Re: Feedback

@kingtubby wrote:

‘Alt+Mouse wheel’ scrolls horizontally

Thanks! This makes moving around in the arrangement editor much better. However, it’s awkward to use since it’s not a standard shortcut combination.

@Zynewave wrote:

I remember testing this a couple of years ago, and was not happy with the result. I have a mouse with side-tilt, but it provides horrible accuracy.

Wouldn’t it be better to have it available for the users who would use it? The users who don’t like it could just not use it. I don’t think its accuracy is any worse than a scroll wheel; they both scroll a fixed amount that is configurable in Windows.

Is the code for the tilt support the same as for a horizontal scroll wheel? (I mean checking for a WM_MOUSEHWHEEL window message.) I remember once having a mouse that had two scroll wheels – one for vertical and one for horizontal. It’s useful when applications support both directions rather than ignoring the horizontal scroll messages. Keep in mind that not all users have a second hand available to press the Alt key, either because they are disabled or using the other hand for something else.

The reason I’m talking about all of this scrolling stuff is I find this aspect of the program a bit annoying. With most good Windows applications, you can scroll using a native scroll bar, horizontal scroll wheel or using the middle mouse button. With Podium, you can’t do any of these. I know that you can use the viewport thing at the top of the arrangement editor to scroll horizontally, but it also scrolls vertically, which I find annoying; I don’t want the arrangement to be scrolling around vertically when I’m trying to scroll horizontally.

I’ve seen similarly unusual and non-standard navigation in other digital audio workstations, but I think that they provide a poor user experience. They’re definitely very functional, and users can adapt to them and become proficient at them, but it’s inconsistent with most other applications, which decreases the user experience. (Maybe Podium’s style of navigation is standard for DAWs. I’m looking at this as a newcomer to DAWs and an experienced Windows user.)

For comparison, I find Audacity’s navigation to be a much easier and more natural experience than Podium’s because:

• It supports Ctrl+Scroll Wheel zooming.
• It has a standard Windows horizontal scroll-bar.

In summary, here’s what I’d like to see in Podium regarding navigation:

• Ctrl+Scroll Wheel to zoom horizontally.
• A horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the tracks screen and editor screens. (The vertical scroll bars are useless to me since I can use the vertical scroll wheel. I’d much rather have horizontal ones.)
• Support for horizontal mouse wheel scrolling.

A do like the program’s intuitive user interface functionality, but I think it can have a steeper learning curve for new users because of the absence of these standard features.