Zynewave's Forum Page
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@thcilnnahoj wrote:
A few quick comments before I go to bed:
Thanks for the feedback.
– Tiny selectors on track headers, hmm… I haven’t found a device with a name that takes more than half of the available space. Also the lack of bypass buttons – there’s more than enough room, I think. Like this, the only way for newcomers trying Podium for the first time (meaning no knowledge of keyboard shortcuts or mixer options) using the default setup to bypass a plug-in is in the rack panel. But maybe this is just a far-fetched example.
Yes, that was a mistake. The bypass buttons are now shown on the track headers. I also noticed a bug that has appeared in beta9, causing the entire selector to be colored as bypassed, even when a separate bypass button is shown. That is now fixed.
– The whole upper half of horizontal fader grooves is drowned in shadows, making it unnecessarily hard to see the coloring, which is such a nice feature. 🙁
– I like the non-shadowy look of the vertical fader grooves, but as I said before it looks blurry on dark background. I also wouldn’t mind them being even a little wider still.The shadows are drawn using the same algorithm that is used for all shadows in Podium: The lighting comes from above (slightly to the left), so the horizontal grooves will be naturally darker than the vertical ones. I’ll see if I can twist reality a bit.
Here’s another way to display bypass buttons I believe worth mentioning (used in Fabfilter plug-ins). The control’s not (just) a selector like in Podium, but the principle can be applied to those as well. Just disregard the level bar, +/- and X buttons on the sides.
1. Control in its normal state. (If you move the mouse on it you can adjust the level)
2. Mouse hovering over left edge of control – it turns into a little power button.
3. Control in bypassed state, without the mouse hovering over it.Podium’s bypass X button could, for example, appear as soon as the mouse cursor is moved anywhere on a selector button, like saying “Hi! If you want to bypass this thing, I’m over here. Otherwise just click anywhere else to open the editor.”
Unfortunately this behaviour is not very “touch screen” friendly. I’m not saying I’m going to change the entire Podium UI to focus on touch screen support, but I do think that touch screen operation will become more prominent in the future. So I keep that in mind when I design UI behaviour. Pressing on a touch screen will perform a click, and so you don’t have the usual mouse cursor you can move over controls to reveal more options.
@thcilnnahoj wrote:
@Zynewave wrote:
I plan to adjust the track lane headers before releasing 2.23. In fact I plan to experiment with changing the entire group bar hierarchy display in the tracks region, so that it matches the group header display used in the mixer. Try to imagine the mixer strips turned on the side. This means that the left edge of the track headers will no longer be offset horizontally according to their hierarchy position. This will ensure that e.g. all gain/pan sliders are aligned vertically, no matter what the hierarchy level the track is at. Any opinions on this?
I have a hard time picturing this. Wouldn’t it mean that all tracks moved more and more to the right, instead of only child tracks becoming indented, as the number of “group level strips” (for lack of a better word) increases?
Something like this?
Yes, something like that. Thanks for the mockup. There are pros and cons with that layout. One advantage (IMO) is that you get all controls/track names vertically aligned on all the tracks. Some may think that this improves the overview, while others may think the lack of indentation of the track names disrupts the overview. Personally I think indentation works well in for example a file folder list, but I often find it confusing that the track header controls are shifted around according to group level position. What do people think?
I think I’m done with the mixer redesign:
Notice that the bypass buttons are now hidden by default. They can still be enabled with the mixer options menu. Instead the input selector turns into a big bypass button when an input is assigned, the same way that plugin selectors turns into editor buttons. Shift+click can be used to toggle bypass of the source/effects.
There are still a lot of unfinished things that needs to be coded, so it will still be a couple of days before I have a new beta ready.
Let me know what you think of this:
The chain panel buttons in the mixer can now be made smaller, by selecting the old “use small font” option in the mixer region properties.
The slider ‘groove’ is now bigger, so it’s easier to see the glow indicating the slider position/value.
I’ve implemented a new “slider with value popup” control type, which I’m considering making the default, as shown in the screenshot. Moving the mouse over for example a send slider will show “Send: -3.20 dB” in a popup above the control. Often you don’t need the full decimal value indicated all the time. I think it helps clean up the UI.
I’ve tried to find a way where a mixer strip can be shown as selected, without having the entire strip background painted with the select color. It can be quite overwhelming if you use a very bright select color. I’ve tried adding some space between the strips (again), and drawing a frame around the selected strip, similar to the key focus frame drawn around list boxes. Eventually I would like to do the same with the track lane headers. Any opinions on this new style?
