Zynewave's Forum Page

Beta4 is up. It has bug fixes and more refinements to the graphics. The track header BSMR buttons and the group bars (with the collapse buttons) now resize with the button size setting. The blank bounce button row in the mixer is removed if there are no bounce tracks.

Tomorrow I’ll start implementing the slide and zoom tools for the mixer.

@Trancit wrote:

After a closer look to the mixer, I have to say, you should definetely work on the Solo/Mute/Record buttons… 😀

Especially when resizing the mixer channels, they are far to big and “ugly”…

I think they are by far not so important to take so much space…

I think there are plenty of users that would say solo/mute/record are quite essential in a mixer. Making them smaller would go against the button size conventions I use throughout the Podium UI. I’ve tried my best to make them not look “ugly”. Do you have any suggestions to what should be changed?

Did you change the colour of selected track in the new beta??? Especially the mixer channel this blue is so dense and bright, it´s hard to see any details anymore and this bright colour doesn´t fit the rest of the colour scheme…

I did in beta2, and I gave my reasons for this in my previous reply before your post. Anyway, in the new beta3 I’ve changed it back to a thin frame.

@ninjawarrior wrote:

If i can suggest, do something about those faders. To me, they don’t even look like a faders.

I didn’t design them with real physical faders in mind. The fact that they are translucent came in handy for the new compact design. Otherwise I would not be able to overlay the faders on top of the meters, and so the strips could not be zoomed all the way down to 25%.

Also you could try to put fader center and left channel output meter goes left side on fader, and right channel output meter goes right side on the fader.

That would pose problems with mono and surround meters. The current design scales easily no matter how many channels are shown in the center meters. Having the L/R meters on either side of the fader would also mean it would be hard to distinguish the meters from the previous and next strips. The distance between the R meter of one strip and the L meter on the next strip would be closer than the distance between L/R on the same strip.

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

Sigh… I think I’m over the initial shock now. That was quite something.

Cheer up. Try the new beta2 😉

I guess there’s no way you could be convinced to make the button roundness setting also apply to all the things on track headers, mixer strips, and the rack…? I understand the implications it would have.

Explain why you preferred the old style?

@Zynewave wrote:

I’d appreciate your feedback on the new design.

– I find it weird that buttons on track headers, mixer strips, and in the rack don’t have (noticable) shadows anymore, whereas all other buttons still do. Personally, I liked it better with shadows, as in 2.35.

I felt that the shadows around all the controls within a track header were a bit too much. By toning it down I feel it’s easier to distinguish the track headers from each other. That’s also why I added the 1 pixel rounded corner to track headers.

– What happened to the frame on mixer strips!? 🙁 Personally, I don’t care whether the selector buttons overlap the frame, or the frame overlaps them – I don’t want to have to look at the top of mixer strips every time to see which one is selected. Besides, it looked really neat. 😉

It looked horrible when used on the new narrow strips. It was difficult to tell apart shadow, meter, slider groove, and the 2 pixel focus frame. In beta2 I’ve gone back to painting the entire strip background with the select color. The reason I changed it to the frame some time ago, was because the old flat track controls did not blend well with the select color. Since then the new track chain panel with real buttons has been implemented. I think this works better with a full select color background. If no one objects to this, I’ll do the same with the track headers.

– I don’t like that the space between the input/source selectors and effects is gone.

It’s back.

– It’s funny that the gain/pan fields now always use that small font, even though you said before that better readability compared to the small font on faders was one of the fields’ main advantages. 😉

If I remember correctly, that was done before the new chain panel with the smaller font was implemented. I felt it looked a little out of place with the large font in between all the small font texts. I think it’s ok to use the large font for the track name.

– I think a logical consequence of mixer strip resizing is that the BSMR buttons should just be centered when they are drawn on top of the meters. I’d say this should also happen on MIDI tracks (that have no meters).

They are now centered. Note that the pixel width of meters are uneven, and buttons are even, so they cannot be centered exactly above the meter.

– There’s some space wasted where the B button usually is. Maybe this space could be reclaimed when you don’t actually have a track visible on which bouncing is enabled. If there is one, it would push down the SMR buttons so they’re aligned again on all tracks.

I can remove it if there are no bounced tracks at all. I won’t remove it if just the currently visible tracks don’t have a bounce button. It would be very confusing that the BSMR buttons would jump up and down as you scroll along the mixer strips.

– I think hiding the handles in the zPEQ editor miniature when reaching a certain zoom level would be worthwhile. That way you could at least see the EQ curve (you can’t reasonably edit it anyway using that tiny editor).

Good suggestion. Implemented in beta2. If you move the mouse over the EQ display, the nearest handle will still appear.

– Have you ever thought about using dials for pan again? It’s just easier to see, and definitely easier to adjust values on small strips. Unless everyone hates dials. 🙂

I like the symmetry of the slider.