, but have the courtesy to implement a way to enable or disable it in a Preferences or Settings area. It does not take that much more time to implement and test, trust me, I’ve been writing s/w for over 45 years.
Anyway, we could go on and on but I have s/w to write and I submitted my objections and suggestions to support. We’ll see how important or urgent it is in the coming s/w releases.

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I’m definitely a Glowforge employee! And I’ve been taking everyone’s suggestions and feedback about the chat window to the team and letting them know.

The Hopper is real! I have been taking everyone’s suggestions and requests and sending them to the Product or Software teams as they plan for future features. We do really care about the community and that’s why GF invested in my role, so features and suggestions could be funneled up to the team.

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As someone who’s been here from the beginning, you’re aware of how many things came out of the hopper and are now standard features! The software we were using ~6 years ago bears little to no resemblance to the one we’re using today, and much of that was hopperized :slight_smile:

This one, which still works to this day, is one of my favorites!

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There have certainly been improvements to the GF. It just seems to me that any relationship between these improvements and the “hopper” are the result of coincidence rather than intent.

That sounds great! I will be trying it.

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